Power & Passion: Partner/Dynamic Balance

This is the fourth of five in this series on relationship balance:
1. Symbol Distance
2. Metaphor Direction
3. Self/Other Diametric
4. Power/Passion Dynamic

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As Richard John Neuhaus puts it [in 'American Babylon'], ‘libido dominandi’ is “the lust for power, advantage, and glory.” It shouts, “My way or no way!”

This lust for domination doesn’t just characterize politics in the City of Man, it characterizes each of us. The libido dominandi is that within each of us that plots and strives to have our own way and force others do as we say.
~ James Tonkowich, Libido Dominandi: St. Augustine and the Lust for Domination (emphasis mine)

Of course power and passion are close cousins in human experience, we can see how close by looking closely at the word ‘ambition’:

Ambition:
an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honor, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment

Synonyms:
appetite, ardor, aspiration, avidity, craving, desire, drive, eagerness, earnestness, emulation, energy, enterprise, enthusiasm, hope, hunger, initiative, itch, keenness, longing, love, lust, passion, pretension, push, spirit, striving, thirst, vigor, yearning, zeal

I might like to think of myself as a passionate ‘sensitive guy’ but it is no secret men often have their interior experiential want and desire for things egotistically attached to their sex drive as if their will-to-power‘s force of self were the very fist of their phallus.

It’s why St. Augustine called it ‘libido dominandi‘, “the lust [to dominate and] for power, advantage, and glory”. So it is I wonder if my interior “desire for” is comparatively merely more attached to ‘emotional requite-ment’ of passionate (romantic) love, rather than to lustful (orgiastic?) climax of powerful domination. In a way this topic could easily be about ‘sorts of uxory’ and the difference between uxory and submission, however rather than compare kinds of relationships I think this issue more educational about negotiating a functional power-passion dynamic within a single relationship.

For I don’t think libido dominandi is always bad (certainly not always “sinful”) in and of itself; the libido dominandi by another name might be Nietzsche’s ’will-to-power’, something neither moral nor immoral but merely essential about life and living. And if some women like a sensitive man, I can also see how some women find the sensitive man “too (emotionally) needy” and instead prefer a man with more ambition, drive and will-to-power. In fact such grit, moxie and determination is sometimes thought courageous, independent, self-reliant and oft idolized in ‘the rugged individual’. And of course, not only is there going to be a range of behaviors among men and expectations among women (or vice versa) along this spectrum, but there’s certainly also variance within any particular individual character from time to time – and such variance of personalities and expectations  within a relationship dynamic means (re)negotiation, adjustment and coping.

And if some men like a sensitive woman, I can also see how some men instead prefer a woman with more ambition, drive and will-to-power. I think my wife manages to minimally define any other person when she says “I want” – rather than forcing another to do it “my way or no way” she more often simply says ”I just want what I want – and you can do what you want”. But if I happen to like ”her will to power” more than “her power over me”, I can surely see how other people might prefer something further down the spectrum and may even experience a more dominating dynamic as something more intimate, loving and functional – for them.

Moreover what I might label my “passionate, emotional sensitivity” (or ‘emotional requite-ment’ of passionate romantic love) my wife sometimes labels with a simple “emotionally needy”. This mismatch doesn’t happen often enough to be a serious issue for us (though it can in some relationships) and when it does we adjust and negotiate: I find a balance of self and other that’s right for me (as does she) and each of us (with our partner in mind) try (re)negotiating our love symbols in order to attain a balance that is functional for both of us. And of course we don’t get everything we want right away and we often end up coping with whatever unmet desire (for ‘more of the other’ or for ‘more space’) as best we can. I always try to remember that she doesn’t always get everything what she wants either, when she doesn’t get all the relationship ‘space’ (or the immaculately clean home) that she wants (from me) she has to cope with possibly having more guilt and less freedom than she wanted.

Finding the balance and dynamic of power and passion that works for both people in the relationship is a process probably best approached with patience – and also with some recognition of the interconnectivity of these four different relationship balances. In a very real sense each of these balances are merely different perspectives, each highlighting slightly different aspects and nuances, of the intersection between two individuals in an intimate relationship.

