Are power imbalances in relationships really that bad?

Lemon_gecko · 2026-07-16T13:39:27+00:00

"Are we, at the end of the day, just... not trusting each other with power?" - yes.

"What if YOU were the more powerful one, do you think you would innately hurt the other?" - I don't think many women are ready for that conversation, but yes, women would abuse power too. They already do, just not with men, because they don't have power over men like that statistically.

Aside from that i have no idea what the point you tried to deliver, it was too vague.

lesliecarbone · 2026-07-16T14:09:33+00:00

INFO: To what sorts of "power" are you referring?

Expensive_Lion1807 · 2026-07-16T13:37:44+00:00

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”

Power often acts as a mirror that amplifies a leader's true character while attracting individuals already prone to Machiavellian or narcissistic traits.

Power disinhibits individuals, removing social constraints and allowing their inherent, underlying tendencies—whether benevolent or destructive—to surface.

Corrupt or power-hungry individuals are disproportionately drawn to positions of authority, meaning the corrupt don't always become bad upon gaining power over others; they were often seeking the role precisely to exploit it.

Fondacey · 2026-07-16T14:07:31+00:00

As long as you can walk away with no loss beyond the relationship, then it doesn’t matter.

Relationships usually add more complexity like housing and children and independence. Then a power imbalance adds vulnerability for the less powerful.

Kaleidoscopetide · 2026-07-16T14:44:13+00:00

The concept of money is indeed very creepy.
Are you as close friends with your boss as you are with your coworkers? Can you be completely honest with said boss? I know that my old boss thought we were friends, but I thought he was an ass the whole time—I just couldn’t tell him that, because I needed him to like me so that I could eat food and have a house. The way I look at it, a relationship that lacks equality is just like a relationship that lacks honesty or loyalty or mutual respect or anything else—it’s missing something that’s necessary for a real, deep, positive bond.

chalkandapples · 2026-07-16T15:15:49+00:00

Power imbalances in and relationship, romantic, platonic or in business, it doesn't mean it is always bad. But it's risky and statistically bad for the person with less power. We're saying that this is a risky situation for the person with less power to put themselves in and giving them that warning.

I would be super on alert for example if a 40 year old wanted to be in a business partnership with my 20 year old little brother. It doesn't always mean the 40 year old have malicious intent but it's suspicious and you bet I would research that 40 year old's entire life and have lawyers all over that contract. In relationships, we don't have lawyers or a clear contract, so we can only rely on experience most of the time, which young people don't have and people in a position of less power may be too desperate to think clearly. Parents tend to be the sanity checker for relationships and lends their life experiences to their kids in these situations. It's telling that young people that are close with their parents, from a loving family and with a good support system are much less likely to participate in relationship dynamics with odd power imbalances.

Secret_Entry1840 · 2026-07-16T14:05:22+00:00

What power? What kind? How big is the imbalance. Is it all one sided? You’re being too vague. Give examples.

selfishstars · 2026-07-16T16:58:37+00:00

I think we should have a skeptical default distrust of power. Power can be, and very often is, abused.

Age gaps (especially if one person is an adolescent):
When you are young and lacking in life experience, you are vulnerable to disinformation, you are still learning what is normal and healthy, you may not yet be able to identify coercing, controlling, or otherwise unhealthy or abusive dynamics. Some people actually seek out younger partners because they are more easily impressed, more easily manipulated, more easily groomed, more easily put in situations that they don’t know how to handle, etc. Their brains are still developing and have less capacity to understand the full weight of their decisions. They are in a life stage where they are learning and being guided by adults, but not all adults will have their best interest in mind.

Positions of authority: There are certain roles or professions that have significant influence over us, or control over our access to something very important or necessary for our well-being or survival. This could be your boss, your pastor, your teacher, your coach, your doctor, your landlord, the police, etc. These are people who are given additional trust in our society, which also gives them additional responsibility to not abuse that trust. If your boss propositions you, that puts you in a difficult position: if you say no, how might that negatively affect your job/livelihood? If you date your boss, how will it affect your job/livelihood if you break up? If one person in the relationship is a minor, then the power the person of authority has over them is compounded. Teachers, coaches, religious leaders… these are people who are entrusted to protect and guide young people in their development. These are the people we want our children to be able to go to if they are ever made to feel unsafe. And we can see that they have the capacity to cause mass harm (see: the Catholic Church, Larry Nasser, Boy Scouts, etc.).

