Having Hand...
There's a great Seinfeld episode about "having hand" as it pertains to having control in a relationship. There's a memorable quote in which the woman George is dating breaks up with him, but he crys out, "You can't break up with me, I have hand!"
Do relationships really involve that kind of power structure? Is someone always the dominat position over the other? I think so, but should it be? Not ideally.
The best relationships are the ones in which there is an equal sharing and open communication, but this rarely happens. I'm luck that I have a group of friends who simply accept me for who I am. They stand by me when I need support, they criticize me when I need criticism, we laugh, we cry, these are my good friends, there is no judging, there is no "hand."
These relationships though are people I've known more than half my life now. We've grown together from adolescents to adults. In my more recent relationships, there is definitely a sense on "hand," especially when it comes to women. As I posted before, I often behave like a puppy dog in the presence of an attractive woman, thus automatically taking a submissive role in the relationship. I don't like this position and have set about trying to change that. I want my relationships with the fairer sex to be more even-handed but to get there I need to take some sense of control, something I have only recently done. Boy does it feel good!
I must avoid the trap of having a sense of too much control though because just when one thinks they have control of a relationship, is when one loses it. The last thing I want is to be drunk on power and lose the hand I'm playing. As the woman who broke up with George retorted to his cry, "...and you're gonna need it!" That's the last thing I want!
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