Agreement & Ambiguity: Self/Other Balance

And our agreement needed ambiguity, uncertainty and semi-silence so we could grow as individuals and as a couple and get to the place of comfort we both enjoy today.

Along with distance balanced love symbols and directionally balanced relationship metaphors comes finding the right balance between self and partner. This balance is tricky however as it’s comprised of three different balances and two different perspectives on those balances: each individual strikes an interior balance between themselves and their partner, they negotiate with their partner for a third external balance, and of course they each have their own perspective on all three. Yet these together allow individuals and couples to know where and how they are and aren’t integrated with their partner, where and how they may and mightn’t, will and won’t, intimately ‘meet’ their partner.

When I first approached my wife with the idea of having a female led relationship*, I was seeking to (re)negotiate our love symbols not only in order to get more adequate love symbols to express myself (this is my interior balance between self and partner) but also so that we might meet and integrate with each other better and more intimately (which is my perspective on our exterior balance between self and partner). Well, my wife was rather skeptical about my idea. She naturally wanted adequate love symbols for her (her interior balance between herself and her partner) but she also wanted to get wherever our relationship was going in an organic and non-artificially structured way (her perspective on our exterior balance between herself and her partner).

Negotiating between her desire for organic growth and my desire to already have the symbols I wanted took some time, and if during that time the issue wasn’t exactly an open secret, it often felt like the unspoken elephant in the room. But like my open secret theorizing, our agreement to retain ambiguity and semi-silence over the issue was an instrumental part of a slow change plan/process for acceptance and the (re)negotiation of love symbols, an instrumental part of a way to balance individual need for relationship fulfillment of desire with a partner’s need for emotional space and comfort.

It wasn’t a real open secret since she knew generally how I felt, what I wanted, what I intended, nearly as quickly as I was aware and since all the specifics were always readily available nothing was being hidden. At the time I felt strongly (and still do) that it was of utmost importance to communicate to her what I was generally thinking and feeling** even if she didn’t want many specifics. Likewise did she manage a basic communication about how she felt, and again even at the time I thought she was right not to listen to me past a certain point. As she said, since I didn’t have adequate symbols to communicate what I wanted there was no point in talking about the issue until we verbally worked out some negotiated plan. Our relationship should be allowed to grow of its own rather than placing uncomfortable and artificial strictures and outlines around it, whether to stretch or hem it in any way.

Thus, both having good points, we ended up looking for a good (negotiated) balance between [1] what I wanted for us and the symbols I thought would better fit us down the road (direction) and [2] how she wanted our relationship to grow and how she wanted symbols that fit us constantly between the “here and now” and “wherever we end up down the road” (speed). And though our subsequent semi-tacit agreement was  somewhat akin to the frog in a pot scenario I’ve mentioned before, there yet remained a great deal of intentional ambiguity about what her specific (speed) limits were for my pressing uxory were, and over where (direction) our negotiation might ultimately lead us. And our agreement needed ambiguity, uncertainty and semi-silence so we could grow as individuals (grow our interior balance between self and partner) and as a couple (grow our exterior negotiated love symbol balance) and get to the place of comfort we both enjoy today.

The (semi-)silence was a tool, the anti-intimate distance between us was a tool, ambiguity itself a tool, one we actively and consciously agreed to use in order to attain a better more adequate, more intimate, (negotiated) balance between us. And when the silence did not serve us we did speak of the elephant in the room, especially if she felt I was driving to hard, ‘exceeding the speed limit’ (metaphors driving metaphors), if she felt I were uncomfortably playing a role ‘at her’ rather than organically playing myself with her. And the idea of playing roles speaks quite well to her fears at the time and to why (as I said above) she wasn’t sure she wanted to know and talk about all the specifics of what I thought, wanted, felt and fantasized. For no matter how “no strings attached” such information about my interior is, she knew she’d always feel confronted and obliged to do something (anything) for me because she loves me.