Other power differentials can come from things like citizenship/residency, immigration status, economic disparities, social status/influence, reputation/networks, language barriers, a caregiver and someone who relies on them for their activities of daily living (for example, due to disability), etc.

As a society, we have decided on a few power imbalances that have so much potential for harm that we make them illegal. It’s why we have age of consent laws. It’s why it may be illegal or a professional violation for certain professionals to have relationships with people under their care.

This really comes down to consent. Consent should be freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, and specific. Large power imbalances complicate the “freely given” aspect. Consent cannot be the result of pressure, manipulation, threats, fear, or someone using their position of power.

But, we also value personal autonomy and freedom, keeping the government out of our bedrooms, etc. It would be impossible to make useful blanket statements, try to quantify, or try to enforce any policy against most other power imbalances in relationships. There’s no equation that we can plug all the variables into, and just because there are power imbalances does not necessarily mean that that power is being abused. That’s why as a society, we create social norms and use social pressure on each other to discourage behaviour that we believe causes harm.

This is why you may encounter older women shaming older men for dating young women in their teens and early twenties. Men will often frame this as older women being “jealous” that the men want younger women and not them. When in reality, it’s more often that we were those young women who were groomed, taken advantage of, and/or abused by older men (or our sisters were, or our friends were). Many of us have learned (have had to learn), in depth, about things like grooming, abuse, and its effect on victims. We know just how young and naive and vulnerable we were at those ages, and how wide the gap between say, a 16 year old and a 21 year old, an 18 and 28 year old, a 25 year old and a 40 year old. We know that dating a much younger person is a predatory behaviour. Even if you want to argue that it’s not inherently predatory, the fact is that people who are predators will seek out vulnerable people to take advantage of.

We also know that historically, child marriage functioned as a system that often enabled adult men and families to control girls and women, regardless of the personal motivations of every participant. Under patriarchy, women have been (and continue to be) primarily valued for our youth, fertility, physical attractiveness, and submissiveness. This is because the larger systems we live under are used to control girls and women’s reproduction and unpaid domestic, care, and reproductive labour. Let’s be clear: for millennia, women have been in domestic servitude to men and systematically (and often literally) forced to breed and bear children.

Feminists have fought for girls and women to have agency over their own lives. To choose their path, rather than to be forced into it. And we know that there are predatory men who want to sink their teeth into girls and young women before they have fully formed their identity, learned about and experienced the world, learned healthy boundaries, built up her self-worth on something other than male validation, gotten an education and/or job experience and has her own economic independence, etc.

We aren’t dumb. We see what these men are doing. You want a girl who is impressionable, naive, still forming her worldview, so that you can be the one to mold her into the wife-resource you want her to be. You can influence her worldview and values to align with your own. You can catch her before she is experienced enough to identify your bullshit, before she’s been exposed to too much feminism, before her value (to you) has been depreciated by age or by being “used” by other men, or because her fertility window is closing, or because she has built and recognizes her own power. And then you can knock her up—keep her barefoot and pregnant—without an education, job experience, or her own money… so that you have more control over her and she can’t leave.

But there is a pretty good chance she will grow up and grow resentful over the prison you’ve put her in. She’ll find a way to leave, and then you will join one of the other bitter divorced dads, complaining that women are the problem, and that she isn’t entitled to anything in the divorce because you worked hard and paid for it all, while she got to sit at home and play with the kids, playing down the fact that consigned her to that unpaid labour because you know just how valuable a woman’s unpaid labour actually is to a man.

Anyway, what we care about is protecting vulnerable people from being preyed on by those who have a high likelihood of, intentionally or not, causing them harm.

Personally, I feel uncomfortable in relationships that feel like there is too much power imbalance (in either direction). I know men talk a lot about being in the “friend zone”, but if I even suspect a male friend might have a crush on me, it becomes very difficult for me because I feel responsible for setting boundaries for him because i don’t think he is going to set them for himself and I don’t want to accidentally take advantage of him. Is he helping me with x because we are friends and he knows I’ll likely help him with something in the future? Or will he agree to doing things just because he wants to ingratiate himself to me in hopes that it will lead to sex or a relationship? What if my normal way of treating friends is misinterpreted as flirting and I accidentally lead him on?

