From Power Struggle to Sacred Partnership: Renegotiating Love That Is Built To Last
In this talk, I explore the hidden asymmetry that often emerges in long-term relationships, when women have been conditioned to be relationally overdeveloped and men, relationally underdeveloped. Women are socialized to attune, to over-function, and to hold the emotional center of the relationship, often at great personal cost. Men, on the other hand, are taught to lead, to provide and perform, but not necessarily to stay present in the emotional field. The result is an asymmetry that becomes a power struggle: : one partner carrying the relational labor, the other retreating or defending. It’s not that love is missing—it’s that the inner structures for mutuality haven’t been cultivated or renegotiated. This talk invites us to name and repair that imbalance, not by assigning blame, but by stepping into a more honest, mature, and relationally accountable way of loving. The crisis is a moment to reconcile about who we’re becoming when we shed the gendered and societal roles we’ve played. And it’s also an opportunity to build something much more honest, more connected and more mutually satisfying.