Your spouse tells you that you are too controlling and he/she is fed up with you, and now you sense that your marriage is falling apart because of your controlling behavior. Maybe you were unconscious of your controlling behavior in your own eye, and you had also been reluctant to admit that you were a control freak, although your spouse may have repeatedly complained about your controlling behavior; however, after you spent some time alone in reflection, you have come to realize that you have been a little too controlling in your marriage; and you feel the urgent need to overcome this shortcoming.
You might take some minutes to read the tips below on how to stop being controlling in your marriage.
First of all, it is necessary to gain an in-depth understanding of your controlling behavior.
What does controlling behavior result from?
Have you found yourself constantly seeking to pursue an outcome or way that you want, ignoring anyone else’s opinion? There always exists an emotional cause of controlling behavior, and this is the biggest cause – it is fear. If you are determined to change your controlling behavior, it is crucial to understand this emotional reason. Until you completely understand the impact of this emotion on your behavior, you will still keep striving to manipulate the situations around you, whether your intention is good or bad. For example, you may have realized that fully controlling your spouse or child is bound to be a recipe of misery/failure, but actually, you still attempt to control them.
Fear makes you insist on controlling things around you, even though when those things are running smoothly.
Even some control freaks not only have gotten used to the controlling behavior but also accepted it as one of their personal traits, even a good attribute. Have you ever heard some people say “I am a controlling perfectionist”, “I just like to control things in my way”, or “I just want it that way”? This type of words (e.g. “my way”, and “that way”) signals to a listener that they are a little proud of such a trait.
Whenever a person’s negative trait is elevated to a point where he passes it off as his/her okay trait, a series of relationship problems tend to arise. In particular, if you manage to justify your controlling behavior, you will spontaneously force it on the people around you. In your married life, you will want your spouse to do things exactly as you want; but sometimes when you or your spouse realizes that it is obviously unreasonable to act in your way, you still cling to your opinion and don’t allow your spouse to stick to his/her own opinion for certain matters; and sometimes when you notice your spouse’s behavior does not meet your standards, you may directly take over the job and show him/her how to do, or even you may ask your spouse to move out of the way and then you choose to manage all by yourself.
As the patterns of your controlling behavior get deeply ingrained, your relationship tends to hit the rocks. What is worse, when a marital crisis occurs, you even become more controlling than usual, why? It is because your fear gets fully activated at that point. You can’t stop fearing that something unfortunate will happen and that you will lose your marriage, and hence you attempt to gain more control of the relationship.
Fear drives your controlling behavior, even though you may not be aware of your anxiety and fear while trying to manipulate your spouse.
So what are you fearful about on earth? It can be originated from two aspects below:
(a) The fear of losing control of things around you.
You fear that you will be unable to control the circumstances, and those things spinning in unexpected ways.
(b) The fear of not being able to get what you want/need.
When you are afraid that you will not get what you want, you will make more attempts to achieve what you want. Compared with the previous type of fear, this type of fear can cause relatively many marital problems. Why? During the process of getting what you want, probably you will interfere with interests or rights by whatever means because sometimes you can hardly get what you want unless you spare no effort to force him/her.
It is just an illusion to control everything around you:
Sometimes, you can have a situation well in hand for a short time, or you can get good reinforcement about something that you had difficulties in controlling; and these achievements can convince you to gain more and more control over things by trying hard, therefore you become more and more controlling. However, you have to be aware of a fact – getting full control of everything around you is just an illusion, it is beyond the realms of possibility. And your controlling behavior will only continuously nurture your spouse’s resentment against you.
Do you have the belief – “I’m right”:
Your controlling behavior is also based on the belief – “I am right”. If you didn’t believe that your opinion was right or at least reasonable, how would you force your spouse to do things exactly in your way? Your controlling behavior usually originates from your good intention; initially, you never thought that your controlling behavior could wreck your marriage.
As time passes, your controlling behavior will produce an opposite effect – it forces you to always make yourself out to be in the right. But if unchecked, your controlling behavior will become more and more unreasonable, and it will only result in a loss for both sides in the relationship.
What does the controlling relationship feel like?
A controlling relationship is very similar to a parent-child relationship. But in a parent-child relationship, the child will eventually grow from childhood to adolescence. At this point, do you feel as if you have a rebellious “child” beside you, even though he/she has benefited from the mode of being controlled and controlling?
Spouses in the controlling relationship can not be counted as “WE”. It is more about a “you and me” relationship in which one side just can listen to and obey the other side; so one’s opinion is always negated by the other, and this is the real harm of the controlling behavior.
Do you force your spouse to do according to your self-standard?
You must have a higher self-stand than your spouse, and you may always challenge yourself to meet an expected target in almost every aspect of your life, such as your standard for how to treat other people, how to interact with people, how to be yourself in a world, and how to fulfill your duties.
Ask yourself whether you have gotten used to asking your spouse to finish things according to your standard. If so, I bet problems often arise as long as your spouse can’t fulfill your standard. Simply speaking, do you feel that it is a little unkind to always force your spouse to do things in your way? An example can make this point clear: you always work hard to accomplish everything, and you are sure that you work harder than ordinary people, but you should not ask all the people around you to keep working just like you. If you insist on imposing a tight standard on other people, there may be serious consequences, because there may be few people who can be as hard as you can. And a similar case can also be seen in many parent-child relationships. Generally, strict parents choose to guide their children with firm discipline, but their children fail to live up to their expectations from time to time, then these parents will probably feel upset about their children’s bad behavior.
