Inner resentment is a sickness that drains our energy and eats away at our cells. A blatant outburst of anger runs its course and it’s over. Resentment lingers. The power struggle is just as real, but it’s clandestine. We pretend it’s not there and soon we don’t even notice that it exists.
It’s especially difficult to acknowledge your resentment when you are the kind of person who allows your vulnerability to show and you believe in listening to the other person’s point of view while they are not interested in hearing yours.
When you are coming from a standpoint of respecting differences and of working on your own faults, with someone who is only too pleased to point out your faults and happy to tell you that you’re wrong, you run into a particular kind of challenge.
How do you let go of resentment when you’re caught up in a power struggle, and how can you drop the power struggle when you want to take responsibility and the other person perceives it as you singlehandedly shouldering all the blame?
My son’s music teacher gave them an exercise: They broke up into pairs. One person in each pair was told to play in a way that fully supports what the partner needs to express himself. He should only sense what the other needs and be there for him in a way that will give him self-confidence. When this is accomplished and the partner has expressed himself in some way, they switch roles. My son’s partner didn’t do what he was supposed to do. Instead of providing a background of support, he went off and did his own creative thing. There are many possible responses to this from fighting it to going along with it. The teacher told him in the end “You have to learn how to deal with things when the other person doesn’t play by the rules.”
If this isn’t a statement of what all of relationships are about, I don’t know what is.
In a power struggle, the struggle is not over a difference of opinion. There’s a struggle because someone is not playing by the rules. The rules of the game of relationships is that simce we are different, our needs are different and our perspectives are different, we have to pool all our resources to find out what is good for everyone.
If I am open and vulnerable, that is to say I am willing to allow for another viewpoint, while the other person is not allowing for my viewpoint, then the other person is breaking the rules. Then is it up to me to decide what to do in this case.
How do you protect yourself when you want to disengage from the power struggle, but they are trying to overpower you?