The Power of Partnership: Seven Relationships that Will Change Your Life

PRAISE FOR THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIP

So comprehensive and groundbreaking that it will probably prove to be one of the most important books of this century. If you want to improve your life and your world, read this book!

— Barbara Marx Hubbard, author of Conscious Evolution

This extraordinary book is a life’s work in itself, and a gift to anyone exploring how we can do our lives better, do our relationships better, do our work experience better, do our schools better, do our world better.

— David Mallery, director of professional development of the

National Association of Independent Schools

"In The Power of Partnership, Riane Eisler offers all of us a way to transform our business, our community, and ourselves. It is must reading for any business owner who is looking for more meaning than the bottom line."

— Barbara G. Stanbridge, past president of the

National Association of Women Business Owners

Nothing can vanquish anxiety like clarity, which is what Riane Eisler delivers abundantly. Read this book and you’ll come away with a new understanding of how the world works (and why it so often works atrociously). Even more important, you’ll feel better about it — because you’ll feel less helpless about it. And in a world that seems to be going mad we can all use some of that!

— Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael

All those who value relationships — and those who don’t — will do well to read this book and help reduce anger and violence.

— Arun Gandhi, founder/director of the

M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence

A step-by-step approach to personal development. Eisler is a brilliant role model as a global citizen — and one of the preeminent minds of our time.

— Hazel Henderson, author of Beyond Globalization

If the Osama bin Ladens of this world were required to read this book and absorb its message, the human race would surge onto the fast track toward love and creativity.

— Howard Bloom, author of Global Brain

Brings compassion, intelligence, and practical advice to the essential work of personal and social transformation. This book will be a treasured resource for helping us move forward in the twenty-first century.

— Judith V. Jordan, co-director of the

Jean Baker Miller Training Institute, Wellesley College

If our planet is to survive, it will need the kind of wisdom that shines through this book. Riane Eisler is one of the most creative and visionary thinkers of our time.

— Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of TIKKUN Magazine

and author of Spirit Matters

"More relevant than ever in a post-September 11, 2001 world, The Power of Partnership details the steps to build sound and lasting relationships with the self, the intimate partner, the world, and life itself. It is essential reading for every person searching for ways to improve our lives and our world."

— George Gerbner, Ph.D., dean emeritus of

The Annenberg School for Communications, University of Pennsylvania,

and author of Telling All the Stories

In a stroke, Riane Eisler’s simple, powerful message makes all other self-help books irrelevant. How can we live fuller, richer and more loving lives without also making it possible for others to do the same? By replacing individuals within our world, she demands that we work on healing the world and healing ourselves — a model that can create the ripples from which tidal waves are made.

— Michael Kimmel, author of Manhood in America

Here is a book for the turning of the times, for what is offered here are the essential ways to make the world work. The wise and prescient Riane Eisler guides us through the paths of partnership that lie beyond the wasteland of dominator psychology. This is a radical work of social evolution that should be taken very seriously. It is a gift to the present historical moment and an enterprise of enormous importance.

— Jean Houston, Ph.D., author of A Mythic Life

"The Power of Partnership provides a superb framework for this new age and innumerable answers to achieving it. Its eight chapters could be the headings of the Wisdom Age for humanity on this miraculous, magic, and precious Planet Earth."

— Robert Muller, Ph.D., co-founder of the U.N. University for Peace

and author of 4000 Ideas and Dreams for a Better World

How wonderful to encounter in one book not only an incisive and clear understanding of what causes so much suffering in the modern world, but a compelling vision of how both personally and as a society we can change. Riane Eisler gives us a wise and very practical recipe for hope.

— Susan Griffin, author of A Chorus of Stones

Those of us who believe that peace begins, and can only be lastingly and reliably achieved, with peace in our hearts, know that this depends crucially on our relationships: to ourselves, to our family, community, nation, the community of all nations, and to nature. Riane Eisler offers the essential guidelines for creating and sustaining relationships that can give us — and hence the world — the peace we so desperately need.

