My "power position"

[thisworld]

"Cheated and lost my power position."

I wrote in the post that I use as my start for self awareness work that I feel cheated in this relationship and that I lost my power position. I want to work on the latter. 

When I read what I wrote, I first said “What the heck is a power position?” 

My open disturbance: The wanter/the wanted. I think popular culture has this everywhere and it’s hierarchical. Womens magazines are chock full of information about how to make ourselves “wanted”, how to make men “chase” us so there is this satisfaction when they get us, because we are “wanted”. Some say this is human natüre, some explain this with evolution – I suspect there may be some biological determinism in this. And then there are “romantics” who take pride in being the “wanted”, the sole flag carriers of love. Do I agree with this? No. Do I have it? Yes, to some degree, it’s engrained In my life, I have never put myself in a “wanted” position knowingly. I haven’t played conscious games. I became “wanted” for some people and I became wanter for some. In my longest relationship, my marriage, in the beginning, we were both wanters and wanteds and that felt very good. And I believe this is just a partial representation anyway because once you are in a relationship, it’s obvious that both people want the other, don’t they?

My relationship with my ex was almost like a return to middle school years, I felt like this who is the wanter/wanted thing was there. Something in this made me feel like this. It could be triangulations, stories about his being “wanted.” I don’t bring up stories like this in relationships. This doesn’t even occur to me.

On top of it, I felt like I lost my position – of equals. I was almost forced to be in the position of that who only “wanted” and maybe would be granted or one who was jealous but was “consoled” – in ways that didn’t resemble consolation to me anyway.

My reaction: I got sort of angry. It felt like someone was playing with the foundations of something and that this wasn’t about mutual emotions of love or anything. It felt like a power fight sometimes and when I named it like that I kind of lost interest.

Covertly: Out of this power fight perspective, I surely felt sad. But this sadness was not a very frustrating one. It was one that kind of accepted defeat but there was something “knowing” in it. I think I had accepted certain things before I openly knew them. I think I accepted certain things  the moment he started talking about his exes and young online groupies etc. I tried to give him the credit of doubt (maybe tried to rationalize as well) but somehow there was something in me that knew the outcome. There was this feeling like "I wish this didn't happen. I wish all these events disappeared" but I couldn't experience that wish in a very emotionally involved, strong way. Its impossibility seemed obvious and almost prevented too much emotional involvement with my own wish. I almost feel like I grieved subconsciously but is that even possible? Could it be something that resulted in a calmer sadness when I openly noticed it?

Your opinions are appreciated.   

[Lucky Jim]

Hey this world, What makes you think your Ex has BPD?  Why do you think a r/s has to involve a power struggle?  LuckyJim

[thisworld]

Lucky Jim, I think he has BPD because we went through all the phases and almost all the symptoms described in other people's experiences here - so many people seem to have dated him here:)) He also has strong narcissistic traits. My therapist thinks he is BPD/NPD with traits all across Cluster B. He is an active addict and addiction sometimes imitates BPD but some addiction counsellors and long time NA members say addiction doesn't do this. I don't think relationships have to involve a power struggle, I think they shouldn't. But when I think about the way he related to me, I think it was almost always a power fight rather than a mutual cooperation and it was acted out in a very childish way. 

[thisworld]

I think I have found an answer to this coincidentally. Skip mentions five stages of a romantic relationship in one of his posts and the second stage is the power struggle. I think this may be what I experienced be it due to a disorder or just the natural flow of things. I had never experienced it to this degree but maybe it was magnified in this relationship. Oh well.