Oscar Wilde said:
Everything in human life is really about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.
O.K., I think family is about power, but let’s go with it.
What is power, and how can we harness it for a healthy relationship?
All of us let power play out unconsciously in our lives. Creating dynamics that push and pull.
Humans need to be encased in a power structure, it’s inherent. Without we fall apart, and I think lots of that is to do with finding the limits of the container of our lives. Relational containers, societal state containers, and lots of other ways that we check for safety.
There are dynamics of inferiority, superiority, drama triangles and triangular relationships that release the tension of a conflict.
It takes a particular type of awareness to have the space to respond in relation to someone. To hold your own power, or truth, alongside their life experience. Recognising and acknowledging your experience, and theirs.
Without going too spiritual, in these moments, time seems to be different. To disappear. Things get really detailed, in my experience.
A moment can seem like a lifetime.
Two human beings become synchronous, fully connected. To who they are, not who you need them to be — the absolute intimacy of one human being to another.
A kind of synergy, coherence, a harmony of two people’s understanding of the situation and all the factors in the situation. It is embodiment too. You begin to resonate on the same frequency. You get onto the same vibe.
If there is sadness, anger, grief, despair, joy, excitement, hope then it can exist. It is observed and felt. It’s given space to be. Nothing is rushed away. Everything is felt and moved through the body.
Let’s explore how power has been taught and conditioned in our cultures and what might be an example of a more sustainable and equitable way to hold power:
Power over
The ultimate fantasy of power is to have complete power over your situation. Superiority. The underlying drive of most of Western society: crush it, go get it, progress. Be the knight in shining armour.
The only way to consistently perform and progress is to hold power over something.
If you are surrendered to life you must accept life’s ebbs and flows.
The inability of humanity to deal with the climate crisis is mostly about this inability to surrender to the yin energy. It is a human crisis, not the climate’s.
We are too dependent on our power over the environment to feel safe, protected and secure with changing our relationship to it.
Power over is healthy and useful when we want to manipulate and harness our will to achieve something, to make a choice that will drive forward from the desire and hunger to be human.
Unfortunately, most of the time, it translates into most of our relations. How we set our inner world, is how we relate to each other.
Men are taught to be competitive with each other, seek power over each other, know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and dominate with passive threats.
If men are in their hearts, then they can relate with competition to enocurage each other to be better and more in tune with who they are.
Unfortunately, men are conditioned out of intimacy and heart-space.
We are actively discouraged from being vulnerable and then shamed and blamed when we show symptoms of repressed emotion. Then shamed when the violence of that repression erupts in attacking the self, others, withdrawing or denying our reality.
We now have epidemic problems around suicidality and domestic abuse.
The root of this violence, of any violence, is humiliation. Working in coaching has shown me that this is the most common fear of men, to be made fun of, to be humiliated, and it is dangerous to all involved. In fact, the most common fear of the women happens to be that they are not safe. Yet, we keep playing these dynamics out on each other.
Also, men are less useful than they have ever been. Technology has replaced traditional masculine roles in most of modern society. Most of social media devalues the man’s perspective, and I understand that equity comes into play here, but we cannot just ignore that fact that many men are struggling with this shift.
Unfortunately, power over translates in a materialistic, individualistic, consumerist society as getting to know someone so I can harness that to beat them to the next step on the ladder.
Often, which has been portrayed time and time again in film, the power dynamic creates a toxic masculine role in the family, which is the only place where the energy can surface. Let’s face it, that turns unhealthy and abusive fast.
If we repress our emotions, we become one of four things:
- Passive-aggressive, snobby, indifferent
- Controlling and angry
- Desperate and manipulative
- Withdrawn, resigned, depressed
If you imagine these as a grid, the first two orientate on grandiosity. The second and third are boundary-less, the third and fourth are shame-based, and the first and fourth come from ‘building barriers’; a walled-off, position.
We keep ourselves safe and protected from pain. Without knowing it, we wall our own pain in with us. We start to spread that pain into our environment because we can’t hold it forever. We start to see confirmation that the world isn’t safe and trustworthy coming back at us. The cycle continues.
The national populism movements that we are seeing in global politics right now play out of these dynamics.
