Could anyone also give an example along with an explanation please?
In: Other
Suppose we both work for the same company, and I have quite a bit of seniority over you. I think you’re cute and ask you out, and maybe you even think I’m cute too, and you say yes.
But now on the date, you’re starting to think about how things might pan out if the date goes badly. If it’s awkward and awful, are we gonna have trouble being around each other at work? If we need to start avoiding each other, maybe that means, because of my seniority, i start getting better shifts and you start getting shittier ones. Or maybe it even means, if I let a manager know I feel weird being around you, and the manager feels themself choosing between a senior employee and an entry-level one, that you’re let go.
I’m not having any similar such worries, because I know that, in the event of a conflict at work, I’d get the preferential treatment. So our date is a little bit weird. You have this motivation in the back of your mind to make sure things go nicely or at least amicably between us, and I feel much more at liberty to be myself, *even if* that means there’s a little friction between us. You’re laughing at my jokes even if you don’t quite think they’re funny, and I’m not doing the same for you.
Maybe I even notice that you’re going a littler further out of your way to please me than I am doing to please you, and I figure maybe this also means if I suggest some date activities which I’m eager to do but you might not be ready for, that you’ll say yes anyway. And maybe I’m a little bit pushier about it than I would be if I had to worry about what this means for my job, the way you do.
This is the kind of stuff that can happen on dates when there exists a power imbalance between people. Ideally, people on a date are working about equally hard to make each other happy, but power imbalances can tilt that equation in one party’s favor.
Edit: Ever watch *It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia*? In my opinion this scene [“Because Of The Implication”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvT68l2wdM0) is a great send-up of someone who is trying to set up a ‘dating’ situation with a huge power imbalance.
When someone has some type of control over some part the other person’s life – that’s a power imbalance. The real issue isn’t during the relationship, but afterwards. The person without the power may feel like they have to stay in the relationship. For example: a professor and a student (professor can make class difficult for student or even alter student’s grade.) or a manager and a worker (manager can change person’s schedule or otherwise f*** up the worker’s job/pay)
In a marriage if you here one person fears the others reaction to the house not being clean, vacuuming done or dinner cooked, dog walked. Anything that has a different reaction between the spouses signals a inter personal power imbalance.
The reaction to who initiates sex is another where one person expects acceptance while the other may doubt what the reaction will be. But is expected to avoid conflict either way.
Latest Answers