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Is your partner controlling?

What is controlling and what makes us so?

For many of us, we have grown up believing that what we feel, sense and intuit is not worth listening to.This happens if your parents also have believed this, were not in touch with their feelings, and therefore felt uncomfortable with their children expressing themselves in this way.

As a result you grow up not having a personal reality that you can depend on, and relying almost entirely on your thinking processes. This particularly happens in the male culture where many boys are taught to be tough and deny their feelings, senses and gut feelings.

When a person has had their personal reality denied, they need to think up an identity according to what they think they should be. But these identities are not grounded in their inner experience.

So having made themselves up from the outside in, they imagine that they can also make up others from the outside in, as well, and this becomes the controlling way they interact with others.

In a control connection, the controller defines the other person. They can neither hear, nor see the real person. Therefore, they have no empathy or real understanding for him/her. In other words, they fail to grasp that another person is actually a separate person with their own reality.

But it doesn’t look like that to start with.

During the initial stage of a new relationship, where there is a strong need for approval, the controlling person can contrive their behaviour to impress, be quite the perfect and charming partner, as he or she is very careful to mirror the desires of the new partner.

The transition

However this “impress the socks off” stage doesn’t last, and once the controlling partner feels secure in the relationship (this happens most commonly at the 3 major transitions: when you move in together, when you get married, or when you start having children) there is now no longer a need for approval.

Without realizing it, the partner has crossed over into the controller’s self definition boundary. With this transition comes the expectation that the partner is now an extension of him or her, and of One Mind with him or her.

This dumbfounding change for the partner can be made almost overnight, or a more gradual pace, but change it does.

The “Bubble”

One man described that for him it felt like he and his wife were in a big bubble that he had created as his reality. His wife had freedom, and all was happy, as long as she stayed in the bubble. “There was room to move about so the illusion of freedom seemed real to her. But when she expressed an idea of her own, or any feelings, it was like she was stepping out of his bubble and stepping into her own. But he did not want her out there. He feared being alone with himself. He feared being with his feelings. So he tried to pull her back into his bubble, or worse, injure her so she could never leave, or worse yet, disorient her so she can never find her way out.” Whatever control measure or verbal abuse it took, getting her back inside the bubble where he could feel safe again was his primary objective.

The controlling person usually feels a great and strong love for his or her partner, but this is in essence a control connection rather than real love. There is no regard for his or her individuality, no empathy or understanding, and usually an angry assault or the silent treatment, every time he or she shows any signs of separateness.

This leaves the partner feeling shunned, negated, unseen, unheard, trivialised, and, as a result, also very confused, sad, and often outraged that they have been so invaded or negated, every time she or he expresses her or his individuality.

All the while the controlling partner denies any wrongdoing, not being willing to recognise the devastating effects on the partner.

All real partnership and real love is dissolved when a control connection is forged.

A disconnection happens every time a partner defines you. He or she begins to connect with you whenever he or she defines themselves or asks about you.

The healthiest relationships are those where there is no controlling, simply acceptance of each other and negotiation between each of you for what you need and want.

However, in reality, many people tend to attempt to control their partner in some way. The degree of control is what really counts. You may be happy to allow your partner some control in areas that aren’t really important to you. You may even be able to joke about it, and it all adds to a lively relationship.

But it you are feeling that you are often being negated, not heard, discredited, blamed for things that are not true, or blamed for things that you know is actually more true of your partner, then your relationship is not functioning in a healthy way, and you will be suffering personally.

Controllers fear intimacy because intimacy requires hearing and seeing one’s mate for who he or she is.  Intimacy severs the control connection.

There are graduated degrees of controlling, and the more extreme, the more difficult it is to improve the relationship. The following is a questionnaire that will help you determine what degree of controlling there is in your relationship.

Questionaire. How to identify a controlling partner

1. Your partner tells you in subtle or not so subtle ways that your perception of reality is wrong or that your feelings are wrong.

2. Your partner seems irritated or angry with you often, even though you haven’t done anything that you know of to upset him/her.

3. You often feel that issues don’t get fully resolved so that you can feel happy and relieved.

4. You frequently feel confused, sad, frustrated or outraged because you can’t get him/her to understand your intentions.

5. You are upset not so much about concrete issues, but about the communication – what he thinks you said and what you heard him say.

6. He/she rarely wants to share his/her thoughts or plans with you.

7. He/she often denies things that you know he/she did or said.

8. He/she seems to take the opposite view from you on many things you mention, but the way he/she says it, your view is wrong and his is right.

9. You often feel unseen or unheard, and sometimes wonder if he/she perceives you as a separate person.

10. He/she is either angry or has no idea what you are talking about when you try to discuss an issue with him.

11. You feel abused or negated by him/her, but he/she insists how much he/she loves you.

12. When you try to communicate how you feel about something, you feel no empathy from him/her, or he negates your feelings.

