Is My Aversion To Using Power and Authority Authentic Or Conditioned?
Finding places to explore authority - power and authority in our intimate relationships
Who would you be if women weren’t conditioned to avoid seeking or using authority? That’s a tough question to answer–at least it is for me. Here’s why and what I did about it.
Listen to this post:
I’m still smarting from my realization out loud last week that–despite being obsessed with the subject of women and power–I’ve been so afraid of power all these years that I became blind to the way I hid behind the term “leadership” as a proxy for the core element of formal power: authority.
And by the way, I’m not alone. Very little business and leadership advice uses the word “power” because it is so triggering to people. The abuse of power is a legacy we humans will be living with for a very long time.
That said, for women to heal ourselves and step up to the things the world needs from us–equality, engagement, advocacy, agency, etc.--women need to establish a healthier and more holistic relationship with power of all kinds. And this includes the kind of power I’m personally uncomfortable with. Worldly power. Authority.
I asked myself (and you) the wrong question
Last week, I challenged myself to imagine a world where women held as much authority in all walks of life as men did. Our offices. Our government. Our justice system. Our health system. Our transportation system. Our homes and families. I struggled to imagine this even as I asked myself and my readers to explore the following question:
If there were no greater penalty for you as a woman to seek and wield formal power, what would you do with this opportunity?
I’ve been gnashing on this all week and decided that I can’t really answer that question other than to say, “I’d make a fair, just, and equitable world in my little corner of it.”
The fact is that I don’t have a lot of authority over much more than myself and my business. That’s not nothing, but it’s not the kind of authority that invests in large amounts of capital (human or financial), determines the course of other people’s lives, or builds bridges. And this highlights a crucial point when it comes to creating healthy relationships with power. Authority over external resources is granted to us. Either we earn it from others, are given it by others, or compete to win it from others. (I’m not including ‘stealing’ it, and I’ll cover the landscape of claiming authority over your internal power at a later time.)
If you’re like me, traditionally suspicious of and uncomfortable with those in external authority, you probably didn’t work to compete, earn or request much formal, authority-based power.
So here we are. Here I am. Without a lot of formal power to claim or use.
I spent more time thinking about the other question I came to last week:
Is my aversion to formal power authentic? Or conditioned?
As I mentioned briefly last week, I don’t think it’s authentic for every human to seek, wield, and use worldly power and authority over other people and resources. The reason I say this is that we all are more authentically comfortable embodying different archetypes, and those archetypes all have many gifts to give and have different relationships with power of all kinds. Whereas the Ruler and Hero thrive on formal power and authority, the Lover and Caretaker thrive on relational power. The Revolutionary and Everyperson thrive on cultural power while the Magician and Creator thrive on personal power.
But because many people, women in particular, have been so thoroughly acculturated out of wanting authority, it’s very difficult to know if our aversion to formal power is authentic. I’ve worked with Ruler and Hero female clients, for example, who are surprised to discover that their archetypal joy includes having authority over other people.
The only way I know to test yourself for what is authentic to who you are at your best is to try it on. And I don’t just mean in your imagination. I mean, find a place in your life where you can really, actually, try to do the thing you’ve been told by others you can’t and shouldn’t do.
How can I explore whether wielding authority is authentic for me?
What does having authority feel like for me? Can I become comfortable with it? Can I stand strong when others tell me I’m wrong to have it? Want it? Use it?
These are the questions I’ve been sitting with this week. And I’ve been working my brain around and around to identify a part of my life where I can experiment and explore these questions. As I said above, I can’t declare myself grand puba of anyone’s money but my own. I can’t grant myself authority over anyone’s time and energy but my own.
Or can I?
After asking myself hard questions, namely, “where am I not taking authority I have a right to, or that others give me?” I’ve come up with a situation to explore and experiment more fully in: my marriage.