— Ervin Laszlo, Ph.D., president of the Club of Budapest and author of Macroshift

With insight, passion, and persuasion, Riane Eisler reveals the many disturbing faces of today’s dominator society. Happily, she also shows how each of us can help evoke a future that matures beyond force and fear. A ‘must read’ for anyone interested in a better world for all.

— Jeff Gates, author of Democracy at Risk and The Ownership Solution

"From intimacy, to politics, to service, to sustainability. . . this remarkable book touches every critical node of vital partnership. . . . Exercises, action check-lists, and a rich bibliography complement the work at every stage. The Power of Partnership offers a compelling argument for the reality of conscious evolution."

— Jim Kenney, global director of the

Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions

"The Power of Partnership is an extraordinary, thoughtful, and timely book. Riane Eisler speaks with wisdom and compassion about the central concerns of today, including war and terrorism, education, and child-rearing. Anyone who is concerned about the state of the world, as well as the state of one’s own home and family, should read this book."

— Christine Sleeter, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Advanced Studies

in Education at California State University Monterey Bay

"The Power of Partnership is an exceptional resource guide for personal and social transformation. It offers practical tools for creating a global community and a path for collaboration in all aspects of our lives."

— Angeles Arrien, cultural anthropologist and author of The Four-Fold Way

"Riane Eisler is one of the innovative thinkers of our time and the wisest woman I know. Here is her clear-minded, warm-hearted, practical guide through the daunting challenges of today’s world. The Power of Partnership will help you make your own wise choices about how to act with empathy and caring whether the issue is global economics, the environment, terrorism, or your own most intimate relationships."

— Gina Ogden, Ph.D., author of Women Who Love Sex

Now more than ever, we must switch from a dominator model to a partnership model if we are to survive. With her customary wisdom, clarity, and compassion, Riane shows us the way.

— Jean Kilbourne, author of Can’t Buy My Love

Riane Eisler’s brilliant work should be read carefully by leaders in all fields across our cultures and by all people who wish to participate in the creative transformation of the human condition at this critical turning point in cultural evolution.

— Ashok Gangadean, co-founder/co-director of the

Global Dialogue Institute and cop-convenor of the World

Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality

Marvelous! A treasure house of relational wisdom by which to be healthy and whole.

— Raffi, singer, author, and founder of the

Troubadour Institute for Child Honoring

"The great depth, awareness, and reflection of The Power of Partnership stems from Riane Eisler’s personal and social experience. Her action steps show us how to create a future that we can embrace and wish for for our children and grandchildren."

— Eleonora Barbieri Masini, author of Why Future Studies?

and past president of the World Futures Studies Federation

BY RIANE EISLER

BOOKS

Tomorrow’s Children:

A Blueprint for Partnership Education in the 21st Century

Sacred Pleasure:

Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body

The Chalice and the Blade:

Our History, Our Future

The Equal Rights Handbook

Dissolution:

Marriage, Divorce, and the Future of Women

The Gate

The Partnership Way:

New Tools for Living and Learning

(with David Loye)

Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life

(with David Loye and Kari Norgaard)

AUDIO

The Chalice and the Blade:

Our History, Our Future

VIDEO

Tomorrow’s Children:

Partnership Education in Action

SEVEN RELATIONSHIPS THAT

WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

THE POWER OF

PARTNERSHIP

RIANE EISLER

NEW WORLD LIBRARY

NOVATO, CALIFORNIA

Copyright © 2002 by Riane Eisler

Edited by Marc Allen

Cover design by Mary Beth Salmon

Text design and typography by Tona Pearce Myers

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Eisler, Riane Tennenhaus.

 The power of partnership : seven relationships that will change your life / Riane Eisler.

   p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-1-57731-408-0 (paperback : alk. paper)

1. Interpersonal relations. 2. Respect for persons. 3. Social

psychology. 4. Conduct of life. I. Title.

