[thesnowqueen]

It's occurred to me that an ongoing problem is that I always perceive these kinds of power differentials in friendships. With one old friend of mine we hardly see each other because I now expect her to make as much of an effort to meet with me (and make arrangements) and express interest in doing so. She has attention issues and stuff so that may be why she does not do it, but I got to the point where I wasn't ok with putting in 80% of the work. So now we hardly see each other.

With another friend I always feel like one of us is acting more interested in making arrangements, etc, than the other. I feel bad when she is more energetic about it, like I am the 'powerful' one and I don't want to be. I am more comfortable when its the other way, but I guess it alternates so it seems ok...

Do others have these hang-ups? Also, how much of this is just in my head?

I have broken a lot of friendships lately; and, it has much to do with discovering these so called 'friends' have some truely outrageously prejudicial beliefs. Gee thanks to a certain politician south of me.

I have done a great deal of considering all the relationships in my life. There was a time when I was just happy for someone to consider me as a friend as it meant attention and hopefully some acknowledgement of worth. But now I don't care if I am surrounded by 'friends' Thus my evaluating relationships.

Perhaps the criterium you ought to think about when evaluating your own aquaintanceships is that of value. Do these people pass the value litmus test?

[thesnowqueen]

Just to be clearer: the question is not about ending relationships here, or whether I believe the relationships are worthwhile or not, but rather about this way of viewing interactions. Do others automatically make the same types of evaluations?

Do others question relationships? Is this what you mean? My answer to this is of course they do.

I do the same. It's like I have a sliding scale from best friend to acquaintance. I had someone I considered a best friend slide to the acquaintance end of the spectrum because I keep making lots of arrangements to meet and she cancelled each time. It happened 3 times and the last time I thought, right, that's it. Not that I'm cutting her out of my life, just that I'm not going to make an effort if she isn't. She still says "we must meet for coffee" but I've since discovered she does that to everyone close to her, but never does. All her friends know she's unreliable. So she's less of a friend in terms of closeness than she was. But then I have other people who move from being a casual acquaintance to getting a lot closer too, as they initiate meeting up. I try and think of it like that, because it stops me from feeling upset if I'm let down - and it means I'm open to developing new relationships.

[s4ndm4n2006]

I'd rather not look at this as "power differentials" because it implies that one has power over another and in a good friendship and relationship of any kind this is not the case. Power is unimportant in a relationship with mutual trust and respect. True one may be the person who is in control of one thing or another but the other may give that role up willingly and this is ideal. Is it truly a power differential when one is willingly submissive and goes along with things while the other is in the role of organizer, or controls the social events? Not really.

How I see it is where the term Power matters is when it actually, in the mind of the people in the relationship view it as important. Typically this will be where two of the same types of personalities butt heads for the same role. Then it becomes a thing about who get s to be what and can easily be viewed as something revolving around power.

It does exist because almost no relationships are perfect matches where each plays a role that works well with the others.