POWER STRUGGLE IN RELATIONSHIPS

Power Struggle in Relationships by Joseph Ghabi

The greatest asset we have in human existence is our soul growth, but somehow we have that confused with becoming powerful. Power does not bring growth unless we understand the essence of sharing that power.

The struggle for power is a main characteristic in basically all of our relationships. The main types of relationships I recognize and have categorized into three main groups for you are work relationships, family relationships, and emotional relationships.

The way I can understand and relate to when it comes to our relationships is as follows, a relationship is basically the cooperation between any two people, on whatever level they are working on. Very simple, yet it's apparently very hard for most of us to deal with in our lives.

In many instances as we can see, cooperation between those people involved in the relationship tends to exist as a power struggle, in terms of who will succeed in gaining control or domination over the other person in order to meet their own needs or requirements. In such a case, the dominant one is losing his or her growth and in effect, the victim is achieving the growth of both people involved in that relationship. What do I mean by that? Think about it! We do obtain a greater amount of growth in experiencing a bad situation.

When you are the abuser, it is a likely case that in reality, you do not understand yourself what you are doing. Many of the people who have been a victim of abuse are carrying the burden of a situation or circumstance they grew up in, in terms of being abused. They might not have been granted any chance to learn how to understand, accept, and deal with this experience of being abused. In effect, they do not know any better, but at the same time they are going backward in their own life until they begin to understand the experience and their lesson fully. Unfortunately for those who are being or have been abused, this is a process of which they had to go through. In some instances it is part of Karma, but the lesson to be learnt here is how to handle the situation and get out of it without being hurt and having a deeper scar than that intended in the first place. In this case the abuser will gain much more in their understanding of the experience unless, of course, they choose not to learn their lesson. I would like to put this into perspective because in certain situations where the abuser has become accustomed to being abused and complaining about his/her situation, it is eventually taken for granted as being an easy way of bringing attention to themselves and to gain sympathy from others. However, that will eventually lead to becoming a pattern and a vicious circle. We can choose to either complain as much we like about our situation or we can do something to try to improve it. It is up to you to be the judge in your own situation. At the end of the day, we do have the power to do improve our lives and achieve our growth it is not up to anyone else to change that.

Have we ever wondered why we feel the need to control our partner? If this is the case, why are we in the relationship in the first place? Are we trying to prove something to ourselves, in order to fill the gap of something that is lacking? Perhaps we need that extra confidence that we think we are achieving when we are in control of someone else's life, making him or her feel insecure as a result of that domination. I believe there are many possible reasons and many questions and their answers come from the need to look to our inner selves in the first place.

In many relationships of our time and from what we can see with the people in our surroundings, we become able to evaluate the way they respond to conflicts or harsher situations in their lives. The initial response and what appears to be an 'easy escape' is that we always tend to shift the blame to the other person involved and claim we have nothing to do with the incident in the first place. We like to proclaim that he or she was manipulating our weakness or our self-confidence and used it as a weapon against us. This may be the case, but we do have responsibility for ourselves and should NOT allow for such treatment to take place.

One thing I personally cannot understand is why we allow our emotions to overpower our rational mind when the people around us who really do care are constantly reminding us we should leave the situation that is bringing us pain and hurting, but we choose not to listen to anyone. Many people have told me "it is easier said than done!' I don't think so! When we are in any situation where we can see no apparent opportunity of growth in that relationship, but we choose to stay anyway even though we are being hurt in the process, well, there is no excuse! Sometimes we are afraid of leaving, this may well be the case, but we need to find out why we are afraid and what it is exactly we are afraid of. That might help!!!

It is apparent to me that on most occasions our pride and ego are taking the best out of us in terms of accepting humility, which is essential sometimes and will enable us to put our life back in order when we see the truth from a different perspective. When we are able to drop the ego and pride, we do see the situation in a whole new light. There is nothing wrong in being humiliated from time to time and when necessary because that will build up our self-confidence to move forward in life with a new understanding and awareness in light of the situation.

Another problem that I feel occurs frequently when dealing with relationships is that we always seem to have a hard time in letting go of the previous experience we passed through. The 'letting go' is an essential factor here and must be fulfilled in order to allow any new experience to take effect in our lives. In reality we will never go backwards in life unless we allow it to happen. The choice is in our own hand. Letting go is the most important factor of our growth and we must learn to master the art of 'letting go' to break ourselves free by accepting the experience as being just an experience for what it really is, and most importantly, without keeping any bitterness in our hearts which can take control in our next relationship.

The only way we can move on and allow new opportunities for growth to come into our life is by investing in our next relationship instead of withdrawing due to us being afraid of getting hurt. That thought alone will bring the experience to you because you are asking for it in the first place. Whatever we project will become our own reality. It is about time that we stop and take a moment to look to our lives from a totally different and detached perspective, especially when we see things are still happening in the same way year after year. Haven't you asked yourself the question yet? Why am I stagnating in my life?

You hold the answers to any question you have. Isn't it time to start looking in a different way when it comes to our relationships? If you think you are happy so far in your relationships, yet, you still find means to complain then you really are not happy. Try to introduce the word "change" as a part of your vocabulary! Trust me our only mystery in life is in learning to understand ourselves. We are tough when it comes to dealing with ourselves, but why? We try to create an image, in fact, in most cases, a fake image of how we would like people to see us for what we are on the outside but in reality we are dying from the inside. What is it that we are hoping to achieve from this? It seems the result is usually always at our own expense! Look at your life and try to bring yourself back down to earth to enable yourself to evaluate your life accordingly.

On a final note, being in relationship with no depth of communication between the two souls involved is rather like not being in a relationship at all! I would like you to take a look around one day when you are in a restaurant. Observe the people around you, particularly those who are in as a couple. Of, course they are sharing the same table, but each individual might seem to be 'somewhere else' in their own thoughts and with no exchange of conversation except perhaps "how is your food dear?" Is that really a true relationship? Maybe in some peoples opinion, but I do not think so. The way we have been taught and how we have become used to evaluating our relationships in many cases is wrong and is an example that seems to mislead us into following inaccurate examples.