3 Common conflicts of power couples
Sunday July 23, 2023.
The truth about why power couples fight
Smart and successful couples have a detectable bias for science-based couples therapy. I’ve been privileged in doing this work, I have noticed some essential truths about their conflicts about intimacy, sex, money, and success.
According to thought leaders Dr. Howard Markman, and Esther Perel, there are only three themes these partners go to to the mattresses over.
Power and control
The first theme is power and control. This is the biggie.
How are decisions made? Who has the decision-making power? How are family priorities established? Discussions about power and control inevitably impacts how couples discuss the more mundane notions of sex and money.
Research is clear that there is a “best” way to manage family finances. I tend to focus on maintaining peaceful functioning with openess, transparency, and “if it ain’t broke…don’t fix it attitude.”
But it’s not effective if one member of power couple fails to advocate for themselves.
Take Matt Damon, He’s been married to his wife, Luciana, for about 20 years. They live a quiet life, and they rarely discuss any details of their marriage, or family life.
They have 4 kids.
Although Damon is an A-list movie star, the couple are very private and don't share much that’s personal. Luciana has maintained a remarkably low profile as Matt’s life partner over the past 20 years.
The mom of four does not have any social media and is rarely featured in interviews. She does, however, step out for the occasional red carpet to support her husband's projects and career.
Recently, Damon has been remarkably frank about his sometimes grueling, difficult work on movie sets; uncomfortable locations, 15 hour days, and the occasional dawning awareness that this film I’m busting my ass on… is destined to be a stinker…
"Without naming any particular movies, sometimes you find yourself in a movie that you know, perhaps, might not be what you had hoped it would be, and you're still making it.
And I remember halfway through production and you've still got months to go and you've taken your family somewhere, you know, and you've inconvenienced them, and I remember my wife pulling me up because I fell into a depression about it — like, 'What have I done?’
I do pride myself, in a large part because of her, at being a professional actor.
And what being a professional actor means is you go and you do the 15-hour day and give it absolutely everything, even in what you know is going to be a losing effort…If you can do that with the best possible attitude, then you're a pro. And she really helped me with that." Matt Damon
Recently Luciana lobbied Matt to take some time off…
And Matt surprisingly discussed his couples therapy to the press, and in doing so, he provides an example of the kind of self-advocacy required to fully stand in your power.
Matt discussed openly an agreement he reached with Luciana in couples therapy. Damon agreed that he would take a break from film work... except he reserved the right to accept a role should one be offered by auteur director Christopher Nolan. LOL… Luciana agreed… and stood by Matt… even when Nolan unexpectedly did call about a role in Oppenheimer.
Trust and closeness
Trust and closeness is about the quality of attachment. If you’re down, do they fly to your side?
Can I count on you? Do you have my back? Are we in this together? Will you put my needs on an equal par with your own? Will you agree to take time off from film work? Can you understand that if Nolan calls, I want to say yes? Can I trust you are spending money wisely? Can we discuss allocated my book advance toward building that porch? Are we comfortable with our degrees of financial transparency?
Does what we spend money on bring us together or rend us asunder? Do we trust the relationship to have frank discussions about perceived inequities?
When you have trust and closeness, you have a reliable vessel to hold your all of your curious questions, and self-advocacy.
Respect and recognition
Respect and recognition are huge. Power couples are rarely born that way.
There is an arc to the attainment of power and influence which requires a constant vigilance of one’s value and values. Also, this is complicated by the fact that excellence in most high-level American endeavors both tolerates, and excuses, a problem saturated, work-life imbalance.
Are my ideas heard? Are my contributions valued? If I decide to go back to school, change jobs or change my career, or decide to stay home to be a caregiver, will you support me? If I move in a different artistic direction, can I count on your support? Did you read the revised script pages? Can you please tear apart this legal argument? Can you acknowledge the (non-monetary) ways I contribute to our family? If I fire our PR firm, will you back me up or stay out of it? You get the idea. The desire for respect and recognition seeps into all the open pores of life.
Sometimes, if there is an additional hidden burden being carried by a partner with less discernible power, respect and recognition in a public power couple, additional stresses and resentments may increasingly tax the couple.
Final thoughts about power and control, trust and closeness, and respect and recognition
Getting out of the struggles around these seminal issues is a process of dismantling the entrenched bullsh*t of your habitual discourse, reversing it, and installing a new, more intentional pattern.
We need the math on our side, what Gottman calls the “Golden Ratio.” What gets measured, gets done.
Remember, the process is a teachable skill set, and once you learn how, the process shapes the experience. Practice makes progress on a new process.
The form, (or process), is always more important than the content, because your life is the content, and therefore the content is “always something.” This is what I call the Roseanne Roseannadanna Reality Principle:
Well Jane, It just goes to show you….Remember…It's always something — if it’s not one thing, it's another…
Science-based couples therapy can offer a reliable protocol that can help you sort through how to best navigate through the “always something” that will inevitably come your way. If you master the correct form you build new emotional muscle.
We choose to move through time with someone worthy, a partner willing to playfully work a process to manage the complexity of balancing both of our intimate lives with shared or separate aspirations and ambitions. There’s room as we move through time for the “always something.”
But as Esther Perel would reliably point out…we didn’t sign up for the same damn thing over and over again…
Power couples don’t naturally have a “feel” for this. They know that, when “something” shows up, absent a process, they risk showing up brash and tactless, like Roseanne.
They acquired an intentional skill set, a process of mutually committing both time and effort on issues that are vitally important to them both as individuals, and also as a couple. They have an intentional we-ness.
I can help with that. Be well, and Godspeed.
