Between the Idyll and the Power

Between congruences and differences, between negotiations and fantasies, couple relationships have been associated with a constant dance, whose steps and movements should engage the melody, the sound, the rhythm, the space and the time, sometimes with some intuition, some dose of improvisation and the pleasure of creating harmony. However, the couple is not just dance. This idyll is threatened constantly by experiences of mastery, of contradictions, of crisis meetings and disagreements, that are leading to large and small rebellions. This article examines the prevalence of gender power relations in the space of loving bonds, which is precisely one of the hardest for intervention and change, where daily perpetuate gender vulnerability at the expense of human development and of life of women. The ideas are illustrated with vignettes of clinical cases of couples who live their love lives as discomfort.