Written by Sylvia Anim
Before I was even asked to write about power dynamics, I was already deep into watching *The Polygamist*. This Netflix series has been living rent-free in my head ever since. I sat down expecting to switch off for the evening yet found myself analysing nearly every interaction.
What kept drawing me in wasn’t the relationships themselves. It was watching how power was held, wielded and normalised. How one person’s influence quietly shaped the choices, behaviours and boundaries of everyone around them. More than that, I kept thinking about how power dynamics can become so embedded that people stop seeing them even while they’re quietly eroding someone’s ability to genuinely give free consent.
Perhaps one of the most poignant realisations watching this series was how universally recognisable the main character felt. Not just to me but likely to many viewers, especially those of us who grew up in African, Caribbean or wider Black communities where certain men often occupy an almost untouchable status.
We all know him.
He might have been the wealthy uncle whose generosity was never questioned because of what he provided. The church elder whose behaviour was whispered about but never challenged due to his position. The community figure whose reputation was protected at all costs because challenging him risked bringing everything crashing down. The family friend everyone deferred to because of his age, his money or simply because he’d always been there.
As a Black woman, very little about the main character genuinely surprised me. And that in itself is a truth worth sitting with.
It wasn’t really the character that felt familiar; it was everything surrounding him. The charisma that excused questionable behaviour. The infidelity that became, “Oh, that’s just how he is.” The subtle testing of boundaries. The way concerns seemed to shrink into whispers. The expectation that everyone else should remain respectful while he was rarely expected to change.
The Polygamist certainly got my therapeutic juices flowing but the power dynamics I’m truly here to discuss extend beyond the series. Before I go any further, I should probably make one thing clear. This article isn’t about polygamy, nor am I suggesting that being a polygamist or being in a consensual polyamorous relationship is, in and of itself, exploitative or rooted in unhealthy power dynamics.
What The Polygamist did was spark my curiosity. As I watched, it prompted me to think about the many ways power can operate within relationships and communities, how it can become normalised, how it can be weaponised and, at times, how it can become sexualised. By that, I mean the point at which power dynamics become intertwined with sexual access, intimacy and someone’s ability to choose freely.
Some of the observations I make are inspired by moments in the series. Many are drawn from my own experiences as a sex and relationship therapist, conversations I’ve had over the years and the wider patterns I’ve noticed both personally and professionally. So whilst The Polygamist was the catalyst for this article, the conversation itself is far bigger than one television programme, one individual or one relationship structure.
What strikes me is how easily power dynamics become protected rather than questioned. Challenging the person with power is often framed as disrespectful, while staying quiet becomes the respectful thing to do. Before long, the dynamic itself is placed on a pedestal, even when it’s gradually chipping away at someone else’s autonomy, boundaries or ability to freely consent.
The Many Faces of Power
We reduce power to money far too often when in reality it’s so much more expansive. Money can certainly create power but so can age, experience, popularity, professional status, family hierarchy, religious influence and the roles we’ve inherited about what men and women are supposed to be.
Take provision, for instance. I’ve worked with many male clients who genuinely believe their worth lies in what they provide. And while that can be a beautiful expression of care, like any form of power, provision can quietly become leverage for sexual access or compliance in some relationships. This is where non-sexual assets like money, status and provision are subtly converted into sexual currency.
We’ve all heard versions of it:
“I pay the bills.”
“I’ve sacrificed everything for this family.”
“Look at everything I’ve done for you.”
The words themselves aren’t always the problem; it’s the expectation sitting underneath them. When provision becomes a reason why one person expects sexual access, sexual gratitude or compliance in return, the dynamic has already shifted into coercion.
The same applies to how many women are conditioned: to accommodate, to keep the peace, to be grateful, to put everyone else’s needs first.
I’ve worked with clients who found themselves in relationships where saying no to sex felt like it carried a financial or emotional penalty. They realised that their lack of autonomy meant their “yes” wasn’t really a choice but a survival strategy. Interestingly, very few of those clients described themselves as being exploited.
They described themselves as feeling trapped. That’s one of the things about these dynamics. By the time they feel coercive, they’ve often been normalised for so long they no longer look like coercion.
That’s why, as a psychosexual therapist, I’m rarely interested in asking, “Why didn’t they leave?” I’m far more curious about what they had learnt about love, relationships and power long before they met this person. Those lessons usually started in childhood and were reinforced by family, culture, religion and the relationships they grew up watching.
Asking better questions
Here’s something I don’t think gets talked about enough. We have frameworks in sexual health that extend far beyond STIs and contraception. They prompt us to look at the whole picture. Is this relationship truly equitable? Can this person genuinely say no or does saying no come with a significant cost? Are their choices being shaped by fear, financial dependency or the kind of obligation that’s been dressed up as love or loyalty?
Those questions change everything.
It’s the same shift the #MeToo movement pushed us towards. We stopped just asking, “Did they consent?” and started asking, “How free were they to say no?” And those are very different conversations. One focuses on the act; the other focuses on the conditions surrounding it.
