In no relationship are we going to be equal in all things. There will always be something in which I am stronger, at which I am better, about which I know more. And the same is true for her. I expect to match her in some important things, but in other ways we adjust. My breath gives out sooner when we are climbing and Jan slows down for me. My legs are longer, so I let Jan lead the way when we are bicycling. I could leave her behind on th bicycle; I have the power to do that, but I don't like riding alone.
Power isn't always about physical strength. I played a team game not long ago in which my team had to move from the chalked squares we each stood in to the chalked squares occupied by the other team. The rules prohibited obvious solutions. Soon, one or two of my team members suggested a complex series of moves that would get each team to the other's places. Did I understand what was being proposed? Not for a minute. I put trust in someone else's ability to do complex spatial analysis and moved exactly the way I was told to without understanding why. I trusted I would end up where they wanted me to be and that I would want to be where they wanted me to be.
That was a game and both teams won when we completed the task. We let the people who had the power of understanding this particular left-brain function take the lead. We do the same in life all the time, and frequently, as a result, both "teams" win. Sarah and Joline are both courageous women, but during their years together they've found the power of courage works for them differently. "When one of Sarah's sisters was arrested on a drug charge, and we thought the police had been worse than they ought to have been under the circumstanes," remembers Joline with cautious understatement, "she couldn't talk about it. I wanted her to go to a lawyer, raise her voice, do something. I was so angry I could hardly stand it." What happened? Did Sarah speak out. "No," Joline shook her head. "She asked me to do it. And I didn't have any trouble at all. I knew Sylvia, her sister, and I went in there with a lawyer who was a friend of my father's and we raised high, holy hell." She smiles at the memory. "We were right, too. It was something that had to be done." Everyone benefitted because Sarah knew what she couldn't do and Joline was willing to do what she knew she could.
Sarah's courage some out, not in confrontation and rarely in words, but in actions. She is the woman who ran across six lanes of traffic, Joline tells me, to help a man whose car had caught fire after an accident and put on the brakes. I don't think our car had even stopped side of the highway. He'd gotten free of the car, but his clothes were bruning. Several people were standing there, horrifired, wondering what to do, when Sarah knocked him to the ground and started rolling over him to put out the fire. By the time I got across the road, it was her in a time of crisis. And Sarah says she relies on Joline "when somebody's got to be stood up to, confronted."
We call this back-and-forth sharing of power in a relationship mutuality which is a function of our interdependence as human beings. No one person can live or function alone, in isolation. That is the human condition. When we volunteer to meet one another's needs and have ours met reciprocally, we say we are practicing mutuality. When one person forces others to serve his or her human needs, we say that person is a tyrant; the people who are trapped into serving are slaves or victims or servants or--sometimes--wives.
Mutuality in a relationship means that I am affecting her and being affected by her. Each of us is open to being touched by the other, to letting her have an impact on us--emotionally, physically, intellectually--in every way imaginable. We are mutually vulnerable and mutually responsibile for the relationship, for one another, and for ourseleves. Mutuality means that I am open to the possibilty of hanging, of becoming a different kind of person as a result of her influence, and she is open to the same. Mutuality cannot occur if one partner holds the power all the time in a relationship.
In some lesbian communties, mutuality has been misunderstood and labled codependence. Many of us aren't sure what codependence is exactly, but we know it's supposed to be bad. "Oh, they're so codenpendant" is usually a statement of scorn or dismisal. Jan and I often voice, but with an undertone that questions or criticizes. To revert to one senario I mentioned earlier, when I make Jan's lunch for her because she goes out to work and I work at home, I'm home, I'm not exhibiting symptoms of codependence but of mutuality. I like making her lunch for her, it is not an obligation, and the fact that I make her lunch does not limit her in any way.
Codependency means not making choices that please yourself. It means compromissing yourself for another person. Because codependency has been misunderstood and misapplied, I think sometimes we are afraid to do something for someone else, even when we might want to.
One symptom or component of codependency is enabling. Enabling was originally applied to someone who assisted an alcohol or chemically dependent person in satisfying her addiction. If, instead of making Jan's lunch, I was going out and buying her liquor and delivering it to her at work so that she could continue a destructive habit, a nd if I did this because I was afraid of what might happen to me if I didn't, or if I did this because I wanted her to stay at work and not go spend the afternoon in a bar and get fired, then I think I would be acting in the realm of what was originally called enabling.
Other forms of enabling take place around obsessive behaviors that are harmful to an individual, behaviors like needing to be sexual with every woman you meet, like gambling, like overeating or starving. Minimizing the negative effects of such behaviors on a friend or lover--without confronting the behavior itself--is damaging in the long run.
But caring for one another in healthy and mutual ways is not something we should be labeling codependence. It is not about codependency. It is about love and mutuality.
Some power issues in relationships come about because one partner has more experience or knowledge than the other; some exist because society gives certain people more status. White people, Christian people, physically attractive or able-bodied people, for example, are all rewarded in this culture because of traits they did not earn. As a white woman, I cannot choose not to accept the status that comes with my skin colour. I would have to change the bedrock on which this society operates in order to do that. I can change my own awareness of my white-skin privilege, my willingness to exploit it. I can work actively against this inequality. But if I, as a white woman, am in a relationship with a woman who is black or brown, we are going to have to deal with our power differences every time we go out in the world. And we can be sure they will filter into our home as well.
Mutuality, in all of these circumstances, only works if both partners are conscious of the issues and are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses. True mutuality requries that each of us function from strength, not weakness.
From the book The Lesbian Couples Guide
By Judith McDaniel