Equal Couples

A man’s power in a couple relationship is often invisible. It only comes into view when it is challenged. If there is an  unspoken assumption about whose needs are most important and who accommodates to whom, compliance occurs without conflict. Many women learn, for example, what their husband’s limits of tolerated behavior are and stay within them. The man’s power is not observable because the wife never seems to want anything the husband does not.

Occasionally a woman holds this kind of power. “Henpecked husband” is but one of a long list of crude and derisive descriptors for men with powerful wives. The clever wife, we are told, gets her way by subtly convincing her husband and everyone else that her ideas are his.

Certainly relationships are changing and becoming more egalitarian, but these old power expectations still float in our cultural atmosphere and remain built into our social institutions. We can’t challenge them until we see them.

Posted by Anne