Watching *The Polygamist* through that lens, what people were often really chasing wasn’t just money or security. It was belonging, validation or the hope of a different life. The concern arises when the cost of chasing those things quietly becomes your boundaries, your voice or your ability to make genuinely free decisions about your own body.
Let’s talk about the enablers
Power dynamics rarely survive because of one person alone. They thrive because people around them adapt, make excuses, benefit from them or convince themselves that saying nothing is the respectful thing to do.
I’ve watched maternal family members advise wives to become “sexier” for husbands who repeatedly cheated, effectively placing responsibility for his behaviour back onto the woman. A woman’s sexuality was something she should deploy to keep a man and simultaneously something she should suppress if it made other people uncomfortable. That contradiction is exhausting to witness and even more exhausting to live inside.
I’ve also watched families quietly manage “that uncle” everyone knew about. Rather than challenging his behaviour, the focus shifted to policing the girls: “Don’t sit there. Don’t wear that. Don’t be alone with him.” The responsibility for avoiding harm moved from the person creating the problem to the people expected to avoid becoming the problem.
That’s how power dynamics get normalised. Enough people adapt to them and eventually they become part of the furniture.
This isn’t only about men either. In female-led industries, I’ve heard stories of women in authority blurring professional boundaries and pressuring younger women into situations that had nothing to do with the job they were there to learn.
And sometimes the people closest to the dynamic are the ones most invested in keeping it intact. I kept thinking about the brother in The Polygamist. He represents those people who see what’s happening and understand it well enough yet stay quiet anyway. The same questions have circled public conversations about Sean Combs. Whatever the outcome of those cases, they opened up a wider reckoning about the people who knew, the people who benefited and the people who protected the system because it was working for them.
What struck me is that these aren’t isolated stories. They reflect something much broader about how power operates. Whenever one person has something another person needs, or believes they need, whether that’s money, opportunity, status, protection or belonging, we should be curious about how freely that person can really choose.
When it gets personal
This is something I don’t often share publicly but it feels relevant here.
Being a psychosexual therapist makes people curious and most of the time that curiosity is genuine. Every now and then, though, something shifts. Conversations that start with questions about my work gradually become questions about my own sexual preferences, often dressed up as wanting to understand how I might respond professionally in certain situations.
It’s subtle. And that’s exactly the point. Power dynamics rarely arrive dramatically. They test the waters first. One comment. One question. One boundary nudged. Then another. Before long, what once felt inappropriate starts to feel normal. That’s how many unhealthy power dynamics take hold.
But that never flies with me and I’m always quick to let the person know.
What concerns me though is how many people, when opportunity is dangled in front of them, genuinely feel free to say no. When there’s something to gain, whether that’s a career opportunity, financial security or social standing, declining a sexual request doesn’t feel so straightforward. And that’s exactly how power finds its way in: through the gaps where someone feels they simply can’t afford to say no.
When power wears the face of opportunity
This is where we move beyond what any television series can fully capture and into the dynamics that play out in real life, in real industries and in real communities. Often behind closed doors and rarely with witnesses.
Power that leverages sexual favours for access to opportunity is one of the most enduring and least honestly discussed dynamics in existence. It lives in offices. In churches. In universities. In the spaces where someone has something you need and has decided, consciously or not, that your compliance is part of the exchange.
We know the versions that have been named: the casting couch, the internship that came with unspoken conditions, the mentorship that slowly started to feel like something else, and the promotion that seemed to hinge on how available you were willing to make yourself.
What makes this so insidious is that it wraps itself in opportunity, in flattery and in the language of potential. For people who have worked hard, who have something to prove and who come from backgrounds where doors don’t open easily, the cost of saying no can feel enormous. That’s not weakness; that’s the architecture of the trap.
The heart of the matter
Everything I’ve touched on here barely scratches the surface. I could have gone deeper into how race and power intersect sexually: the fetishisation of Black women, the hypersexualisation that strips us of the right to simply exist without our bodies being made into someone else’s narrative.
I could have gone into how social media has created entirely new power currencies, where followers, visibility and virality have become leverage for sexual access in ways we’re still only beginning to understand.
Every time you think you’ve found the edge of this topic, you find another layer. Another dynamic that hasn’t been named yet, or hasn’t been named loudly enough.
The Polygamist gave me a starting point. Real life gave me everything else.
These uncomfortable conversations are needed precisely because silence has always been the thing that lets these dynamics thrive.
It’s also worth saying that none of this is inevitable. Power doesn’t have to be weaponised. Someone with genuine integrity understands the difference between influence and leverage and chooses accordingly. That choice belongs to them alone.
If there’s one thing writing this article has reminded me, it’s that power isn’t inherently good or bad. It exists in every relationship. The real question is what we choose to do with it.
Do we use it to create safety, equality and choice?
Or do we use it to gain compliance, silence concerns and slowly reduce another person’s autonomy?
As a psychosexual therapist, those are the questions I’ll continue asking. Not because they’re always comfortable, but because they’re often the questions that matter most.
Ultimately, perhaps the question was never simply whether someone said yes.
It’s whether they genuinely had the freedom to say no.
