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.

Priorities

Apropos of the difference between the (happy) bossy-uxorious and the (unhappy) domineering-henpecked dynamics, I recently reread Hantman’s essay on “Personality Types that Drive Your Partner Away: The Controller” (scroll past “Educator”). When Hantman says: In other words, the Controller is less interested in being loved than in being in charge, and obeyed, I immediately thought of something else:

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

What an interactive, communicating, expressive, symbol means to one person on their interior (including connotations, nuances, significance and relative importance and priority) will have important implications for the resulting relationship’s dynamics. This is why the process of getting our “symbol straight” in a love symbol negotiation is so important and never ends.

Bossy

Bossy:
adj. boss·i·er, boss·i·est
Given to ordering others around; domineering.

Boss:
n.
a. An employer or a supervisor.
b. One who makes decisions or exercises authority.

v.tr.
1. To supervise or control. See Synonyms at supervise.
2. To give orders to, especially in an arrogant or domineering manner: bossing us around.

v.intr.
To be or act as a supervisor or controlling element.

In the dictionary of my youth I swear next to ‘bossy’ would have been “like a boss” or “to behave like a boss” and then I’d have to raise my finger up to the entry for ‘boss’ too. This is how I learned there’s a real difference between being “like something” and “being something”.

My wife has said before she doesn’t want “to be in charge” of our relationship or really “in charge of” anything, in large part I think because “being in charge” has connotations for her of a “management-employee” dynamic and/or of “force and obedience” that she doesn’t quite want to have in a partnership/team of equals.

What she does say, and what she sticks to hell-n-high-water, is that she’s ‘bossy’, that she happens to have a lot of things she wants done and done her way. Yes of course, with my often ambivalent and always uxorious personality, in a real sense she rather ends up the de facto ‘boss’ who’s “in charge” anyway.

But if I asked in my last post, Does my wife want a “female led relationship” or does she just want to have what she wants?, and pointed out how at some level these different things, correspondingly ‘boss’ and ‘bossy’, are de facto, “in practical effect”, the same thing - in this post I’m pointing out these similar things are also different on another, different level – a level that’s important to my wife, a level where she preserves her interior sense of self, character, principles and personality.

For if she can be said to ”be in charge” only in a de facto way due to me and my uxory, only because I am constantly choosing for her being in charge in this de facto manner, then she can thus be ‘bossy‘ and make decisions without being ‘domineering‘, i.e. arrogant, tyrannical, imperious – and safely avoid any “domineering-henpecked” dynamic.

Domineering:
adj
acting with or showing arrogance or tyranny; imperious

 

De Facto Difference

de facto:
adv.
In reality or fact; actually.
adj.
1. Actual: de facto segregation.
2. Exercising power or serving a function without being legally or officially established: a de facto government; a de facto nuclear storage facility.

Two actions can look quite alike but have diametrically opposite intentions. Fictional plots are full of this sort of thing: the person who tries to save another person ends up on trial for murder because it looks like they killed them, the one in love with another is treated as an archenemy because of the communicational disconnect between meaning and intentions. How often have we heard

I assure you we have no intention of (this thing); we only intended to do this (other completely opposite thing) – which only just happens to look exactly like we intended (this thing).

and feel as if forced to choose between naive (guarded, hesitant) trust of intentions and being taken for a gullible chump, mark and sucker. Things aren’t always what they seem, people’s intentions aren’t always clear and our conscious interior choices can look from the exterior like other things – even things that as a matter of character we would not consciously choose.

Does my wife want a “female led relationship” or does she just want to have what she wants?

Do I want to “submit to her” or do I want to intimately experience and participate in her desire and passion?

Are these at some level the same thing – just different?

Sometimes the point of having such a plot of contraries is to show how different sides are still part of one coin, opposites as aspect and facets of each other and so the author reveals the essential similarities in character, situations, actions and even intentions of the opposite — to love is sometimes to hate, to be an ally is sometimes to be an enemy, and vice versa, etc.

We don’t practice “orgasm management” or “orgasm denial” or “male chastity”. Yet since porn and other women are out and we’ve decided (whether I’m merely deciding to do somethings her way or not) that we’re going to only have sexual experiences that edify our intimacy together, since she doesn’t choose such physical intimacy as often as I would choose it  –and I certainly wouldn’t press such an issue regardless if her reasons are health reasons, that she’s tired, or irritated with me or anything else–, our conscious choices and intentions have amounted to the de facto practice of ”management”, “denial” and “chastity”.

But there won’t be any locks on body parts or ticking clocks on blog sidebars because our attentions, as our intentions, are focused on increasing and maintaining passion and intimacy, not on (near as I can tell) the length and duration of the exercise of force or coercion. It’s not that I think people who practice ”orgasm management”, “orgasm denial” and “male chastity” do not focus on increasing and maintaining passion and intimacy, it’s that I think we do it differently – and that difference isn’t always bad.

‘Help Meet’

And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
~ King James Version

As a further note on Teamwork: Difference & Equality and how men and women can be different yet equals, I think of myself as a ‘help meet’ for my wife, a symbol-phrase that has seeped into my unconsciousness from my more religious days, straight from the bible.

I myself have never been able to quite see the phrase as indicative of god’s ordination of women’s submission to men, yet this is the phrase’s gendered history. Thus imagine my happiness to stumble upon Shawna R. B. Atteberry’s essay Does It Really Mean “Helpmate”? where she gives an explication of the Hebrew phrase ‘ezer cenegdo‘ that also explains much of how I feel, what I mean and what I intend when I say ‘I am her helpmate’:

Ezer is used 20 times in the Old Testament: seventeen times to describe God and three times to describe a military ally or aide. “Help” or”helper” is an adequate translation, but English has different nuances than the Hebrew does. In English “helper” implies someone who is learning, or under a person in authority [a subordinate]. In the Hebrew “help” comes from one who has the power to give help–it refers to someone in a superior position. That is why God can help Israel: God has the power to do so. God helps Israel because they do not have the power to help themselves.

There is another possible definition for ezer: “power” or “strength.” Both words are from the same Hebrew root and the nouns would be identical. [...] the name of the Judean king, Uzziah, means “God is my strength.” [...] Azariah means “God is my help.”

Cenegdo is two prepositions: together their literal meaning is “facing.” ke is the first preposition, and it means “like” or “corresponding to.” Negdo means to stand in someone’s presence. Paired with ke it means to be in the presence of an equal. Together these two prepositions show the relationship between two people: it means they are standing or sitting facing each other, which shows they are equals. Ezer cenegdo does not mean–or even imply to mean–that one who is subordinate or inferior in creation or in function. Woman was created to be a power[ful] equal to man; an autonomous being that God created so that the man would have someone like him, and equal to him, to share his life with.

Yes, I possess, and I am meant to give to my wife and equal partner, strong, powerful and different (though yet equal) – help, and in helping her I help myself and us.