That information about my interior can easily affect her perspective and the way she negotiates love symbols with me – indeed even seriously compromise her perspective and negotiation. In a way by maintaining distance from and ambiguity about my interior she was protecting our relationship – because if she were to lovingly catering to my ideas, symbols and fantasies out of a sense of obligation or guilt, she might actually help that larger process of organic and balanced love symbol negotiation instead devolve into a fantasy-based role-playing relationship.

And in another way, she was using intentional ignorance to protect her freedom and choice (which are part of her fiery self): by not knowing all the specific details in my head she didn’t have to feel (as) guilty or obliged when she made choices towards what works best for her, by not talking about some things she could get the ‘space’*** she needed to deal with the issue the way she wants to, the way most comfortable for her, the way that maintains her interior balance between herself and myself. And because I knew this at the time I didn’t press the issue, because I don’t want to be on her “to do” list - because if she hates feeling obliged, so too do I hate making her feel obliged.

Of course, it is always difficult to make the choice to be patient, to accept and cope with having an interior imbalance long enough to grow your relationship, to grow and balance your exterior love symbol negotiation in the way that’s best for both you and your beloved. Yet it can very much be a choice between making your partner feel obliged and making you both feel guilty on one hand and on the other hand feeling as if you are suffering in silence without happiness or fulfillment. With any fortune one can cope/manage an interior peace for as long as is necessary – because coping and living with a bad choice is worse than being patient, appropriate and considerate when (re)negotiating love symbols with the one you love most.

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* Today I might point out how “uxorious” is a better dynamic descriptor for us than “female led” and that even uxorious has it’s problems as a label, but back then I didn’t have any better or adequate words, symbols or metaphors to communicate my meaning.

** This is a significant and distinct difference from the so called “stealth submission”, which I think is semi-deceptive and do not condone in anyway. For her not to have that basic information about me and my thoughts, for me to withhold basic information about how I feel and what I want, would not have been fair or loving to either of us.

*** To her credit (and apropos of ‘where does it all end?‘), if there were always and only ever going to be this neverending frog-in-a-pot semi-tacit process of potential guilt and/or uncomfortable obligation and the closing of her freedom, if there were never going to be any set of symbols “good enough” for me, if she were doomed to constantly working to protect and defend her freedom and our relationship, then I wouldn’t blame her for wanting some sort of space. To be ever, always and increasingly uncomfortable? No, I do not want that for her; I don’t think anyone would want that for the one they love.

Metaphor & Dynamic: ‘Pointing’ Balance

If two individual’s interior ‘balance distance’ between (love) symbol and object come together to form a relationship dynamic (albeit still yet with need/room for some negotiation), describing that resulting dynamic directly in all its disparate aspects can be difficult, which is why we use metaphors.

Driving, of course, is commonly used even in ‘vanilla’ relationships to metaphorically point at which partner is “behind the wheel” and is ultimately in control of where the couple is going, how fast they’re going, what route they’ll take to get there. This despite the fact that at sea the one making such decisions quite often isn’t the one “behind the wheel” – or that many “in charge” people prefer to have a driver and to make those decisions from the back seat in a more ‘driving Miss Dominant’ scenario. Picking driving as a metaphor, no matter how complex one makes the metaphor or how accurate it is, will only highlight a limited number of specific relationship dynamic aspects and only to a certain degree; a metaphor always remains an illustration of part of something and will never be the ‘real thing’.

And by highlighting some certain relationship aspects, other aspects are diminished. Certainly the ‘passenger’ ‘drives’ his own life and likely ‘drives’ a number of aspects in the relationship as one person actively making every decision seems unlikely. At some point all metaphors break down and/or need other (new) metaphors to better adequately “point” at whichever aspects happen to currently be under illustration.

Perhaps rather than ”Mr. Submissive” driving “Miss Dominant” or vice versa (I should probably admit I never saw that movie), perhaps they each have their own car, each driver making equal and individual driver decisions in tandem coordination as they move along together, perhaps caravaning one in front of the other, perhaps sometimes side by side (almost as if in the same car), perhaps sometimes the other in front of the one depending on who has better information about the area they’re navigating at the time.