Aspects of the feminist movement and the movement to find equity amongst race and gender ask to grab power from people who have long had power over them.
Hardly anyone is talking about how disempowered and submissive the indigenous American communities are, is that because their voices have been so oppressed that they can’t force their own empowerment?
None of it is a safe environment.
I’m not dismissing the innate drive for someone who has lived, and whose generations before them have lived, under oppression and submission, to get back personal power. It’s just that personal power is not taken back by finding someone to put power over.
After I was raped, I subtly sought power over people to feel vindicated and safe and to stop people from seeing the humiliation I felt.
My salvation came when I knew I was worthy of love for merely being alive as a human being. When I entered therapy ten years ago, that was the first thing we worked on.
We need to be able give power to those who aren’t actively trying to grab it, as well as those who are for the right reasons. We need to recognise that we have power within us inherently.
Like the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, we don’t want to become the people we have revolutionised against. Although ironically, that is the nature of shadow. We become obsessed with who we ‘other’, and slowly we become them.
We want to emerge as something wholly new and nurturing. We will never get to equity through perpetuating power over dynamics.
Holding power over people can be a sweet elixir, yet, it’s not the way to deeper connection and intimacy. Perhaps the most complex dynamic to work out, everyone on this planet has been conditioned to seek a certain level of submission and dominance in all areas of their lives.
It’s tough to step back and see these dynamics playing out in conscious awareness.
Power under
This one is tricky. Some of us were conditioned to hold inferiority to others. I know this position really well, as it was the conditions of my early life.
This isn’t to do with being inferior as a child, because it’s natural to depend on the power, strength and will of caregivers and adults.
I’m talking about family dynamics and community members.
Any forms of abuse or oppression, traumatic experiences, in childhood cause inferiority complexes.
Hard for most people to understand. There’s a lot of victim-blaming going on. People get judged, blamed, criticised, or shamed for not feeling comfortable interacting in social settings or group dynamics. In reality, it might be a subconscious block or a somatic block from trauma held in the body, that prevents someone from engaging.
This is not to say that inferiority should be accepted in this situation, it’s an excellent opportunity to nurture yourself or someone else out of that traumatic experience, that’s called counter-shaming.
Sometimes that work cannot be done outside of therapy.
I’m not advocating the victim mentality here either, although it is healthy to recognise and accept any form of victimhood you might have experienced.
What I’m advocating is, if someone was conditioned to be inferior, shaming, blaming, judging and criticising won’t help them to become an equitable part of a relationship.
The tension, pain or distress you feel when someone you love is not interacting the way you want them to, is your pain.
The way to allow them to interact is to nurture them and be compassionate to their history. Whilst holding them accountable for their behaviour. It doesn’t mean you can’t feel angry or aggrieved, but these things need to be expressed cleanly (not directed at the other) in a safe setting and in consensual agreement.
Gottman institute said that the number one cause of relational breakdown is contempt:
Contempt is the worst of the four horsemen. It is the most destructive negative behavior in relationships. In Dr. John Gottman’s four decades of research, he has found it to be the number one predictor of divorce.
However, dealing with contempt is almost standard practice for people living in the power under position.
This is harder when both parties in a relationship are feeling pain at the same time.
Many social groups will exile and disgrace someone who cannot engage in the way that they expect — causing more disconnection. I’m sorry but it’s also rigid and abusive.
They have every right to do that if that is what they need to feel safe, however, if they are interested in repair, then this is not going to be a successful experience.
To the person conditioned to inferiority through trauma, this will only reduce their comfortability and increase their feelings of insecurity. It’s also going to scare them shitless in most cases. They might feel threatened and unsafe because those critical stances might further remind them of their trauma.
If they are an articulate and experienced spiritual seeker or meditator with many miles of change under their belt, then maybe they can shift this dynamic over time. That’s unlikely, though. Otherwise you might find yourself coming up against a dead-end brain fog or dissociation.
Similar to Oprah and Bruce Parry’s stance in their recent book: “What Happened To You?”. The idea is not to say to someone: “you messed this up, you didn’t want to be there, you did this, you did that.”
It’s to ask them:
What happened to you that makes it difficult for you to show up in those circumstances, what do you need to feel capable of doing that?
