Are You Being A Powerful Woman In Your Relationships? Here’s how to find out.

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power. ~ Oscar Wilde

You could replace the word sex with relationships in Wilde’s quote and it would hold equally true for most people. Unfortunately, one of the things many of us learn as we grow up is to confuse the idea of controlling other people with the feeling of having power. But this is false power. The recent film “The Phantom Thread” is a perfect study of two people trying to reassure their insecurities and shared fear of rejection through power games in the relationship. Both seek to control the other in many ways, but underneath it all they both want love and are afraid they will be rejected. TRUE power in relationships, as I tell my powerful women clients, is NOT about control.

True power is feeling free to safely be our real self.

First we must give ourself permission to love and accept ALL of who we are, then it becomes safe to freely share our real self with others. That’s because once self-love is complete, then we are unfettered by fear of rejection — and an odd thing happens… we become even more attractive. To love. To ourselves. To others.

If you’d like to try it out, do this: observe how and when you use control tactics to create false safety and false power for yourself. We humans play the power and control game a lot of ways: with sex or money, for instance. Here are just some of the ways you can spot if you are slipping into the illusion that power equals control…

• You want the other person to do what YOU want them to do, or you are very attached to certain hopes or expectations (positive or negative)
• You are hyper-aware of “who wants whom more” — “Does he want me more than I want him? Do I want him more than he wants me?”
• Using sexual desire as leverage
• Monitoring who has more money, status or prestige (comparing)
• Thoughts of approval or disapproval (“Is he good enough for me? Am I good enough for him?” and nitpicking or disqualifying people)
• Constantly craving ‘certainty’ and future guarantees of dates, times and timelines in the relationship , over-planning the future with him, noticing you are anxious if you don’t know when you’ll see each other next

Pay attention to when these things come up for you, then, when they do, remind yourself that this is not REAL power and does not REALLY keep you safe. Most relationships that are based on fake power through control end very badly and tempetuously. So, instead of control and expectation, CHOOSE to give yourself the FREEDOM of self-love in that moment — then take the ACTION that TRULY demonstrates self love.

For example, one client kept trying to get her man to show up on time for their plans but it was not working. She felt devalued and disrespected by him. Instead of continuing to try to find new ways to ‘get him to’ show up on time (a control approach), she instead gave HERSELF permission to let him know, self-lovingly not angrily, that from now on if he didn’t arrive by 2pm she’d drive to their event or activity separately and meet him there because she didn’t like waiting. Then she FOLLOWED THROUGH. This is where most of us have trouble — following through on these self-love boundaries! By KEEPING that boundary and following through, she respected HERSELF. And know what else? After this happened a couple times, he DID start to show up on time. Without any drama, fighting, or tug of war between them.

When we seek only self-control rather than control of others, we attract exactly what we wanted in the first place.