But the reality is that if I was the person in the position of power, I would try to be extra mindful of that and not put my partner in situations where they didn’t have an equal and empowered voice in the relationship. But I also know that I will always have blindspots regarding just how much power I have over someone, or how I may yield my power unintentionally and the effects it may have on my partner and their disempowerment.

Suspicious_Glove7365 · 2026-07-16T14:38:34+00:00

If power = money in relationships, then it is unquestionably bad for ALL women to be in relationships where they have none of their own, or are wholly dependent on their partner’s money.

Women MUST have their own money in relationships, or else the power is so imbalanced that the man can hold any leverage against her for her survival. This happens all the time with relationships where the woman never works and just raises the kids. Women can’t leave when things get bad. It’s like being a prisoner.

All women should strive to have their own money.

howdoiw0rkthisthing · 2026-07-16T14:20:48+00:00

What is the question exactly? Are you asking why it’s bad for one partner to be more dominant than the other or two make more money than the other in a committed relationship? Are you asking why it’s bad for an employer/employee or student/teacher relationship to become sexual?

prettywords_ · 2026-07-16T13:34:15+00:00

Power imbalances make it harder to leave. That's the issue.

SnooCats37 · 2026-07-16T13:35:27+00:00

Power imbalances have no place in relationships, intimate or friendships. They need to be built and maintained on an equal footing. Power imbalance relationships are innately predatory

chamomilecloud · 2026-07-16T13:57:18+00:00

I think this discussion is pointless because even the scrawniest man could hold me down and rape me if he wanted to. To be in a relationship with a man is to be in an inherent imbalance, and you trust this man will not hurt you.

ChadChasingBReturns · 2026-07-16T13:34:59+00:00

Why would billionaires be an issue? It’s the power imbalance.

-nymphobrainiac- · 2026-07-16T14:00:04+00:00

Just like in kink, a power imbalance requires managing. If the powerful one unintentionally uses their dominance to walk all over the less powerful one's boundaries, you can do serious and lasting harm. Similarly, if the less powerful one is unable to articulate their boundaries or maintain them without the dominant micromanaging them, they can hurt themself and their dominant.

Within a romantic relationship where they're both very attached, the dynamic can last far longer than it should. It's the same with people who stick around at toxic jobs for a long time.

That's just in a relationship where they're both good actors who are simply unprepared for the realities of a power imbalance. Which isn't to say that they can't be wonderful and incredibly satisfying relationships. They absolutely can be. But you know, with great power comes great responsibility.

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Just_Fisherman4910 · 2026-07-16T22:09:12+00:00

Re: "that would make our entire system - the very concept of money - very creepy"
-> It seems like you have not actually heard the truth about money creation - money is created "from nothing" for certain people who are deemed "credit worthy" (aka the bank types numbers into your bank account on a computer).

ResponsibilityAny217 · 2026-07-17T05:51:58+00:00

are power imbalances in relationship really that bad ?

To me no it's mostly the abuse of power that's bad, also consider risk/reward and cost/benefits.

Like with my boss I don't really have a problem with them being more powerful than me in our relationship. But we have a contract that explicitly explains risk, reward, cost and benefits.

Romantic relationships don't do that, not even marriages do that super well.

Why is it different with relationships ?

Increased risks, then compound risk leading to greater chance of loss. Also ppl are ppl, math is fun and all but ppl get messy.

Is it riskier with sexual intimacy being mixed into it specifically?

Yes that's 1 of the big risks of many. Without the sexual risk then relationships are about as risky as friendships, which can still have power imbalances and risks but not as intense for more ppl as romantic relationships.

What if YOU were the more powerful one, do you think you would innately hurt the other?

Yes.

PurplePillDebate-ModTeam · 2026-07-16T13:39:08+00:00

[permanently deleted]

Title	Are power imbalances in relationships really that bad?
Author	FuuraKafu
Upvotes	0
Comments	163
Date	July 16, 2026 1:32 PM UTC (6 days ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1uy30n4/are_power_imbalances_in_relationships_really_that/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/are-power-imbalances-in-relationships-really-that.1585171 https://theredarchive.com/post/1585171

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