Leaders in relationships

TP_CM

Would you agree that in order for any relationship to work, there needs to be an active member and a passive member? In other words, a person who keeps the ship running and a person who takes a more passive role, sometimes without realising.

Active members might be seen as 'control freaks' in their day to day lives, and are easily disappointed by others when they go about things in another way. They handle change a lot easier and are quick to accept outcomes. They have many talents and experience in different areas.

Passive members are slow at taking decisions, could be seen as being lazy or incompetant and they have lived a more insular life. They might have a high degree of intelligence in one or two specific areas.

My thinking is that this is a basic requirement, and that two active members in a relationship would fail as quickly as two passive members. Active members might feel slightly annoyed their counterpart is not doing as much, but might not realise that, in actual fact, the most important side to their passive partner is that they allow them to be that active member, allow them to take control and ensure things are done in a certain way.

This obviously has exceptions, and people can enjoy holidays from themselves as much as holidays from home. Meaning that occassionally roles can be flipped but it is infrequent and not for long.

Have you seen or experienced this? Would it be a starting point, when embarking on the dating scene, for a person to be honest with themselves about which category they fall under?

SuperRabbit

Maybe? Not in my experience. I've read a lot of Gottman books and he has analysed hundreds and hundreds of couples and I have never heard of any evidence of that, but maybe I missed it. I think who is more active, in my experience, depends on the day and the situation.

What you have got there is an untested hypothesis. First of all you'd need to really define exactly what you mean by "active" and "passive" then do personality tests on people to see who's active and who isn't, then see what their partner was like, and then come back 5 or 10 years later to see which couples were still together and what their subjective happiness in the relationship was like.

So what exactly do you mean by active? If you are just talking about doing things then me and my partner are identical in terms of activity, whereas a couple I know that comes to mind, they are both incredibly active, they are always doing things, making things, growing things, going places, refurbishing, recycling, plastic free, walk the dog, throw a dinner party, put on a play... neither of us could date either of them because we couldn't keep up

TP_CM

By active and passive I mean doing things around the house actually. Cooking, cleaning, kids' lunches, filling out mortgage application forms, shopping etc. Sorry the original post was very vague on that front.

Anecdotally, I see it with almost every relationship around me and particularly with family units where one person seems to be overloaded with day to day tasks and the other seems to do very little in comparison. Anecdotally speaking I've also noticed those characteristics I've mentioned in my opening post so it's a hypothesis i wanted to explore further.

Also, as strange as it might sound, I wanted to explore the possibility that it's actually a requirement for both sides that it be this way. The 'active' member actually needs a passive person (despite the frustration they might feel sometimes), and vice versa. If the active member were with another active member for example, perhaps life wouldn't be challenging enough or they would be frustrated with how that other active member is doing things.

We see on the personal issues forum quite a lot of stressed people upset about how little their partner does in the relationship. It made me look around and notice other relationships are the same.

SuperRabbit

Ah! Yes! I think you've hit on one aspect of an existing model then! if we believe in the "five love languages" it sounds like your love language (and the people you are thinking of) is acts of service. Not for everyone! Some people would say "maybe I can get some overtime at work so we can afford to have someone come clean the house" other people would see that as a sign of "not caring about the family" because they felt that acts of service were part of what made a relationship a relationship and were crucial

If your primary love language is acts of service you will feel unloved if your partner isn't "active" around the house and it will put pressure on the relationship.
But if neither of you has that as their primary love language then it will put little stress on the relationship itself how much is getting done around the house.




There are some studies on this but I don't know how robust the evidence for it is yet. Maybe very very robust? Maybe not very robust?

Does that sound like we are on the same page?

There's nothing about some combinations working better than others, or being necessary, all that's necessary is you know what makes your partner feel loved and you do it.