This isn’t new territory for me. Power dynamics get ugly behind closed doors. And they can be amazing, too. I’ve been working around issues of authority and other kinds of power in this space for a long time, personally and professionally. But I have come upon a new view on these issues recently, and I’m taking new actions that will give me a chance to explore my relationship with all kinds of power much more intimately in the months and years ahead.
I’ll delve more into the details of these situations beyond the paywall, because–safety and privacy is why the paywall is there. But here I will elaborate a bit on some gender-charged themes I see playing out in my own life and the lives of other women I know.
Eve and Adam discuss the uncomfortable topic of authority between them.
Power and authority in our intimate relationships
If you’ve been living in my feed lately, you can’t have missed a gigantic discussion going on–about women and men, between women and men, between women and women, and between men and men–over the balance of power in hetero marriages. The hetero marriage appears to be the current battleground of the sexes (along with the hetero mating-ground-for-marriage, the dating pool). The battles and skirmishes revolve around emotional labor, invisible labor, home care, child care, and other such hard-to-pin-down activities that largely define our personal lives. They skate and skirt around, under, and in between formal, relational, and personal power in particular. Women and men are getting angry, and it’s making it hard for them to live comfortably with each other.
I realize that not everyone is married, so I’m going to switch to the term “partnership” for purposes of inclusivity. Intimate and close relationships of all kinds, where we depend on each other, exhibit some of these same power dynamics, especially across gender boundaries. For example, I’ve supported several business partners through difficult times, and I have to say the issues are not all that different at the core of it. So, if you’re not married, my hope is that you can still find value in the words below, even if some of the analogies don’t quite work. If you want more interpretation and exploration in your own context, join the member chat so we can go deeper.
I’m not going to try to fully encapsulate the issues between women and men in partnerships here (no one has that much energy), but I will refer you to the most insightful article I’ve read on this divide in the context of marriage to date: The Marriage Advice every Couple Needs, But No One Gets by @CelesteDavis. Celeste captures in one article the complexity and depth of the gender dimensions behind why many partnerships fail. She also offers useful graphics and advice. Being completely reductionist, I’ll oversimply her point by quoting the article’s subtitle, “In order to love and be loved, both men and women must do the thing they've been taught their whole lives NOT to do.” She points out that women and men have been acculturated into opposing views of what it means to be a good person (i.e., woman or man) and that while we often try to lean into these visions to fix marital strife, to make ourselves “better,” we actually need to lean against the common wisdom. We need to move towards each other instead of away from each other. In reductionist shorthand, for example, women need to become more assertive, and men need to become more emotional.
What does this have to do with authority? The answer to this question is unique to each partnership. But I am sure that, as it is in my marriage, we grant each other authority of all kinds. Whether it’s over how often the toilet paper supply is restocked or how the retirement funds are invested, these grants of authority are not always made consciously, and they’re not always made equitably. Even when they are conscious and equitable, life happens, and the balance of power between partners gets out of whack. The balance that worked pre-kids, or pre-demanding job doesn’t work the same way after said kids and job take over daily life.
The mark of a successful partnership is not the equity of authority but the ability to negotiate and renegotiate it over time. The exercise of authority in a successful partnership must be taken and given freely and fluidly by both partners as the circumstances and needs of the family change.
A reality that contributes to this conundrum is that many of us have authority we do not use, because we’re afraid of what will happen if we do. Fear is important, and we can manage fear more than we think we can. A related reality is that other people will often give us authority if we simply ask for it. Not all the time, but more often than you might think. That’s a place to start, being honest with ourselves about what authority we have that have not used or asked for.
This is really hard work. A lot of us fail, individually and together. Not enough of us receive grace. We can all do better.
Finding places to acquire and explore authority in your life
REFLECTIONS AND ACTION STEPS
Now it’s your turn. Think of situations in your life and work where you could benefit from having more authority. Center yourself in them and use this reflection to decide how to explore the authority you have but are not using. Use it to decide how to ask for more authority from others.