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Sometimes a relationship starts to feel like nothing but a power struggle. If you're involved with a dominating personality, and you've had a lifetime of conditioning to please your partner, it can be difficult to hang onto your own identity AND have a relationship. But it doesn't have to come down to a choice between staying in the relationship and losing your identity, or ending the relationship and rediscovering who you are. Here's how to discover and assert your own demands within the paradigms of your existing relationship.
What do you really want?
Have you thought about what you really want lately? From your job, from yourself, from your partner? From life itself? Maybe your desires are not grandiose - perhaps an hour to yourself twice a week to read a novel is what you're missing. But what if you want to work longer hours and go for a promotion, but your partner is unsupportive?
The first step in asserting your identity within a relationship is to catalog exactly what it is you want to achieve within it. Write down your short and long term goals. Be specific and don't restrict yourself to what seems possible. In ten years, you could be a millionaire, so note down everything you want from your life, and from your relationship.
Ask you partner to do the same, and set aside some time to compare and discuss your lists. Chances are you've never actually sat down and quantified exactly what you want - to yourself, and certainly not to your partner. This can be a really illuminating excercise. If you communicate carefully and gently with each other about your lists of goals and desires, you can learn an enormous amount about one another, and thrash out how you are going to fit your goals together so that they are not only compatible but achievable.
Do you mean no when you say yes?
Once you're clear on what you want from the relationship, and from other aspects of your life, it will become easer to say no to things that are not going to move you towards your chosen path. So often, one partner falls into the habit of humoring the other, and agreeing to their requests because it's simply easier than making waves or having constant arguments.
But now, with your new understanding of what you're trying to accomplish, you may discover that you don't want to go to the game on Saturday. You may decide that you need to hire someone to help around the house so that you have some time free to attend the art class you have dreamed of going to for 10 years. In the process, you may find that it's not that difficult to say no when the result is a stronger sense of identity and purpose.
Learning to say no can be the most rewarding thing in the world. You may not even realize that you've been bending to the wishes of everyone else for as long as you can remember. After you've gotten over the shock of asserting your OWN desires, you'll find that it's exhilarating to be back in control of your time and to have strong input into the direction of your life.
Keeping track of your progress.
Now may be the time to start keeping a journal. Keep track of your goals here, and also your progress towards them. If you've been meaning to go back to college for the last five years, write down a plan in stages, and then tick off each stage as you complete it.
Or make notes on the specific changes you'd like to implement in your kitchen or study, and let yourself see how you are progressing towards completion of your goal.
Talk to your partner about your progress and enquire about how he's doing as he moves towards his own goals. This will help to reinforce the message that you have dreams as individuals and as a partnership, and that both kinds must be supported by each of you.
As you begin to discover what you want from life, and the stages you will have to move through to get it, you will be able to flourish in even the most demanding relationship. Your identity will continue to be strengthened as you ask for what you want, and successfully negotiate your way towards a more equal power dynamic within your relationship.
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