The Love Equation Isn’t Average: How Power, Personality, and Identity Shape Relationship Satisfaction

Wednesday, May 14, 2025. This is for Molly and Tyler.

Let’s start with the obvious: if you feel like your partner holds all the cards—whether or not they actually do—your relationship might not feel so dreamy.

And thanks to a large new study published in the Journal of Research in Personality, we now have data to back up what therapists have been watching for decades:

Relationship satisfaction is less about how much power you hold, and more about how much power you think your partner has.

But this isn’t your grandma’s relationship research.

Led by Eleanor Junkins and colleagues at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, this study pulls the thread on the old, straight, heteronormative fabric of power dynamics in love and weaves in something much more expansive: diverse identities, relationship structures, and nuanced personality variables.

It’s time to retire the idea that power in relationships is just about who earns more money or who gets to control the remote. Turns out, the truth is far messier—and far more interesting.

The Power of Perception

The researchers analyzed data from 1,750 adults in the POWER study, a diverse sample across gender identities, sexual orientations, and both monogamous and non-monogamous relationships. Each participant answered detailed surveys on their personality traits (using the Big Five), gender expression, relationship power, and satisfaction.

Here’s where things get juicy:

• The strongest predictor of relationship satisfaction wasn’t how much personal power participants felt they had.

• It was how much power they believed their partner had.

• The higher a person rated their partner’s power, the lower their own relationship satisfaction.

If that feels a little familiar, that’s because it mirrors patterns therapists often see when one partner starts calling all the emotional shots—or is perceived to be doing so.

The imbalance, real or imagined, erodes mutuality and safety.

Personality and Power: It’s Complicated

The team dug into how personality traits modulate these dynamics. For instance:

• Extraversion and conscientiousness were modestly linked to greater feelings of personal power.

• Neuroticism, openness, and agreeableness were negatively linked to personal power—especially agreeableness, which is usually considered a relationship superpower.

Here’s an interesting finding: agreeable folks might actually feel less powerful in relationships because they’re more attuned to their partner’s needs.

They yield. They compromise.

They say, “It’s fine, really,” when it isn’t.

Over time, this can lead to an internal sense of diminished influence.

This finding cuts into a long-standing cultural script that says: “Just be nice, and your relationship will thrive.”

The truth? Agreeableness, without boundaries, may become a recipe for quiet resentment.

Moderation in the Middle

The study didn’t stop at correlations. It used non-linear modeling to explore moderation: how power changes the effect of personality traits on satisfaction.

Take agreeableness again:

• Agreeable people were more satisfied when their partner was either very dominant or very submissive.

• But when power felt ambiguous? Satisfaction dipped.
  It turns out, agreeable folks like clarity—they can be happy in clearly defined dynamics but don’t do well in fuzzy power hierarchies.

Neuroticism showed an even darker curve:

• When people high in neuroticism felt their partner was powerful, satisfaction took a nosedive.

• Likely because these partners are already emotionally sensitive, adding perceived power imbalance turns tension into threat.

Identity > Resources

One of the most striking insights was this: social identity—not wealth, education, or age—was the most powerful moderator of how personality and power impacted satisfaction.

In other words:

Who you are mattered more than what you had.

This was especially true for nonbinary souls, queer people, and those in non-monogamous relationships.

For example:

• In some groups, femininity was associated with greater satisfaction when partner power was high—suggesting a comfort with surrender or trust.

• In others, openness predicted better outcomes regardless of power dynamics—perhaps reflecting a higher tolerance for ambiguity or complexity.

This finding flips the old relationship adage on its head.

Compatibility isn’t just about shared values or communication styles—it’s about how personality and perceived power interact within your unique identity context.

Therapy Room Takeaways

As a couples therapist, here’s what this study confirms—and what it complicates:

• Perception of Power is Determinative.
  If one partner feels dominated, even in the absence of overt control, the relationship suffers.

• Agreeableness can Backfire.
  High agreeableness without clear relational structure may leave people adrift in decision-making and influence.

• Identity Matters.
  Applying the same therapeutic interventions to everyone assumes a kind of average couple that doesn’t exist. Intersectional identity shapes how people experience love, power, and safety.

• Power Dynamics aren’t Linear.
  Some couples function beautifully in power-imbalanced dynamics—especially if these roles are clearly defined and consensual. Others implode if the dance of influence is vague or erratic.

The Research Caveats

Of course, this study has its limits. It’s cross-sectional, so causality is elusive.

The sample, while diverse in gender and sexual orientation, was predominantly White and American. And the subgroup analyses had small cell sizes, which increases the statistical noise in those intersectional findings.

Still, it offers a crucial template for future relationship science: stop averaging out people’s differences. One-size-fits-all models are increasingly inadequate for the complexity of modern love.

As Junkins herself bluntly put it:

“The average tends to represent no one.”

Closing Thoughts: The Power in Not Knowing

This study doesn’t offer a simple formula for happiness.

That’s its genius. It tells us that satisfaction isn’t just about what you bring to the table—it’s about who’s at the table, how you think the chairs are arranged, and how you feel about where you’re sitting.

Therapists, take note: Power is rarely absolute.

It’s relational, contextual, and deeply personal.

And if your couple walks into your office with resentment simmering just under the surface, ask not just who holds the power, but who thinks they do—and how they feel about it.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Junkins, E. J., Briley, D. A., Ogolsky, B. G., & Derringer, J. (2025). Registered Report Stage II: Does personality vary by relationship power? An investigation of satisfaction in diverse romantic partnerships. Journal of Research in Personality. Advance online publication.

McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (2008). The five-factor theory of personality. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (3rd ed., pp. 159–181). Guilford Press.

Simpson, J. A., & Overall, N. C. (2014). Partner buffering of attachment insecurity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(1), 54–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413501998

Thompson, L., & Walker, A. J. (1989). Gender in families: Women and men in marriage, work, and parenthood. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 51(4), 845–871. https://doi.org/10.2307/353202