13. He/she often frightens you with rage to silence you.

14. You often feel no empathy from him/her when you are describing how you feel about something..

15. He/she often manipulates you by ignoring you or withholding affection.

16. You feel diminished by the time he finishes his/her conversation with you.

17. He/she always needs to be one up or right.

18. He/she attempts to define you eg You’re only doing that for attention.

19. He/she blames, accuses, judges or criticises you.

20. He/she counters, blocks or diverts your conversation.

21. He/she confabulates, ie makes up something negative about you and speaks it as if it is the truth.

22. He/she often is well behaved in public, but abusive in private.

23. He/she will not ask for what he/she wants, so that you can negotiate fairly.

24. He/she will not respond at all to your requests, or will respond with frustration, or will only seem to respond, but not follow through.

25. Your attempts to enhance the relationship, improve communication, and find some happiness all lead to difficulties.

26. Whenever you try to explain that you are not thinking what your partner is saying you are thinking or doing, your partner will not hear or understand, or negates you in some way.

27. You partner behaves well towards you when you are of one mind with him/her, but the trouble starts when you express either different views from him/her or your own feelings.

28. You often find him/her angrily accusing you of the very things he/she is doing himself/herself.

29. The way your partner treats you has deteriorated radically since you became more settled together (moved in together, got married, started having children)

Scoring

0 -5 - There is likely to be some misunderstanding between the two of you. Learning some communication skills should be all you need.

6-10 – There is some level of a control connection in your relationship. It is likely that your partner is trying to test how far he/she can go in developing a control connection with you. You might like to read more about this topic in the articles here, or I highly recommend both of Patricia Evans books The Verbally Abusive Relationship, and Controlling People. The best practical advice is to nip it in the bud on each occasion, as soon as he/she starts by saying something like “Cut it out!” or a repeated “What?”

11 - 20– Your partner is almost certainly attempting to control you to a reasonable degree. Also, in not being able to see or understand fully what has really been going on, you have unwittingly allowed it to continue. I suggest you read the further article “Why do we unwittingly let ourselves be controlled? And also get help on your own first, as soon as possible. We can help you form an Agreement with your partner against controlling and abuse, and can also help each of you individually in managing this process.

20 and above –Your partner is very controlling. Get help on your own first. There is only a small chance that you will be able to re-engineer a more healthy relationship while still living with him/her.

Before you can have a loving relationship with someone, he or she has to see you as a separate person.

 At the Hart Centre our Psychologists are trained to identify controlling behaviour and can help support you, and give you strategies via a mutual Agreement on managing your relationship. We also offer help to the controlling partner in exploring why, and assisting him/her in developing a more respectful and healthy communication style.

Why do we allow ourselves to be controlled?

Here are some of the reasons why we may have allowed this type of controlling behaviour to have slipped in to our relationship.

1. We assume that there is good will, that our partner really does want to understand us, and when he or she doesn’t, it is because we haven’t been able to explain it fully enough. (In fact a controller is trying to control, not understand us at all, despite their protestations to the contrary)

2. The controlling person usually expresses great love for you, and also shows love in other ways with gifts and kind things, so it seems inconceivable that he or she would also be trying to devalue your thoughts and feelings.

3. These controlling events usually happen in private, and as well, there is usually a complete denial of any wrong doing by the controller, so your suspicions are never validated by anyone else, so you can feel your going crazy, or perhaps over reacting.

4. The controlling partner can very often turn it around and project it onto you, so you are then blamed for something he or she is actually doing. You can start questioning your sanity.

5. Frequent assaults over time can tend to normalise these acts in your mind, and you can begin to question yourself.

6. The controlling partner has usually been so lovable up until the transition, that it is very difficult to rationalise such a change in him or her.

7. You can believe your partner is rational, and has often made a wrong assumption about you, and when you explain it to him or her, there he or she will understand. (However you find that no matter how much you attempt to explain your view, they never understand. This is because they are not there to understand, they are there to distort your view.)

8. You have not been aware of such a thing as verbal abuse and controlling measures, and though even though you have felt hurt and frustrated and confused, you haven’t understood what has been going on.

9. You can think your feelings are wrong.

10. Your partner can be good at times and not at others, adding to the confusion.

11. The abuse can be subtle, with the control increasing gradually over time, so you gradually adapt to it.

12. You can sometime be so stunned or thrown off balance to be able to think clearly about what has just happened.

The Difference between Real Love and a Control connection.

Julie Hart

These articles are largely adapted from ‘Controlling People”, “The Verbally Abusive Relationship”, and “The Verbally Abusive Man” by Patricia Evans