Romantic Domination

Romantic relationships between professors and students, between employers and employees, and between other partners at different points on an institutional hierarchy are widely regarded as morally troubling. Popular explanations as to why have appealed variously to violations of institutional duties, to the impossibility of sexual consent within such relationships, and to the vices of the more powerful partner. I advance an alternative explanation. Romantic relationships, I argue, are already hazardous in their own right. We are distinctively exposed to and dependent on our partners, which gives them the ability to interfere with us in significant ways. This makes romantic relationships ripe for what republicans call “domination”—a situation in which one person is vulnerable to the arbitrary interference of another. Romantic partners can avoid this objectionable condition by achieving a rough equality of power, which will prevent either partner from interfering with impunity. However, significant asymmetries of institutional power make this balancing act harder to achieve and, therefore, make domination harder to avoid. Extending the theory of freedom as non‐domination in this way, therefore, not only helps solve a tricky ethical puzzle but also demonstrates the surprising capacity of republican theory to illuminate personal relationships.