It seems habitual. You get into a situation where you're used to yielding to someone, or hearing their suggestions, then yielding. And it's like you have no voice. Because if you voice concern or show opposition to their suggestion or demand, the mere fact that your resistance is uncommon deflates the value of your opinion.

Americana dictates that the silent man is the strongest, the cowboy who doesn't say much, but means what (little) he says and says what he means. For the most part this is a fantasy, the mute is rarely the leader. Leadership requires strong communication which has little to do with to do with words. Good communication (that propels effective leadership) is fueled by will and the ideas behind it. But rarely is a good leader silent expressionless or uncommunicative, he may not be glib or a "splainerman" as Texans say, but he certainly communicates in order to lead.

It's hard to break established patterns in relationships. If you're used to yielding, you can put your foot down once or twice and decide not to yield and you may win. But the behavior that made you become a yielder reoccurs in almost every moment of every interaction. You can see the abusive husband's rage in every slightly-slammed car door, every darting glance, every stone-faced non-reaction to everyday malaisical work stories. The woman crying harm and the batterer pretending it will just go away.

Every nuance of the controlling woman's wrath in her most trifling motions toward her husband. Not to mentions her actions: demeaning pats on the shoulder, speech with sinking inflections (as one speaks to a child).

To break the pattern of yielding is to radically reformulate the relationship itself. It is unlikely, considering the odds of two strangers meeting and forming some kind of relationship, for the second pass to even happen. Essentially it's not the other parties' fault or even your fault the relationship went the way it did. The pattern of the relationship arose from the synthesis of the two parties in space and time. If it's no longer satisfactory for whatever reason, it should be ended, as there is no shortage of other candidates in a world this large. This is one example of how our archetypes have changed due to the massive world population.