Of course there are going to be times when they get separated, either accidentally or perhaps intentionally in order to rendezvous later. And it might happen that they arrive at a ‘stop sign intersection’ simultaneously from perpendicular directions (or in another example from opposite directions). In such situations my old driver ed teacher taught me to make eye contact and communicate with the other driver over who would proceed through the intersection first. Will waving the other driver through first be the ’safe’ and ‘prudent’ choice or the ‘passive’ and ‘submissive’ choice? There’s always the ‘driver to the left’ rule of right-of-way and there’s always the possibility these two particular drivers may already have some prearranged rule on the matter. And then of course there’s always the option of merely waving a thank you at the other driver (or skipping this entirely) and ‘aggressively’ (hopefully not quite ‘recklessly’) gunning it through the intersection, perhaps thereby dominating the intersection? or dominating the other driver? Or ‘forcing’ the other driver to take the ‘passive’/'submissive’ position?

Well once again, at some point all metaphors break down, and I’ll be honest up front: in this example I’m not sure it matters who proceeds through the intersection first so long as there isn’t an ‘accident’ or ‘incident’ — and if on some level such a thing as “right-of-way” doesn’t matter, then certainly there’s will be a level at which labeling people by such relative and aspectual ‘relationship positions’ will seem silly too.

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It is true that in both cars and relationships every person  fears ‘personal injury’ and the expense of ‘repairing’ their ‘vehicle’, or much worse ‘replacing’ their ‘vehicle’. These fears aren’t bad in or of themselves, but another fear we all have about ‘accidents’ or ‘incidents’ is that those we love might be injured, even fearing our loved ones’ subsequent emotional injury should anything ‘accidentally’ or ‘incidentally’ happen to us. And we tend to classify some fears as more noble because they’re focused on people and other people at that. Moreover when one has ‘too much’ self-centered fear when compared to fear on behalf of others, that person is usually considered ’self-centered’, ‘weak’ or ‘cowardly’ –precisely the words often heard in association with ‘passive’ or ‘submissive’. Yet clearly people can do the same thing (the ‘action’ of avoiding accidents and incidents however done) for different, multiple and even ambigious reasons, and a closer look at more than one aspect is often warranted.

For if in my real life driving I always wave the other driver ahead, always take the ‘passive’ or ‘submissive’ position largely (though admittedly not solely) because I fear for my loved ones, in my real life relationship I always wave my wife ahead, always cede to her the right-of-way, not out of fear, but because I passionately love her and passionately love seeing her go, quickly and lively, wherever she wants to go. In fact, I’m going to turn whatever way I need to in order to follow her through that intersection because I want to continue seeing her go, not because I am fearful of going, or passionate about ‘stopping’, or passionate about ‘ceding’ or about the ‘passive’ ‘following’ ‘position’. Yet even so, might someone accordingly, relativistically, relationally, positionally, label me (pejoratively or not) ‘submissive’.

And it is certainly true that my wife is more passionate about ‘going where she wants to go’ (obviously preferably with me) than she is passionate about ‘stopping me’ or my ‘ceding’ anything. Yet from another perspective (possibly about other aspects) this isn’t entirely true because I’m surely (at least) equally passionate about having what I want, even if what I want passionately is to be in the car/caravan/ship/whatever with her, even if my other interests and self definitions are more ‘portable’ than hers, even if we’ve made/negotiated other arrangements/agreements. My wife (who isn’t really interested ‘dominating’ per se) ends up ‘driving me’ (‘leading’, whatever the current metaphor is) merely because I passionately, uxoriously, wave her through/on/by the ‘intersection’ of whatever relationship choice happens to be current. Yet even so, might someone accordingly, relativistically, relationally, positionally, label her (pejoratively or not) ‘dominant’.

