We can all talk about the things we don’t like in relationships: being shouted at, ignored, taken for granted, talked down to, being bossed about, and that’s just scratching the surface.
But what do we actually want? And how can we create a relationship in which we do get what we want?
How do we create the conditions for love, respect, acceptance, tenderness, intimacy and great sex?
I was away last week and I took my copy of Bell Hooks’ The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. She devotes the first 100 pages or so to an analysis of how patriarchy fails men as well as women. She talks about how masculinity is distorted by patriarchy and the hidden injuries suffered by men in a world in which domination is the only game in town.
Then in chapter 7 she goes on to talk about feminist masculinity. To quote her directly, Hooks says:
“ending patriarchy is necessary for men to have collective liberation. It is the only resolution to the masculinity crisis that most men are experiencing.
“To offer men a different way of being, we must first replace the dominator model with a partnership model that sees interbeing and interdependency as the organic relationship of all living beings. In the partnership model selfhood, whether one is female or male, is always at the core of one’s identity.”
What struck me reading this was that Hooks talks about partnership, rather than the oft-touted teamwork model of relationships.
Should couples operate as a team?
My understanding is that teams usually have a captain or a manager. There may not be an I in the word ‘team’, but there sure is an I in the word ‘captain’.
Perhaps the majority of relationships under patriarchy are founded on an inequality – one person assumes the role of captain, and their partner is at best the first mate. Sometimes the two people swap places, as each vies for the place of top dog.
So why we call them partners I can’t imagine.
Reading Bell Hooks’ words it seemed to me that partnership is the foundation on which we can build the loving equality that we actually need. And that means the same for both men and women: letting go of the privileges and protections afforded – or at least promised – to us by patriarchy. Because even if the woman is the one with the power in a relationship she is still enacting the patriarchal structure; just in reverse.
Giving up the privileges of power is something few of us will relish. No longer able to call the shots, no more excuse to sit with your feet up while someone else sorts out the mess in the kitchen. Or no longer shirking responsibility for decisions we once deferred to the ‘captain’.
So why would men give up the privileges of patriarchy?
Even more important for men is the willingness to redefine your identity outside of the traditional patriarchal notions of masculinity.
To quote Bell Hooks again:
“The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.”
I would add here that it is sometimes also women who assault the self-esteem of men as they attempt to break out of the emotional self-mutilation that Hooks describes. For men to be able to change and connect with their inner life, women must also let go of being tied into traditional notions of femininity and masculinity.
As women we can no longer assume that we will always be the ones with the greatest emotional intelligence. If we want our menfolk to be involved in traditional female domains such as child-rearing and providing us with emotional support, we have to permit men to do these things, make mistakes, learn from them and get better at it! And we have to do this without mocking our men when they get things wrong or show vulnerability.
The old patriarchal model of marriage gives rise to a whole host of behaviours which are, quite frankly, counter-productive. You may get what you want in the short-term if you shout at your partner or if you withdraw because you’re angry. But as a long-term strategy it just doesn’t work.
The likely outcome in the long term is, at best, a marriage or relationship which is dead inside, where you just rub along like housemates who know each other too well.
Or when the behaviour is more extreme, it will likely end in the divorce courts.
The long-term gain of transforming your marriage or relationship into a partnership where both of you are respected, loved and cherished is obvious. It may require a degree of courage, a willingness to trust and a preparedness to let go of things we have always taken for granted as a right. But the reward is so much greater than those little privileges that it's well worth the investment.
In the coming weeks I’ll be talking more about what we get wrong and what we can do to get things right. And I’ll keep coming back to the idea that a relationship works best for both parties when it’s conducted as a loving partnership.
If you would like to look at the possibilities for creating something new and wonderful in your relationship, get in touch. You can book a free one-hour Relationship Renewal Clarity Call, where you'll be able to explore what's not working for you in your relationship, a vision for how you would like it to be, and your next steps towards that vision.