Why So Many People Want Someone Else to Be in Charge (And Why That Desire Shows Up in Relationships First)
Wednesday, February 4, 2026.
The desire to be ruled is rarely ideological.
It is almost always neurological.
Most people don’t want power.
They want relief.
Relief from choosing.
Relief from explaining.
Relief from negotiating reality with someone who keeps asking follow-up questions.
This is not a political statement.
It’s a nervous system one.
Over the last decade, I’ve watched a quiet shift take place—not just in culture, but in couples’ offices, kitchens, boardrooms, and late-night arguments that start with “Can we just decide?” and end with someone shutting down.
People are not craving authority because they love hierarchy.
They are craving it because shared decision-making has become cognitively exhausting.
When Equality Starts to Feel Like Work
We like to imagine that equality feels good.
Sometimes it does.
But equality also requires sustained attention, emotional regulation, tolerance for ambiguity, and a willingness to be influenced.
When those capacities are strained—by stress, overload, or prolonged conflict—equality begins to feel less like fairness and more like labor.
What breaks first under pressure is not goodwill.
It’s the ability to hold more than one perspective at once.
At that point, hierarchy starts to whisper.
Not loudly. Comfortingly.
Let someone else decide.
Let someone else carry the weight.
Let someone else be right.
This is not tyranny.
.It’s exhaustion masquerading as choice.
The Appeal of the “Competent Decider”
At a cultural level, this impulse is sometimes discussed under political labels. One of those labels—used by political theorists and internet subcultures alike—is neo-royalism, often associated with figures such as Curtis Yarvin.
But the label matters far less than the impulse beneath it.
Strip away the ideology and what remains is something deeply familiar to therapists:
One person is perceived as clearer, calmer, more competent—and therefore entitled to decide for both.
Sound familiar?
It should.
It’s one of the most common asymmetries I see in intimate relationships.
The Relationship Version of the Same Pattern
In couples therapy, this dynamic appears when one partner becomes the default interpreter of reality.
Decisions are framed as obvious or rational rather than negotiated.
The other partner slowly stops offering input because it’s too costly.
Nothing is explicitly forbidden.
But everything must be justified.
I see this moment clearly when a partner says, “Just tell me what you want me to do.”
The sentence sounds cooperative.
It isn’t.
It’s the sound of authorship being surrendered.
Over time, the less dominant partner learns something quietly devastating:
My experience is allowed only if it doesn’t complicate things.
This is not collaboration.
It’s outsourced agency.
Why This Feels Good at First
Letting someone else decide can feel wonderful.
Especially if you are emotionally depleted, chronically misunderstood, tired of explaining yourself, or punished for being “too much,” “too slow,” or “too emotional.”
Hierarchy promises efficiency.
And efficiency feels like peace—until it isn’t.
Because what you give up for efficiency is voice.
And once voice is gone, resentment takes its place.
The Hidden Cost of Being Ruled
Whether in relationships or institutions, the cost is the same:
Diminished agency.
Narrowed self-trust.
Erosion of mutuality.
Quiet compliance that later turns brittle.
Folks don’t usually rebel because they hate authority.
They rebel because they disappear under it.
In intimate relationships, this moment often arrives as depression, numbness, or an argument that seems to come out of nowhere.
It didn’t.
It came from too many decisions made for someone instead of with them.
A Therapist’s Translation
So when you hear people arguing about hierarchy versus democracy, kings versus consensus, founders versus committees, it’s worth translating the debate out of politics and back into psychology.
What’s often being expressed is this:
I don’t trust my capacity—or yours—to stay regulated long enough to decide together.
Whether or not political theories built on that impulse succeed is beside the point.
Their emotional appeal is the data.
What’s being expressed isn’t a philosophy of governance.
It’s an exhausted nervous system looking for containment.
The Question That Actually Matters
The real question isn’t whether hierarchy works better than equality.
The real question is:
What conditions make shared reality feel intolerable?
Because when people are resourced, regulated, and respected, they don’t ask to be ruled.
They ask to be heard.
Therapist’s Note
If you’re reading this at 2 a.m. and thinking, “I just don’t have the energy to keep negotiating anymore,” that’s not a failure of character.
It’s a signal.
Before you hand over your voice—in a relationship or anywhere else—it may be time to rebuild the conditions that make mutual decision-making possible again. If you want help with that, you know where to find me.
Final Thoughts
When someone tells you they’re tired of deciding, listen closely.
They may not be asking for leadership.
They may be telling you they no longer feel safe inside shared reality.
The opposite of hierarchy isn’t chaos.
It’s capacity.
And capacity—unlike power—can actually be rebuilt.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.