That way, we raise each other up, take each other by the hand, and walk each other home to our hearts.
Power struggle
A power struggle is when both people are seeking power in a relationship. They might be seeking that power because that’s where they feel safe, protected or comfortable, they might both be seeking one type of role, or they might have been conditioned to really enjoy the struggle.
They might both be seeking the inferiority position, or the superiority position. One person might need to feel power over their partner to feel like they are themselves or that they’re performing their societal role adequately.
It might not be desirable, but we need to be honest about this. It is pervasive. It is everywhere. Some people do like the interplay, and it can play out in sexual dynamics in a healthy and exploratory way, with mutual consent.
An overarching power struggle will lead to constant and intense interactions: sniping comments, put-downs, mocking, insinuating, confusion, deliberately unclear statements, tension moments, awkwardness, tense silences. There are more. These are releases of the tension.
Typically, if two people are involved in a power struggle, there’ll be moments of eruption of the tension that neither can hold indefinitely in their bodies, or a person that the tension can be directed onto; a scapegoat.
Some relationships thrive on this dynamic tension. Others drown. Some lose themselves within that so their partner can shine. Others demand superiority through the struggle, exhausting their partner into submission.
The way to exhaust the power struggle is not to engage in competitiveness. Quiet indifference and assured personal nature. Boundaries, compassion — not empathy in this case, and grounded nature in who you are and what you need.
When heterosexual (especially) men and women compete for power, it never ends well. That’s because masculine and feminine energy competes for power in much different ways.
They are not playing by the same energetic rules — a sure way to confusion and pain.
If you’re feeling confused, foggy or exhausted, you can always say to your partner:
I’m feeling exhausted and confused. I don’t want to compete with you. Can we talk about how we feel at the moment? What is keeping us from connection?
Power with
This brings me to ‘power with’. it is so uncommon in this modern world, that you might think this is an incompatible phrase.
Do you notice anything within your body when you read it, a constriction or a dismissal?
‘Power with’ is entirely possible. Seeing someone for who they are and what their preferences are.
Honouring them for those preferences. Holding them gently in their truth, acknowledging them, allowing them to be.
To have conversations in each moment that you feel pain, is not always possible, and wouldn’t be appropriate.
You can’t check in with each moment you feel that your boundaries have been crossed, each time you feel anger. You can commit to checking in with each on a weekly basis, to cherish that time, to share time doing things that fill both of you up, to focus on ways you can be more connected and to praise each other for who you are, authentically.
To live with the intentionality of conscious relationship.
To dedicate time and consciousness to the interrelation.
Compassionately, honestly and openly.
So pain can be accepted, noticed and explained from a position of understanding and life experience.
Drawing back on the ‘what happened to you’ stance, conflict is a chance to get curious and gain greater connection. To explore how one person might be, consciously or unconsciously, hurting themselves and others. We all do that, to some extent, and that is our work to do on ourselves, outside of relationship.
The imago dialogue is a great way to then share those perspectives intimately.
Conflict often arises from self-hatred or self-abandonment. Parts of ourselves that we cannot acknowledge, and therefore we seek to squash or dismiss it in others.
Conscious conflict, where both people are standing in their power, who are both being heard and getting the chance to share their subjections and perspectives with respect, can be incredibly healing and allow you to grow as a person.
It is important to hold these conversations in a safe format.
An opportunity that you’ve been waiting for to create a deeper connection.
Blaming, criticising, judging and shaming someone will never lead to a deeper connection.
If one or both of you feel closed off and defensive, the best thing to do is to open and relax.
Yes, this is challenging.
Suppose you can frame the conversation in terms of connection and not a power struggle. In that case, you can both keep power in your life experience and the conversation becomes an exploration of the ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ that any two people have in relation.
From this, you can decide what action, agreement or decisions to make, if any. The difference here is that one person doesn’t have to give up their agency, power or self-respect to create harmony in the relationship.
Power within
Holding power within is essential to having a ‘power with’ relationship.
You have to have a sense of your own grounded and coherent power. This is a relationship to higher power also. There’s a humility to it.