Thus I think there’s really only one thing that always remains important and relevant regardless of which relationship aspects one’s preferred metaphor illustratively highlights. If it is true that we ‘point’ with metaphors at aspects of our relationship, we shouldn’t be surprised our attention is on what we’re pointing at. (How many times has a driver pointed at something out the window for the benefit of others and promptly made a regrettable driving error?) Where and how we “point” is going to be where our attentions are, is going to be how we think about our relationship. How we choose to think about our relationship, even which aspects we predominantly choose to highlight, will shape our interior perception of our relationship and subsequently affect our relationship “driving decisions”.  A balanced approach to how we think about our relationships is important.

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(And for the record, in real life when we do go somewhere in the same car, I do all the literal driving, largely because she thinks I’m a better (=safer) driver. Whatever aspect that may metaphorically point at about our relationship.)

Symbol & Object: ‘Distance’ Balance

I might encourage her to unchain and release her interior kraken, encourage her to stop differentiating between loving me and loving what I do for her …

…when symbol confusion leads one to love power exchange instead of loving one’s partner, the resulting relationship becomes philosophically untenable if not functionally untenable as well.
~ OH, Monsters

And though many of us may be “addicted” to symbols involving behaviors less than physically or mentally healthy or sometimes to behaviors and symbols that do not actually fulfill the interior ‘hole’ [need] very well at all [too much 'fetishizing], yet when a symbol really works for our interior need and desire, it really works and we know it.
~ OH, Passion Addiction

I’ve written before about what happens in intimate relationships when symbols and their objects get too close, but I’ve missed putting such objectification in perspective with having symbols and objects too far apart.

The fact that objects are more easily dominated (used) than people is perhaps the heart of the “objectifying fetish”: I am so without objection (so submissive) that I am like unto – nay, I have become – an object. And I can imagine for some people the feeling of being dominated (manipulated, used) like an object (or the experiential movement from personhood into the “objecthood” of a “tool”) is an important part of their submissive experience, either for a more masochistic sense of dehumanization or simply for the meaningful sense of perfect use of thing/person (or other senses and combinations).

Of course I can also imagine that fetishistically having less distance between symbol and object like this might be accepted, functional and welcomed in an individual’s interior and even in a couple’s relationship. However for me there’s a point at which tend to feel more as if I’m an actor on a stage, too aware of ‘playing’ a ‘role‘ to experience the meaning I seek. This is why I rather think my ’electric’ uxory is more interactively communicative dynamic rather than objectifying symbol fetish and is why I believe I understand and maintain the difference between ‘being the object of her desire/passion’ and ‘being an object/tool that gets used by her’.

But of course on the other hand it’s about aspects in a spectrum with abstract poles and about finding and negotiating a range of symbol functionality (a ‘sweet spot’). For if on one hand there is the symbol-object ‘distance collapse’ of  fetish, on the other end there is symbol-object ‘distance mismatch’ of miscommunication, where intimacy or significance is entirely lost because symbols don’t seem to carry enough (or the ‘right’) meaning either among partners (relationship dissonance) or within one individual (interior dissonance). And if every individual is likely to have a slightly different comfort zone so also will every couple have a slightly different ‘distance range’ in their negotiated love symbols; yet what works, works – and when it does, we know it.

So in putting my “electric” response to my wife’s fiery self in the perspective of such a spectrum, an awareness rises of purposefully treading a balanced middle ground between symbol and object:

While I am comforted by my constant effort to make love symbols clear and transparent (without ‘too much’ mis-communicating distance between symbol and object) and by my avoidance of fetishized symbols that stop the movement of meaning from one interior all the way through to the other interior (because they don’t have ‘enough’ distance between symbol and object), still yet I tread with fear and trembling as I differentiate and negotiate a balance that works for me, my beloved and us.
~ Rephrased from Monsters

Sweet to See Your Name

Changing one’s last name with marriage isn’t the sort of love symbol that’s for everyone; it’s not for all men, it’s not for all women. I did change my name though my wife was a tad worried I’d someday regret it (I riff a bit on this in the fictional story Mr. Uxory).

It’s been quite some time since I changed my name (still without regret) yet this past election day was the first year the voter registration roll finally managed to properly reflect that name change.

When my wife came home from voting she said, “It was really sweet to see your name right there by mine.”

Such things are happinesses made of.