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May 4 - July 17, 2025
Some people have already decided to leave their relationship even though they’ve taken no action to get out. The obstacle for them isn’t acknowledging something practical, it’s acknowledging something emotional.
What’s missing for them is a sense of permission.
Diagnostic question #4. If God or some omniscient being said it was okay to leave, would you feel tremendously relieved and have a strong sense that finally you could end your relationship?
They feel a kind of loud No! rise up in them. They discover that they very much do not want to hear that it’s okay to leave.
What does it mean if you felt something like that? It might mean that you’d pinned a lot of hopes on this relationship and that you’re convinced your life will be empty without it. If
don’t let your hopes blind you to the realities in your relationship.
A really good couples therapist can sometimes change things between you that seemed horrible and unchangeable.
Diagnostic question #5. In spite of your problems, do you and your partner have even one positively pleasurable activity or interest (besides children) you currently share and look forward to sharing in the future, something you do together that you both like and that gives both of you a feeling of closeness for a while?
The short answer is that children aren’t glue and shotgun weddings don’t work out.
Children will keep you connected, that’s for sure, but it’s not the kind of connection that has much to do with your love for each other.
If there’s even one thing you and your partner experience together and look forward to (besides children) that reliably feels good and makes you feel close, there’s the possibility you’ll be able to clean out the crap between you and have a viable relationship. If you had just met, there’d be the possibility of your falling in love. Quick take: Real love needs real loving experiences.
Because this book works just like medical diagnostics, positive and negative guidelines don’t exactly have equal status. A guideline that says your relationship is too bad to stay in overrules any guidelines that say your relationship is too good too leave.
So any guideline that says this makes a relationship too good to leave is provisional only. It’s true only as long as nothing else comes along to make it too bad to stay in.
if you answered no there’s still the possibility that you’ve got a viable relationship. It’s just that you’ve got to work together to find something that you both look forward to doing together that feels good and makes you both feel closer.
Diagnostic question #6 . Would you say that to you your partner is basically nice,
reasonably intelligent, not too neurotic, okay to look at, and most of the time smells all right?
If you can say that right now you feel your partner’s reasonably nice, smart, sane, not ugly, and okay smelling to you, you’ve removed an important obstacle to your finding your way back to each other. When people say yes to this question, the possibility of love still exists. Quick take: You just can’t love someone who’s mean, dumb, crazy, ugly, or stinky.
So, when people say no to question #6, it’s very often an angry, disgruntled, grievance-filled no. It’s a no that’s tainted with hurt and disappointment.
There’s something about their partner that frustrates and confuses and overwhelms them and makes their life unbearable. And that something has to do with power. Everyone intuitively understands there’s such a thing as being in a relationship with someone whose personal power is so overwhelming and destructive that you’ve just got to get out.
you can discover whether your partner’s power is something you just have to deal with the way everyone else does or whether there’s something about power in your relationship that’s so bad that most people in your situation ended up feeling happy they left and unhappy they stayed.
We’ve got to understand what keeps power so hidden before we can truly see it. There are a couple of reasons why the ebb and flow of power is a dirty little secret in relationships, why we keep it secret from each other and from ourselves.
It’s a terrifying thought: “If I even think it’s about power, that means love is dead, and I won’t face that.” Yes, we reserve the right to complain endlessly about our partners, to even call them controlling, but if this relationship is about power, we think, it can’t be about love.
we’re all embarrassed to admit we feel powerless.
Unfortunately, women also get hit from the other side. While we’re ashamed of being powerless, we’re ashamed of being powerful too, of wanting power, of caring about power.
But there’s good news. When you look power in the eye, you can’t lose. Either there’s something toxic going on with power in your relationship that makes it a relationship you’ll be happy leaving, or the realities of power in your relationship don’t make it too bad to stay in, and you’ll very likely find that power problems are fixable.
If you’re in a relationship with the average person, then the two of you struggle as everyone else does over whose needs will get met. But if you’re in a relationship with a power person, then any and all of your needs are a threat to his power.
Diagnostic question #7. Does your partner bombard you with difficulties when you try to get even the littlest thing you
want; and is it your experience that almost any need you have gets obliterated; and if you ever do get what you want, is getting it such an ordeal that you don’t feel it was worth all the effort?
There are two main threads that generally run through the growing up years of power people. The first thread is that they have parents or other influential family members who are in one way or another incredibly powerful people. They grow up with the sense that accumulating power of one’s own is the only way to survive. They learn the rule: do whatever it takes to win.
the child of parents like this soon realizes that cooperation is impossible. The only alternatives are victory or escape.
The second thread for power people growing up is that their parents inadvertently ran a school that taught them lessons on how to be powerful. They observed their parents and they saw how when you do this you win. This learning gives them an advantage.
it’s crucial to distinguish between external circumstances that change the power dynamics all by themselves and a power person using circumstances to gain still more power.
One more thing power people have going for them is caring.
Suppose the issue is deciding what you’re going to have for dinner. One of you doesn’t much care what you eat. The other cares passionately. He emphatically requires certain vegetables cooked a certain way, for example, vehemently hating certain dairy products. Guess who makes the menu.
A power person goes beyond caring about some particular thing and uses his caring about everything to gain power.
If your partner bombards you with difficulties when you try to get even the littlest thing you want, and if almost any need you have somehow gets obliterated, and if whenever you do get something you want it’s such an ordeal that you don’t feel it was worth the effort—then you’ll be happy in the long run if you leave and unhappy, if you stay. Quick take: Power people poison passion.
if your partner’s a passion-poisoning power person? Maybe you can’t get inside his head, but you can see what he does and how it makes you feel.
The things power people do to maintain their power fall into a number of specific categories.
The Best Defense Is a Good Offense. Whatever need you have, power people claim there’s something wrong with you for having that need.
Power Judo.
The point of these tactics is that instead of opposing you the power person seems to be going along with you by promising you what you’re asking for. But he never delivers.
Snow Jobs.
You can be greeted with an emotional uproar, a verbally abusive uproar, a political uproar, an intellectual uproar, even an uproar of busyness and practical details that obliterates your own needs.
The Endless Campaign.
the power person keeps coming at you, coming at you, coming at you—battling endlessly over every step
Dirty Fighting.
Power people scare and intimidate us.
Con Jobs.
Your needs make them sick. Literally. Or so they’d have you think.
Power people do what they do because they feel incredibly unsafe unless they’re holding all the reins of power.