I do this by breathing my energy right down into my balls and then giving it to the Earth. If I’m stuck in a power struggle, I’m usually feeling stuck in my solar plexus; there’s adrenaline in my system, which makes my solar plexus tight and closed.
An bad state of being for connection, let alone having difficult conversations about pain and identity wounds.
Holding my power feels like an elongated, strong and naturally curved back, an emotional smoothness, a confident smile, an open heart, and a curious mind.
It feels a certain way that I can’t describe. The closest thing would be coherence. Not just to my life in the moment, but also knowing that I am on the right path for the future. On my soul’s journey. Knowing that I am relating with someone I love respectfully, seeing them outside of fantasy, expectation, outside the moment in time and space. Really seeing them.
Even if misalignment exists with them in that aspect of life, I can accept that. I can always find that alignment with someone else or within myself. A friend or colleague can fulfil that need within me if I can’t fulfil it myself. Obviously within respectful boundaries.
We all put so much pressure on one person to fulfil all our needs. That’s impossible, and it works out cruel in the long run. A village makes a person.
In this process we ask someone to be who they are not. We tie them up, bind them with knotweed (our expectations) and then accuse them when they, or we, are not happy and fulfilled.
Embodied Leadership
Embodied leadership is all about the power within, for me. Being able to be fully embodied and leading yourself through life.
To be connected to your emotional process and to proceed with what your heart tells you is the best course of action. The heart-mind connection is essential in that sense.
We have to be able to interpret our hearts messages in an open, relaxed and compassionate way.
We have to be open to all that we are, including how we act in protection, the ways we try to claim power from others, and how we surrender to submissive inferiority.
The ways that anger overtakes us or sadness weighs our shoulders down. The way that grief flushes through us. The way that we squash our joy and excitement.
Those are the challenging versions.
You can also observe the joyous moments fully.
The way that your lover looks at you when they are appreciating you. The way that your lover strokes you with care and affection. Spontaneous laughter, running and whooping, playing team sports, the feeling of complete joy when a team is connected in flow.
Where everything comes together.
Swimming in the sea.
Creativity; the feeling of being connected to other musicians, expressing emotion fluidly in a collective understanding.
There are many more, endless versions. That’s why life is a never-ending journey of noticing and celebrating nuance, sameness, and difference.
Group Dynamics
This is where things get exciting or slippery depending on your perspective.
Not every situation and not every group are going to have the preference of conscious relationship. There’ll be an inherent power structure in those groups.
Even groups that are dedicated to conscious relationship have settled on a mutually agreed power structure in certain tasks. A way that we can know our roles and how we perform them. I think the idea is that everyone is open to changing and being flexible on those agreements if it should arise that that is needed.
Interacting dynamically in a group can be an incredible experience, if everyone is comfortable and safe to express their true nature. People inevitably default to their strengths and provide for the group in that way. For example, if someone is naturally good at building systems, they will seek to organise a group.
Where it gets slippery is if you have prior expectation that the group is going to be challenging or unsafe. Group dynamics constantly change so if you’re trying to grasp hold of a reality to feel safe you’re going to find that hard.
Integrating thoughts
An acceptance of all these things will allow them not to dominate our lives. All of these power dynamics start from our relationship with ourselves.
Are you holding power over yourself?
Or do you nurture yourself as an adult might lovingly nurture their child?
Life is dynamic and complex; it is suffering and joy. When we feel powerless, we seek to move and do something that will mean that we don’t have to feel that way.
Instead of seeking to relieve that feeling, try to sit with it, understand it.
Understand the factors behind it, understand the drives in you, the somatic drives — the way the body tenses, convulses, constricts under the discomfort of that feeling.
A deeper connection is on the other side of this understanding.
Genuine respect, true relation, true appreciation.
Seeing someone as they are.
Emotions don’t want to stagnate. They want to move. They want to be felt, and they wish to transmute into something else.
When you can share them, it is amazing!
Actualising emotions in the life of a loved one. Someone who can hold you in a suitable space. Feel with you in connection and love — someone who wants to keep their integrity and power and wants you to keep yours.
I hope this exploration has provided value, curiosity and movement in your life. I’m sure it has brought up both pain and joy, discomfort and comfort. I’d say that’s a good sign. That means you’re truly living in love.
