Stay loved by sharing power with your partner

As water is to fish, power is to people: It is the medium we swim in. And it is typically just as invisible to us. 
Power is not limited to leaders or organisations; it doesn't require outright acts of domination. It's a basic force in every social interaction. Power defines the way we relate to each other. It dictates whether you get listened to. It determines whether your needs take priority or get any attention at all. 
The problem for romantic partners is that power as normally exercised is a barrier to intimacy. It blunts sensitivity to a partner and precludes emotional connectivity. Yet this connection is what human beings all crave, and need. It satisfies deeply. 
But there's only one path to intimacy. It runs straight through shared power in relationships. Equality is not just ideologically desirable, it has enormous practical consequences. It affects individual and relationship well-being. It fosters mutual responsiveness and attunement. It determines whether you'll be satisfied or have days (and nights) spiked with resentment and depression. "The ability of couples to withstand stress, respond to change, and enhance each other's health and well-being depends on their having a relatively equal power balance," reports Carmen Knudson-Martin of Loma Linda University. Equality, psychologists agree, is the world's best antidote to isolation. It's just not easy to attain or to sustain.  
The ascent of intimacy 
Intimacy is nothing new. Seeking support, feeling close, forming strong emotional bonds, and expressing feelings are essential to the human experience. Both physical and psychological well-being, in fact, depend on the ability to do so.
But where we place intimacy in our lives certainly is new. The intensification of individualism and the development of the love match--ultrarecent phenomena on the human timeline - concentrate intimacy in couplehood. Until the 20th century, says social historian Stephanie Coontz of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, intimacy was dispersed among wide family and social circles. The closeness mothers and daughters and even mothers and sons enjoyed, as well as siblings and cousins, would be considered enmeshment today.
So much have social lives shrunk that men today tend to have only one confidante--their wife. That makes men especially reactive to their wives' emotions--notably their negative emotions. That's not to say that wives are not reactive to men's feelings, but having a wider social network allows women more opportunities to calibrate their emotional lives. 
The place of intimacy is not all that's changing. For a long time, the prevailing definition of intimacy has revolved around the sharing of feelings and insecurities. Necessary as it is, it is no longer sufficient; confiding can be confining. It makes little allowance for individual growth, a requirement in long-term relationships. And individual growth fuels not only the expansion of love but the sexual desire and eroticism increasingly expected if relationships are to satisfy for a lifetime. 
"Intimacy rests on two people who have a capacity to both listen and speak up, who have the courage to bring more and more of their full selves into the relationship," says psychologist Harriet Lerner. "Both need equal power in defining what they want and what they really think and believe. But you have to know you can leave a relationship. If you truly believe you can't survive without a relationship, you have no power to really be yourself within it." 
Shared power is the only power 
Although many people associate power with manipulation and coercion, contemporary psychologists and philosophers have forged a new power paradigm: They view power as the capacity of an individual to influence others' states, even to advance the goals of others while developing their full self. It doesn't require observable behaviour, let alone force.
If a woman is as influential as her partner is, then a relationship lasts, says John Gottman. But if he's much more influential than she is, the relationship doesn't last. For the dean of relationship researchers, an "interlocking influence process" is at the heart of a balance of power. "It's really about responsiveness to your partner's emotions. If you have power in a relationship, you have an effect on your partner with your emotions. 
And responsiveness to a partner is what makes a relationship feel fair, says Gottman, professor emeritus in psychology at the University of Washington and head of Seattle's Relationship Research Institute. Housework and childcare chores don't even have to be divided 50/50 to establish equality in a relationship. 
Fairness has one critical element, says University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz--respect. In interviewing thousands of couples around the world she found that the American definition of a good relationship is "best friend." Best friends are egalitarian, and what most characterises good friendship is respect--equal dignity. 
In marriage, Schwartz says, it applies to division of labour, joint decision making, and especially license to speak up. 
With identity and worth affirmed, partners then can open themselves to being changed by the other, to accept influence.
Beyond manipulation
Straight talk is essential to shared power, insists relational therapist Terry Real, who is based in Boston. But for some females, that can be dicey at first--it requires giving up the only form of power they have long been confined to practice. "The indirect exertion of power through manipulation is part of the traditional female role," says Real. "Men don't like being manipulated, and it's one of the few legitimate reasons they don't trust women. That women exert indirect power because direct power has historically been blocked doesn't make it any less ugly." There's a significant reward for direct communication, Knudson-Martin finds--the intensification of intimacy, leading to increased relationship satisfaction. 
Equal partnership has another critical feature--shared responsibilities for the relationship itself. The more equal the relationship, the more responsibility both partners feel to make it work or get it on track if it is off. 
Affairs: A cost of inequality 
He who wields excess power in a relationship wins the battle--but loses the war, says Terry Real, who aims to nudge the world into thinking about relationships ecologically. "You're not above the system. You're in it. If you throw out pollution over there, it winds up in your lungs over here. Relationally, if one partner wins and the other loses, both lose--because the loser always makes the winner pay." 
Bullying doesn't engender love, observes Real. It engenders resentment and hatred, which tend to show up in passive-aggressive behavior--withdrawal of generosity, of sexuality, of passion, and, ultimately, of love itself. "People don't like being controlled," Real explains. "The exercise of power is really an illusion, but it's an enormously destructive illusion." 
Power changes everything 
Denying the dignity of one partner has consequences not only for relationship stability and happiness, but for health. 
Power, says Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner, has distinct biological correlates. The "new science of power" emerging from his decades-long research shows that "people with power tend to behave like patients with damage to the brain's frontal lobes, a condition that can cause overly impulsive and insensitive behaviour." 
The possession of power changes powerholders--usually in ways invisible to them--by triggering activation of the behavioural approach system, based in the left frontal cortex and fueled by the neurotransmitter dopamine. 
When pressure sparks power strife 
Young couples today enter marriage expecting equality. Both partners assume they are going to be working, Schwartz reports. Men feel much more permission to be involved in the everyday lives of their children than their fathers did. Beginning during courting, they are likely to be sharing expenses. 
But ideology crashes into reality when children arrive. Then the necessity of allocating childcare responsibilities gives rise to power inequalities that surreptitiously erode a sense of self and decision-making power. "The woman usually becomes the only parent who is changing her life for the children," Schwartz points out. "She loses outside influence and an internal as well as external sense of who she is. As she loses power as an individual, her partner may exercise veto power in decision making or become cavalier about when to be home for dinner." 
Compounding the problem is income disparity. It tends to give men more decision-making power. "But it's more money-specific than gender-specific," says Schwartz.