 HM1106 .E357 2002

302—dc21

2001005892

CIP

First printing, February 2002

First paperback printing, April 2003

ISBN 978-1-57731-408-0

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3

To my children

and grandchildren

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE ADVENTURE OF CHANGE

CHAPTER 1

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF

BODY, MIND, AND SPIRIT

CHAPTER 2

YOUR INTIMATE RELATIONS

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

CHAPTER 3

YOUR WORK AND COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIPS

THE WIDENING CIRCLE OF CARING

CHAPTER 4

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR NATIONAL COMMUNITY

WHY POLITICS MATTER

CHAPTER 5

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

THE WORLD AROUND US

CHAPTER 6

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE

FROM MOTHER EARTH TO BIOTECHNOLOGY

CHAPTER 7

YOUR SPIRITUAL RELATIONS

PUTTING LOVE INTO ACTION

CHAPTER 8

PARTNERSHIP LIVING

IT BEGINS WITH YOU

MORE PARTNERSHIP TOOLS

THE PARTNERSHIP/DOMINATION CONTINUUM

THE POLITICS OF PARTNERSHIP

USEFUL PUBLICATIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS

ENDNOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

The Adventure of Change

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, I STOOD AT A TURNING POINT. I had to rethink everything about my life. I was the single mother of two children, working as a family attorney, doing research, writing, lecturing, looking for the life companion I yearned for, grieving over the death of both my parents, not getting enough sleep, not paying attention to what I ate, pushing myself until I nearly collapsed. I became so ill that at times I thought I might die. When I walked, my heart pounded and my breath got so short I had to stop. I hurt everywhere, so much that I sometimes cried. I finally realized I couldn’t go on this way — I had to make major changes in my life.

I began with simple things. I stopped taking all the drugs my doctors prescribed and instead radically changed my diet. I stopped eating the rich foods and pastries of my Viennese childhood: no more apple strudel and Sacher torte, more vegetables and fruits. I realized that I carried a great deal of pain that I had to process if I was going to heal. I began to meditate. I found a wonderful therapist. I became more accepting of myself and found new joy in my relations with others, particularly those closest to me.

I also began to think seriously about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I gave up my law practice and devoted myself to what I really wanted to do. For ten years, I researched a book I called The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, which was published in 1987. It was a rereading of Western history going back over thirty thousand years. It showed that what we think of as natural and inevitable — destructive personal and social patterns such as domestic violence, chronic warfare, racial and religious prejudice, the domination of women by men — are not natural or inevitable at all.

Writing this book changed me and changed my life. The Chalice and the Blade became a best-seller translated into seventeen languages, but more significant for me was that I now saw clearly that the problems in my life were part of a much larger problem. As it turned out, thousands of readers felt the same. Letters poured in, and continue to pour in. I had hoped, naturally, to touch people. But I was astonished by the powerful response to The Chalice and the Blade — especially how women and men worldwide said it was empowering them to transform their lives. The knowledge that I was able to make this kind of contribution gave a whole new meaning and purpose to my life.

So while I didn’t know it at the time, the turning point I faced twenty-five years ago — and the changes I then began to make — eventually led to the fulfillment of dreams I hadn’t even let myself dream and of potentials I would not otherwise have realized.

You too may have been at such a turning point at some time in your life. You may be at one now. Perhaps, as I did, you suspect there must be a better way to live, that your life can be filled with more passion, joy, satisfaction, and love. You may also suspect something even more fundamental: that today we all stand at a turning point when changes in how we view our world and how we live in it are more important than they have ever been before.

WHY THIS BOOK

I WROTE MOST OF THIS BOOK before the terrorist attacks that have so radically altered all our lives. Unfortunately, these attacks make this book even more timely.

