Power Struggle

 Power can be a difficult thing to quantify in a relationship. On the surface, I think most people believe that any one partner having too much power is not good. When we treat power as dominance over another person, then of course that’s not good in a marriage. For one person to win, the other must lose. What kind of marriage would you have if one spouse always felt like they were the loser?  Richard B. Miller was involved in a research project to better understand interactions in a family. He states, “To better understand their marital relationships, we have developed a scale of marital power. We have learned from others that power is made up of two major components. The first is the process of power, where one spouse tends to dominate conversations, doesn’t listen to the other partner’s opinion, etc. The second component is power outcome, which is determined by which partner tends to get their way when there is a disagreement.”  That sounds grim. In both situations I feel there is a loser and a winner, and any amount of power one has looks like a deficit of power in the other.       But what if we reframed power and thought of it more as control? We all want to feel in control of ourselves, of our situations, of our future. I feel like we are more willing to share control, than we are power. In fact, sharing control is often thought of as a partnership. Miller also teaches that,” Sometimes a husband may believe that his role as head of the house gives him a right to be exacting and to arbitrarily prescribe what his wife should do. But in a home established on a righteous foundation, the relationship of a man and a woman should be one of partnership. A husband should not make decrees. Rather, he should work with his wife until a joint decision palatable to both is developed.” In healthy marriages, both spouses feel like they have some control, but neither feel like they have all the control. This is the balance that we should try to seek in marriages. A partnership where both are invested and rewarded from their investments.