Relationships are not easy and take a lot of work. What is the secret to being happy in a relationship? A study published by Journals.Sagepub.com takes a look at the role power dynamics plays in quality relationships. Nowadays, power may be less of a factor since views on gender roles and society's expectations have changed.
181 heterosexual couples ranging in age from 18-71, who'd been living together for at least a month and have been together for an average of 8 years, answered questions about their relationship. They were asked about trust, sexual satisfaction, feelings of oppression and constraint, and commitment and willingness to invest in the partnership.
One of the study's authors, Robert Körner PhD at the Institute of Psychology at MLU, said "We also calculated the balance of power to investigate the extent to which the traits of each partner were similar to each other." They found that a personal sense of power and satisfaction with power predicted relationship quality. One the other hand, positional power, general power motive and balance of power were factors not related to relationship quality.
They found that the happiest couples were those whom reported a high sense of personal power. What seemed to matter the most was not the balance of power but the feeling of being equally as important. Dr. Astrid Schütz explains, "Maybe this feeling extends to different aspects of the relationship. Whereas the woman might want to decide on where to go on vacation, the husband chooses where to go for dinner."
They also address the fact that gender roles have changed over time. Men were still found to have more positional power than women in education and income. They were also found to "need" to be the decision maker. Whereas more women felt content in their relationship even if their partner felt like they were more in charge.
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