I originally wrote The Power of Partnership for four reasons. I wrote it because it can help people who — like me at my turning point — need and want effective ways to heal and change. I wrote it for my children and grandchildren, because I passionately want a good future for them. I wrote it because so many people have asked for practical applications of the ideas introduced in The Chalice and the Blade. And I wrote it to provide a new perspective and practical strategies for people and organizations concerned about the dangers we face in our country and the world — dangers that the terrorism on our own shores has brought home to us with deadly force.

The Power of Partnership is above all a practical book: a book to help us help ourselves, particularly at this time when so many of us feel helpless. It is a self-help book. But it is a self-help book that goes much deeper and further than the typical self-help book.

As the new reality of our lives demonstrates, the self can’t be helped in isolation. All of us are always in relationship—and not just with the people in our immediate circle, in our families and at work. We are affected by a much wider web of relationships swirling around us and impacting every aspect of our lives.

If we don’t pay attention to these less immediate relationships, then just trying to fix ourselves alone is like trying to go up on a down elevator. No matter what we do, we’re trapped and headed in the wrong direction. Many people are beginning to realize this, as they go from self-help book to self-help book and workshop to workshop. Certainly working on ourselves is essential. But it is not enough.

We all want to be healthy, safe, and happy. We want this for ourselves, and we especially want it for our children. We work hard so we can send them to college and leave them well-provided financially. But, in our time when so much is happening we wish we didn’t have to think about, many of us are beginning to realize that much more is needed.

The Power of Partnership offers a new approach to transformative change. It deals with personal change and the larger changes needed if we and our children are to have the good life we all want. It shows the connections between our personal problems and the global problems piling up around us, and how a happier self and a better world are interconnected. It provides a wealth of practical steps that will help you find more love, get along better with your loved ones, make your work more satisfying and meaningful, and help you feel more safe and live your life more fully. On the larger scale, it provides practical steps to move us toward a more secure, sustainable, and satisfying future.

THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIP DEALS WITH the seven key relationships that make up our lives. First, our relationship with ourselves. Second, our intimate relationships. Third, our workplace and community relations. Fourth, our relationship with our national community. Fifth, international and multicultural relationships. Sixth, our relationship with nature and the living environment. And seventh, our spiritual relations.

In the next seven chapters, you will see that there are two fundamentally different models for all these relationships: the partnership model and the domination model. You will see how these two underlying models mold all our relationships — from relationships between parents and children and between women and men to the relations between governments and citizens and between us and nature. As you learn to recognize these two models, you will see how both individually and collectively we can influence what happens to us and around us. As you learn to move relationships toward the partnership model, you will begin to make positive changes in your day-today life and our world.

While the terms domination model and partnership model may not be familiar to you, you’ve probably already noticed the difference between these two ways of relating — but lacked names for your insight. When we lack language for an insight, it’s hard to hold on to it, much less use it. Before Newton identified gravity, apples fell off trees all the time but people had no name or explanation for what was happening. The partnership and domination models not only give us names for different ways of relating but also an explanation for what lies behind these differences.

In the domination model, somebody has to be on top and somebody has to be on the bottom. Those on top control those below them. People learn, starting in early childhood, to obey orders without question. They learn to carry a harsh voice in their heads telling them they’re no good, they don’t deserve love, they need to be punished. Families and societies are based on control that is explicitly or implicitly backed up by guilt, fear, and force. The world is divided into in-groups and out-groups, with those who are different seen as enemies to be conquered or destroyed.

In contrast, the partnership model supports mutually respectful and caring relations. Because there is no need to maintain rigid rankings of control, there is also no built-in need for abuse or violence. Partnership relations free our innate capacity to feel joy, to play. They enable us to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This is true for individuals, families, and whole societies. Conflict is an opportunity to learn and to be creative, and power is exercised in ways that empower rather than disempower others.

