Being controlling....

As many of you know I will be married for 20 years this December, and what a 20 year journey it has been! I often write about the way I was in the early years of our marriage, and this is another one of "those posts". Looking back I easily see the control issues I had during the first 5 years of marriage. Because I am an anxious person, my control issues were often about trying to control life in order to keep my anxiety down. Well, it didn't really work at keeping my anxiety down and my controlling behavior put rifts between me and my husband. Besides trying to keep my anxiety down my controlling ways also got triggered when I felt insecure (an example is a previous post about fighting with my husband over his spending time with his family). Thank goodness I married a patient man who was very intuitive about my inner world and worked hard to help me feel safe and secure- because it worked! I still have moments of insecurity and controlling ways, but they are brief, and I come to my senses pretty fast. My marriage has really helped to heal those parts of me.

When I see clients who have a lot of control issues, I feel for them, and depending on where they are at in their own healing, their level of understanding their behavior fluctuates. One of the biggest signs of control issues is when you have little tolerance for who your significant other is and you try hard to change them. For example, you are upset that your wife isn't assertive with with her family, sales people, teachers, etc, but you also don't recognize that you do NOT want her to be assertive with you! You chastise her for her inadequacy in sticking up for herself, but you really don't want her to stick up for herself with you! Or you say you want him to have friends, but you have a fit when he gets something set up cause it "interferes" with your schedule. The other end of the spectrum is the blatant controlling behavior: you can't hang out with friends, work, spend any money on yourself, go on a getaway with the girls (although he hunts for weeks at time with the guys), or makes it very difficult for you to spend time with your family. Many more of us fall not on the extreme side of controlling, but on the more "gray" side, where it isn't always as easily recognized for what it is.

Control issues are able to be healed if the desire is there. If we keep in mind that we want the best for the other, we will do and act in ways that promotes that. We can say we feel left out or insecure, but we can also recognize that those are OUR issues to heal, and the other can help, but they cannot heal it by doing everything we demand/want. In fact by giving in to controlling behavior, it usually gets worse. Bring it out in the open, call it what it really is! My own sisters did this for me in our 3rd year of marriage, and it made a profound impact on me. I did not want to be controlling and knew I needed to change. It hurt to hear it, but after I calmed down, I knew they were right.

So if you have control issues, do not deceive yourself that you are trying to help your significant other by keeping them safe or what have you- your behavior/feelings are about YOU, and your wounds. Yes, the other may trigger your wounds, but that is pretty much every relationship! When we are close to others, our wounds get triggered.

But what a blessing to be able to see that and heal ourselves and our relationships!