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Imbalance of Power at Home
Judi Goodman, LICSW
"I feel I am drowning in my own
poison. I am continuing to lose it.
I lose it when he makes me feel invisible,
when he doesn't let me talk. Or when he
doesn't talk to me. I just don't feel safe
sharing anything with him."
If you are reading this, you may be questioning what is happening in your life. Couples normally struggle over power and whose needs should have priority. How these are worked out with each person feeling good and taken care of determines the quality of the relationship. But if power and control become a central issue in the relationship and especially if one feels intimidated, you are not having the "normal" power problems. We will look at responses to the "power over" position of a partner; what may be the signs, the effects on you, dynamics of power and gender, and assuming there is a margin of time that you can begin to work on yourself—how to strengthen yourself and have clearer boundaries.*
Although physical battering has been a recognized national concern recently, verbal and emotional abuse, less definable and much more subtle at times, is as toxic because it attacks your mental health. Until now, women have silently accepted this. Power, control and intimidation are at the core of all abuse. If you are in this situation, however, there may be time for you to strengthen yourself enough to see if your partnership can be changed.
It is about rules of how to be and who has the privilege to decide. The person who makes the rules in any system has no desire to give this role up; men are the major high score rule makers, but on one end rule maker turns to controller/abusers in setting up the constraints in relationships. Women are thus left with having to be responsible for challenging her partner's behavior. How to do this? One of the best ways to begin is by becoming aware of the dynamics of power and control.
If you are in a relationship in which your
- desires and complaints are undermined
- partner is explosively angry and rageful
- where your partners' moods slip into hostility
- where you are blamed, devalued, intimidated and controlled
- where your partner refuses to talk about your distress
you are in a relationship that may be thought of as emotionally or verbally abusive. You may find yourself being placating/resentful or angrily eruptive. The problem is, neither of these change anything. You may find yourself feeling depressed, mentally ill, or just confused. The feelings you have and your incapacity to deal may feel like a "not usually me" experience or they may feel like
history revisited.
Major hurdles to change for women are:
- Highly overvalued attachment to their partners
- Inability to maintain firm boundaries or be aware of the intrusion into their boundaries; also, inability to step away.
- Living in stress from the covert intimidation by their partners
- Inability to maintain their own emotional balance in the face of conflict
- Fear
- Cultural constraints – gender, ethnic, social role
- Their own history of abuse
For most women, harmonious relationships with partners and intimacy are critical for well being. Owning your own power and expressing anger well are not skills women are familiar with and opposite the attributes valued for a woman's behavior. Women don't have the body, or the way of being, to just
"do it." And what is even more confounding for some women who DO own their own power in places like work is that they can't do it with their partner.
To deal with a controlling and emotionally abusive partner, you need to look at what really is and then develop the strength to change. If this is you, what lies in front of you is to:
- Examine your attachment. Many attachments are more like addictions. Women need much support to face the void and to bear the tension as they withdraw from their intense overattachment and find their own voice.
- Be clearly aware of boundaries, both your difficulty protecting your own boundaries and sensitivity to boundary invasion by their partners early enough.
- Learn how not to get knocked off course by an abusive partner. You can learn to be centered instead of reactive and to develop body practices that will allow you to feel stronger and more assertive, more grounded, leave, or yield—whatever is best at that time.
There are a number of issues to look at:
- Can you bear the tension while he escalates his behavior and demands as you try to change the dynamic between you?
- Can you take on building your body so it is coherent with what you WANT to do for yourself? Because women are not trained to fight and bear the tension of fighting, they often feel weak and unable to take on fighting for their own rights.
- Can you let go and begin to build your own life and happiness—or do you still look to him to ok it?
- How do you think this behavior is affecting your children?
- Do you think that if you let things be and live in resentment that you can sustain a relationship—forgetting that marriages die from attrition and resentment and men leave women anyway!
* For a good discussion of how to discern what is changeable from what is not, Mira Kirschenbaum's Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay, especially
Step 2 and Chapters 6 and 7, is excellent.
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