One Up and One Down
There is a power dynamic that shows up uninvited to every dinner conversation, every decision about money, every moment when someone needs to be right and someone else needs to keep the peace.
Therapists have a name for what most of us are doing without realizing it:
One up and one down.
Here's what's interesting: we think this is natural. We think it's just how things work.
It's not.
The Story We Tell Ourselves
In most heterosexual relationships, the script is already written before anyone walks on stage. The man gets to be one up—making decisions, setting the tone, living the life that generations of patriarchal society told him was his birthright. The woman gets to be one down—managing emotions, avoiding conflict, making sure everyone else is comfortable.
"Don't make him mad."
Four words that carry the weight of centuries of conditioning. Four words that turn love into a careful dance around someone else's fragility.
The woman in the one down position becomes an expert at reading the room, predicting moods, smoothing over rough edges before they become sharp enough to cut. She becomes the keeper of harmony, the enabler of his blind spots, the one who makes it possible for him to never have to look too closely at himself.
This isn't about individual relationships. This is about the water we're all swimming in.
The Trap of Position
Here's the thing about one up and one down: it's seductive for everyone involved.
When you're one up, you get to feel in control. You get to avoid the messy work of actually listening, of being wrong, of changing your mind. You get to stay comfortable in the story that your needs matter most.
When you're one down, you get to feel indispensable. You get to be the one who keeps everything together, who understands what others can't see, who sacrifices for the greater good. You get to be right about how wrong everything is, without having to risk the vulnerability of actually asking for what you want.
Both positions are forms of control. Both are ways of avoiding intimacy.
Real intimacy requires giving up control. It requires showing up as you are, not as you think you should be. It requires letting someone else change you.
Most of us are terrified of that.
The Alternative Nobody Talks About
What if the one up, one down dynamic isn't the starting point?
What if it's actually the thing we need to move past?
The path forward isn't complicated, but it's not easy. It requires three things that most of us would rather avoid:
First, if you're in the one down position, you have to find your voice. This means stopping the enabling. It means speaking truth to power, even when—especially when—it makes someone uncomfortable. It means risking the relationship for the sake of having a real relationship.
This is harder than it sounds because the one down position comes with its own rewards. You get to be the good one, the understanding one, the one who sees what others miss. Giving that up means giving up a form of superiority that's become part of your identity.
Second, if you're in the one up position, you have to get curious about what you're not seeing. This means asking questions you don't want to ask. It means being mindful of needs that aren't your own. It means embracing the intimacy you've been avoiding by staying in control.
This is harder than it sounds because the one up position feels like safety. Why would you give up control when control feels like the only thing standing between you and chaos?
Third, everyone has to accept that relationships are messy. There will be harmony and disharmony. There will be moments of connection and moments of missing each other completely. In between, there will be work. The work of repair, of understanding, of choosing love over being right.
This is harder than it sounds because we've been sold the story that love should be easy, that the right person won't require this much effort, that healthy relationships flow naturally without all this conscious attention.
The Choice We Keep Making
Every day, in a thousand small moments, we choose between control and connection.
We can keep playing the game where someone gets to be right and someone else gets to be accommodating. We can keep pretending that this dynamic is serving us, that it's natural, that it's the best we can do.
Or we can remember something radical: the other person is someone we chose to love.
Not someone to manage or someone to please or someone to fix or someone to control. Someone to love.
Love requires seeing the other person as they actually are, not as we need them to be. It requires being seen as we actually are, not as we think we should be.
This is the work that most of us are avoiding when we get stuck in one up, one down. It's easier to have a dynamic than a relationship. It's easier to play roles than to show up as ourselves.
The Repair That Changes Everything
Here's what I've learned: every relationship that matters will break. Not once, but regularly. The question isn't how to avoid the breaking—it's how to get good at the repair.
Repair isn't about going back to how things were. It's about creating something new from the pieces of what was broken. It's about using the break as information, as an invitation to build something stronger.
But repair requires giving up the fantasy that we can control how other people respond to us. It requires showing up with curiosity instead of defensiveness. It requires caring more about understanding than about being understood.
Most of us would rather be right than repair. Most of us would rather be comfortable than connected.
The ones who choose repair, who choose connection, who choose the hard work of seeing and being seen—those are the ones who get to experience love as it was meant to be experienced.
Not as a negotiation or a transaction or a performance, but as the radical act of choosing another person, again and again, even when they're difficult, even when you're difficult, even when love requires more than you thought you had to give.
