A week ago today, I helped staff a Hanover Safe Place information table at an Ashland event. I was reminded that relationships are crucial to a person’s health and well-being—whether that person is real or fictional. Today I’m starting a series of blogs on relationships. I’ve written about relationships before from various angles, but they are worth revisiting.
I’ll start with good two-person relationships. Although much of this is phrased for intimate partner relationships, it applies to other close relationships as well (e.g., family, best friends).
As illustrated in the wheel above, good, healthy relationships are based on equality and nonviolence. They include
- negotiation and fairness
- non-threatening behavior
- respect
- trust and support
- honesty and accountability
- economic partnership (regardless of who has the money)
- shared responsibility
- responsible parenting
Note to writers: Too often fictional characters are presented in idealized (and clichéd) relationships based on physical characteristics and/or sexual appeal. Make your good relationships richer along the above dimensions.
Various elements in the power and control wheel apply across types of domination, whether physical, sexual, or otherwise, and across settings (e.g., in the family, workplace, church, or community). These methods include
- using intimidation
- using emotional abuse
- using isolation
- minimizing, denying, and blaming
- using coercion and threats
- using economic abuse
- using male privilege
- using children
Note to writers: The examples presented in each of these categories are especially helpful in making your villains realistic—and varied!
As the historian and moralist Lord Acton said as long ago as 1887, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
And one more note: it is a maxim of social psychology that the person who cares the least has the most power. Think about it!