John and Kate Plus Hate - The Politics of Interpersonal Power

What ever happened to John and Kate Plus 8 - The Gosselins Couple and their Gang of Eight?

I'll tell you what happened because I've been there, done that and couldn't affort the T-shirt.

What we see are the direct results of a marriage between two people who were only partially matched psychologically-speaking and in a whole host of other ways. Kate was older than John. Kate was more mature than John (Go figure!). Kate was an extrovert. John was a introvert. Kate was a controlling and dominating type "A" personality and John was largely submissive - well until the fireworks began in the summer of 2009.

Why do I say I've been there before?
I was attracted to exactly the same type of woman as Kate in the mid 70s. I suppose I married her for similar reasons as John. My wife whom we'll call Liza was so much like Kate Gosselin that I unconsciouslly found myself wincing and holding my breath at the Kate-John interpersonal dynamics. I remember how helpless I felt when I first saw the J&K show and witnessed their lively exchanges. At that time, I told my friends, "This relationship and this marriage will bust wide open as soon as John's power, relative to Kate's grows."

Power - Domination and Submission.
The J&K relationship is all about power and domination. Until something or someone changes, one party will be largely dominant and the other will be largely submissive. Notice that I say "largely." This is because in most of these relationships, there continues to be a kind of give-and-take in some areas of a marriage or relationship where the normally dominant party will have to yeild to the superior skill set of the other usually more submissive partner. In the case of J&K, for example, John was a professional IT guy, so we wouldn't expect Kate to be the home PC support person or the networking or internet-savy person. Even Kate would have to acknowledge John's superior IT skills and let him handle IT issues. Of course, as home program manager, Kate might even set the priorities for IT projects after getting John's take on the task dependencies.

Next -

Power Shifts - Updetting the apple cart

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