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him/her is gone." Of course, there are many other power bases in
marriage besides love: money, goods, services, sex, status or
authority, friendship and respect for the partner, threats and
punishment, useful knowledge, personal appeal and pleading, and
others. All of these can be used to motivate or direct the other person;
all can become a battleground.
In chapter 7 we saw that men tend to use anger, authority, and
logic (knowledge) to get their way, while women use sadness (tears)
and appeals of helplessness to influence their husbands. In our
culture, at least in the past, male domination is approved; indeed, if
the male isn't successful and doesn't earn a good living, he finds it
hard to get respect. The lack of success, such as unemployment, is
more distressing for married men than for married women.
Conversely, being the breadwinner may be very hard but it is less
stressful than being a spouse who needs to be a breadwinner but can't
get a job. It seems to be generally true that having power is enjoyable
and being powerless is stressful. However, in the specific instance of
female-dominated marriages, neither the husband nor the wife, who
has power, tends to be happy, not as satisfied as spouses in
egalitarian and male-dominated marriages (Gray-Little & Burks, 1983;
Horwitz, 1982).
It is commonly speculated that a person with high needs for power
and control over others is secretly or unconsciously insecure and
anxious. Such people presumably try to deny their weaknesses by
dominating others. For example, an extremely insecure (and
emotionally disturbed) man might abuse his wife, as in the film The
Burning Bed. Research has shown that as men get more education
they experience less and less need for power. In general, this is not
true for women, in fact just the opposite; women want more power as
they get more educated. This is probably because women have to fight
for power in school and the work place even if they are well educated,
whereas men are given power and respect along with the educational
degrees (Veroff & Feld, 1971).
In any case, the need for power has profound effects on love
relationships for men, not necessarily for women. Consider this.
Undergraduate males with strong needs for power as shown by tests,
compared to males with weaker needs for power, were found to have
had more relationships with women in the past but have poorer
relationships with their current partners. They also loved their current
partners less than men with less need for power and they foresaw
more problems in the relationship, expressed more interest in dating
other women, and were more likely to leave the relationship (Stewart
& Rubin, 1976). What happens to these power-oriented college
playboys? They move into the business world and eventually marry
women who are less invested in a career. In other words, these men
shift from dominating women sexually to dominating their wives
economically. Does this mean they feel inferior? Not necessarily, they
may feel superior (if that's possible without underlying insecurity). It is
interesting to note, however, that college males who married highly
