Listen Guys !
“We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.” — Margaret Atwood
John blinked in the glaring fitting room lights, looking like a child playing grown-up in his dad’s clothes. “This isn’t going to work. You do realize those pants are enormous on you, right? Like, absurdly so.” To me, this was obvious. To John, not so much. “I dunno, they look fine to me,” he said, desperately, pulling at the waistband. “No. I’m getting you another pair. That fits.”
Giving in to my clearly superior knowledge of clothes, John left with a great pair of pants. While properly fitting trousers may seem petty, my totalitarian ruling on the situation could be a bit more telling in regards to our relationship. Was I the Stalin to his cowering masses?
Power is not just for the politicians any more. In relationships, power, or more importantly, the person who has it, can govern everything from money, sex, right down to where you get your morning cup of coffee. Along with women’s liberation and burning bras, ladies love to claim they truly hold the power in relationships. Men usually take a less calculated side, owning up to the fact they really don’t care where they go to dinner – just as long as there’s, eh-hem, dessert. But does this so-called “relinquishment” of power imply ownership in the first place?
It seems as though in every woman’s brain, there’s a nerve center that feeds on control. This hunger manifests itself differently for different women – be it buying pants, working in the office, her own appearance or her boyfriend. Maybe it’s some cavewoman instinct that never got eradicated with back hair or a response to hundreds of years of wearing corsets, but oftentimes this craving for power satiates itself by becoming that über-bitch girlfriend all your friends warned you about, wielding an impressive grip on your manhood, literally suffocating your testosterone.
Guys, don’t get smug; you’re not off the hook. Men are just as guilty as women when it comes to their power-hungry ways. Of course you’ve never acted like this, but you most definitely have a friend who gets red faced and poppy-veined when he sees his girl asking another guy for the time. Male friends? God forbid, unless, of course, he makes sure to check her text messages every time she leaves to go to the bathroom. Hell, she’s lucky she’s allowed to talk to her brother.
But why is it important who holds the power? Why do we wrestle for supremacy over someone we are supposed to love and care about? The truth is that no one wants to be dumped. To be dumped is, by far more, devastating than being the dumpee. Having the upper hand insures a tight grip that creates dependency where there’s no wiggle room allowed.
For women, the logic is if they don’t assert the power first, no one will. Men will take it to their graves that they don’t want their girlfriend acting like their mother but they lie like rugs. Without getting too Freudian here, what guy doesn’t want a hot woman ironing their underwear? Sometimes women just need to take the wheel because, quite frankly, nothing would get done. Countless responses of “I dunno”, “I don’t care” can get aggravating. So, now we can cut to the chase and quit asking. Don’t care where we’re going to dinner? Ok, well I’ll tell you. Control becomes an expediter, the Priority Mail of decision-making.
Or maybe the answer is more obvious than all that. It’s a matter of choosing our battles. John, for example, couldn’t care less about which pants he got, as long as they covered his crotch and didn’t make him look like an asshole. For my part, I put effort into what I’m wearing and would like the people around me to do the same (I blame this on years of working in retail). Decisions mean opinions, opinions mean discrepancies, and discrepancies mean arguments. If there’s only one opinion then there are zero fights. We are just trying to keep the peace.
And maybe the power struggle doesn’t hinder the relationship as it is at the core. What control we allow, our partners dictate an essential balance of the relationship itself. Mostly, in healthy relationships, power is given, not born. Allowances and direction given to our partners is an indicator of how we feel about them and how much they are trusted. But, keep in mind, with great power comes great responsibility. So, take your power graciously without being overpowering or controlling. And, when your girlfriend says your pants are too big, listen.