REMEMBER HOW THE FATHER TREATED HIS CHILDREN in the movie The Sound of Music? When Baron von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) blows his police whistle and his children line up in front of him, stiff as boards, you see the domination model in action. When the new nanny (Julie Andrews) comes into the picture and the children relax, enjoy themselves, and learn to trust themselves and each other, you see the partnership model in action. When von Trapp becomes much happier and closer to his children, you see what happens as we begin to shift from domination to partnership.

You may have worked for a boss who watches every little thing you do, who’s afraid that if you don’t follow orders to the letter everything will fall apart, who has to be in full control all the time. This is how the domination model manifests itself in management. If you work for someone who inspires you and facilitates your work, who gives you both guidelines and leeway, and encourages you to use your own judgment and creativity, you’ve experienced what happens when organizations begin to move away from the domination model toward the partnership model.

If your spouse abuses you emotionally or physically, you’re in a dominator marriage. If you’re in a relationship that gives you and your partner the freedom to be fully authentic and at the same time mutually supportive, you’re experiencing partnership at home.

The famous horse whisperer Monty Roberts applies the partnership model to how he relates to horses. When Roberts gentles rather than breaks a young horse, he is using the partnership model. He does not force horses to obey using violence and inflicting pain (the domination model). Instead, he partners with them in learning — and these horses regularly win races all over the world. They are also a pleasure to ride, because they are your trusted and trusting friends rather than your fearful and hostile adversaries.¹

If you look at the difference between people’s lives in Norway and Saudi Arabia, you see how the partnership and domination models play out on the national level. In Saudi Arabia, where dominator habit patterns and the social structures that support them are still very strong, women don’t even have the right to drive a car much less vote or hold office, and there is a huge economic gap between those on top and those on the bottom. By contrast, in the much more partnership-oriented Norway, a woman can be, and recently was, head of state, about 40 percent of the parliament is female, and there is a generally high living standard for all.

You can dramatically see how these two models play out on the international level when you compare Gandhi’s successful nonviolent tactics in dealing with the British in India with the terrorist tactics of Muslim fundamentalists against the United States.

I will have much more to say about the differences between the partnership and dominator ways of life, about the family and social systems that support each, and about how transformation from one to the other can happen and has happened. Here I just wanted to give you a glimpse of these two models in action. No organization, family, or country orients completely to the partnership model or the domination model: it is always a continuum, a mix more or less one way or the other. But the degree to which these two models for feeling, thinking, and acting influence us in one or the other directions affects everything in our lives — from our workplaces and communities to our schools and universities, from our entertainment and health care system to our governments and our economic systems, from our intimate relations to our international relations.

OUR HIDDEN HISTORICAL BAGGAGE

THE DOMINATION MODEL is unpleasant, painful, and counterproductive. Yet, we live with it and its consequences every day.

Why would anybody want to live like this? I don’t think anybody really does, not even those on top if they stop to consider the huge price they’re paying. But what happens is that when people relate to each other as superiors and inferiors, they develop beliefs justifying these kinds of relations. They build social structures that mold relationships to fit this top-down pattern. And as time rolls on, everybody gets trapped in them, as these ways of relating are passed on from generation to generation.

Sometimes people blame their parents for their problems. But our parents didn’t invent their habits. They learned them from their parents, who in turn learned them from earlier generations, going way back in our cultural history.

If we look at this history, we see that many of our habits — whether in intimate or international relations — come from earlier times when everybody had to learn to obey their superiors unquestioningly. In those times, despotic kings, feudal lords, and chieftains had life and death powers over their subjects, as they still do in many parts of our world today. Think of how only a few hundred years ago, if you balked or back-talked, your life was in danger. Think of the Inquisition, the witch burnings, and all the ways people were terrorized in the Middle Ages to instill habits of absolute obedience. Think of how kings were in the habit of chopping people’s heads off, even those of their wives, as the English king Henry the Eighth did. Think of how slavery and child labor under the most brutal conditions were legal, and of how male heads of household also had despotic powers.² Think