Such differences, working in right relationship, can complement each other in ways that will be liberating for each person. In wrong relationship, they lead to endless power struggles. Boundaries may blur, but if the future benefits are high, it is generally an investment. If the benefits are primarily here and now, it is current consumption. The spirit of sustainable service provides a healthy antidote for imbalances in either direction.
Service focuses beyond the self and can thus lift one beyond self-centered current consumption.
For example, some successful communities are based on celibacy, while others are based on group marriages. These seemingly opposite approaches can both work. The issue of power provides another good example. Many communities adopt the ideal of complete equality of power, but in fact such equality essentially never happens in human groups. The attempt to maintain the fiction of complete equality can lead to a collective denial of the actual dynamics in the group.