Abusive Relationships

I am considering a definition of abusive relationships as power imbalanced relationship, where the more powerful partner applies his greater power into keeping the relationship running. The motivation for this stems from a series of problems that I believe the practice of consensual power exchange causes for ethics and social theory, but can the scope of the definition is abusive relationship in general, not merely among sadomasochistic relationships. I have worded the the definition in such a way as to make even extremely asymmetric relationships possibly non-abusive, conditional on the desires of the less powerful partner.

So here is the definition:

An intimate relationship between two partners, D and S, with D being more powerful than S overall in the social areas pertaining to their relationship (whether resulting from wealth, status, physical strength or anything else) is abusive if and only if 1) if D were not more powerful than S, there would not be an intimate relationship between D and S; & 2) S would prefer a possible situation in which D were not more powerful than S to the actual situation.

Comments:

1) states that the power difference is a necessary condition for the persisting of the relationship while 2) excludes situations where S desires to be in a power skewed relationship with D. Note that 2) talks about the power of D, not about the relationship between D and S. Thus, in order for 2) to be true, S must not merely prefer having a relationship with D, but prefer it because of the power asymmetry.

The definition takes the preferences of the less powerful partner to be decisive and ignores the preferences and particular actions of the more powerful partner completely. There are several reasons for this. One prima facie good way to describe abusive relationship is to say that the less powerful partner wants to leave but cannot, due to the influence – emotional, financial, social, physical,… – of the more powerful partner. I think it safe to assume that the more powerful partner can leave the relationship if they prefer to. Since we already assume power asymmetry between D and S as well as the current persisting of an intimate relationship between them, there is no reason to consider D’s preferences. If he would not prefer the relationship to persist, he could abort it.

[Via http://philosophusdicit.wordpress.com]