The power dynamics in unequally yoked relationships

There’s a consistent dynamic at play when one person in a relationship takes responsibility and the other doesn’t.  It’s a power dynamic.  When one person consistently refuses to take responsibility within a relationship, inevitably they’re exploiting the other person or people.

I’m joining together two concepts to explain the one dynamic within the relationship.  One of the concepts is the cause, and the other is the effect.  In effect, when a person refuses to take their responsibility, they exploit others, because somebody must carry the can.

The failure to take responsibility can be seen as the cause, and the exploitation of the situation can be seen as the effect.  That effect is the one in the relationship taking responsibility must bear the injustice.

Of course, in so many relationships these dynamics are occurring in both individuals—neither is grown up enough to know that it is in THEIR best interests, for their own development and prospects not to mention the relationship, that they take responsibility that is theirs alone to take.  In such relationships, where the toxic dynamics play out on a daily basis, where neither faces their truth, there is no hope, and anyone helping will inevitably stare down despair.  When both cannot or will not bear their responsibility, both are exploiting the power dynamic against the other.  Pity the children with parents bearing these dynamics.  Adults who cannot or will not take responsibility haven’t grown up.

But so often in relationships, it’s one party who bears the brunt of the cost of the relationship, taking their responsibility and their partner’s.  The partner who refuses to acknowledge the consequences of their behaviour relegates to the abyss any hope for joy in the other.

Commonly in the unequally yoked relationship is the feature that the one who cannot or will not take responsibility, cannot or will not see.  They have no desire to reflect.  There is no capacity for growth, and therefore no hope for the relationship or to be equally yoked.

This is a hard reality for the one who takes responsibility in the relationship, but it is a truth they have been aware of for a long time, an inconvenient truth, because it forces change.

They begin to understand that it isn’t just a failure in the other to own the consequences of their behaviour.  They begin to understand that they’ve been exploited, that the power dynamics in the relationship has been skewed for such a long time.

When this knowledge dawns on the one who has held up their end of the bargain where the other hasn’t, there’s often a fair bit of anger, because nobody likes to be exploited.  And some of that anger is directed inwardly, like “how have I allowed them to treat me in such a way for such a long time... (and) how dare they!”  The anger is justified yet is also complicated.

The power dynamics in unequally yoked relationships are stark.

Sometimes it’s a case of recognising we’ve been exploited before we fully recognise the other person isn’t pulling their weight.  Few relationships can bear such inequality in the power dynamics over the longer term.

Forgiveness in these situations isn’t as important as accepting we did our best, that the failure of the relationship wasn’t our fault.  Indeed, it’s more a case that we forgive ourselves for putting up with such rot.  What’s more important than forgiving the person who refused to own the consequences of their behaviour is simply holding them to account.

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Earlier articles that relate to this one: acknowledging the cost of unequally yoked relationships and unequal yoking of love in relationships.