Power, Courtship and Relationship Management

Brent of absolutepowerdating.com is perhaps the most well known for discussing the concept of power as applied to dating. He says that the person who has the power in the relationship ends up being the most happy. It doesn’t matter if you don’t exert much power in your dating lives as long as you have the edge, that is, have at least slightly more power than the other.

As an experiment imagine two tennis balls apart from each other and horizontal. The tennis balls represent a male and a female in the courtship process. When one tennis ball moves closer to the other it represents one party pursuing the other.

I first heard about the tennis ball analogy while listening to a talk by Wayne Elise (Juggler). The talk wasn’t about power theory but I quickly realized how the concept and analogy of the tennis ball could be extended to include it. Wayne’s talk was about how the goal of a courtship is to have both balls moving towards each other.

Traditionally and stereotypically the male tennis ball was moving towards the female tennis ball in an attempt to wine and dine her. David D then came along with the “solution” of cocky/funny but what that did was distant the male tennis ball. In other words, the ball moved backwards instead of forward and was trying to get the female to chase the guy. Having the female chase the guy might be an improvement over the traditional model but ideally both parties should be pursuing each other. That is the foundation for a successful courtship process.

The tennis ball analogy can now be supplemented by incorporating power theory into it. Both balls should be moving toward each other but ideally the female ball should move slightly more than the male ball. That is, both the male and the female should be moving towards each other but the female should be making slightly larger steps than the male.

Power theory can be applied in many different ways. For example when it comes to text messaging there should be a fairly equal exchange of text messages. You don’t want to be the one sending a lot of texts to her with little reciprocation and vice versa. If you send a lot of texts w/o receiving anything in return its basically the same as trying to wine and dine her. At the same time, however, its just as bad if you receive texts from her w/o replying because if you’re interested in her you want to appear attainable. Attainability is a concept in the VAC model (value, attainability and compliance).

To maintain the edge in the text exchange you want to make it seem like she is slightly more invested in the exchange than you. Variables in text messaging include the separation in time between text messages, the number of text messages and the amount of interest that is shown in each text. Generally speaking you want to try and mirror the separation, number and interest while simultaneously letting her text you back quicker, send more texts and also show showing you more interest than you show her.

Power theory can be applied in many different ways and in all aspects of life. Just keep the basic tennis ball analogy in mind and take it from there.