Why are you always in a controlling position?
Do you know why you are always in a controlling position? It is because you are always trying to get your standard fulfilled by your spouse. For example, a lot of couples fight about housework, because one may not meet the other’s standards when the other one performs a household duty, the party with the higher requirement will feel frustrated, just like a parent who is not satisfied with his/her child, even he/she may show the other one how to correctly do housework on the spot. This is not a simple question of doing it right or wrong, but a difference between both sides’ standards. Certainly, it is also a manifestation of one spouse’s controlling behavior.
So how should you deal with your controlling behavior when your spouse tells you that he/she can’t bear your controlling behavior anymore?
The following are 5 suggestions about how to stop being controlling in your marriage:
(1) Fully acknowledge you are controlling:
Whenever you feel the need to control someone, or whenever you are tempted to coax or teach your spouse to do things in your way, you should remind yourself that you are driven by fear and that your behavior is ineffective or does not make sense. Then think about what the fear may be about (what makes you feel at risk) and what evokes your fearful response.
Furthermore, you should be aware of the fact – it is normal that couples can argue about the same issue over and over; but your controlling behavior can backfire by exciting your spouse to rebel against you – if you are too controlling while arguing with your spouse, eventually, the argument will result in stalemate, or you and your spouse will conflict each other, feeling anger, resentment, and disdain towards each other; it is beyond question that neither side in such argument can win.
(2) Calm down yourself by breathing:
Remember that your controlling behavior is rooted in fear, and fear happens deep inside the brain. Before you are conscious of potential threats, actually those threats have already been perceived subconsciously – As soon as threats are detected by your subconscious brain, your brain instantly switches into the fear mode; in this case, breathing can be used as a trick to interrupt the process. Here, the so-called “breathing” refers to belly breathing.
Surely, first, you need to learn how to correctly breathe, if it is the first time that you hear about belly breathing, don’t think belly breathing is hard to do. You may have a try of this simple method: lie down, place a hand upon your chest, and meanwhile place the other hand on the belly button, and then start to breathe. While you are breathing, the hand on your belly can move but the hand over your chest should keep still.
This relaxation technique is an easy-to-do psychological suggestion that tells yourself that you have nothing to fear. Anytime you attempt to force an outcome, feel uptight and anxious, or feel compelled to correct something that is happening, you may take a deep belly breath to calm down yourself a bit.
(3) Be conscious of the interactions:
Try to identify the place in which you become controlling, identify what environments trigger your controlling behavior; watch yourself as you enter those environments where you feel fear; observe your thinking and the following happens; in short, notice those moments, and be careful with what you do when these moments happen. The more you observe your controlling behavior, the more likely you can decide on your conscious reactions.
(4) Increase your emotional awareness:
When you feel anxious or fearful in the relationship, probably you have become habituated to acting on your emotions without realizing them; so the next time when you experience fear and anxiety, you might learn to sit with those uncomfortable emotions instead of escaping from them, tell yourself that what causes you to have the fear are those negative emotions themselves, and comfort yourself with the thought: things are not so serious or dangerous and they can run normally whether you choose to respond to your emotions or not.
Increasing emotional awareness does not mean changing your emotions, but realizing what truly they are, and reminding yourself that no particular action is needed to deal with those emotions. Again, the generally effective way to overcome fear and anxiety is just to sit with those uncomfortable feelings instead of making a quick reaction. In the world, numerous successful people have the power to stay calm and collected in the face of a devastating crisis, not to mention petty things like yours.
(5) Be open to new possibilities:
If you separate yourself from the assumption that an option is either right or wrong, you will be left with more possible options and outcomes. You see, there are a lot of things that are not done the way you want, but you can’t deny that those things also go well regardless of the principles of right and wrong. In your marriage life, you can either be right or happy, but you can’t have it both ways. Which one do you want? Being open to new possibilities can lead to happiness, but to be open to new possibilities, first, you have to overcome your fear and anxiety.
One final thought: don’t suddenly do the opposite without notice – don’t suddenly move from “being controlling” to “giving up all your control”. That’s also not fair; just like our bodies’ health, health is a human condition ‘in-between’; and a healthy marriage requires both sides to share perspectives, make decisions, and be responsible. If you suddenly go from one extreme to another, the relationship between you and your spouse will also become unbalanced, and thus both of you can not timely adapt to the dramatic changes. Therefore, when you decide to stop being controlling in your marriage, be clear about where you can give up your control and how to bear the responsibility together.
The final word:
No doubt, it is impossible for your spouse to live happily in the controlling or manipulative relationship; hence, you must be aware that being controlling is definitely a toxic relationship pattern.
It is worth stressing that most of the time your controlling behavior is rooted in the useless and unwarranted fear – your fear does not pose a real threat, so catastrophe will not befall. If you want to save your marriage, now it is time to stop the controlling behavior that poisons the marriage, and instead, you should be dedicated to establishing a more fair and harmonious partnership with your spouse again.
If you are fully committed to the improvement of your failing marriage, you might go on to watch the video below to follow the comprehensive guidance that is offered by Brad Browning, a marriage coach with 12+ years of experience:
Maybe, you are also interested in the related posts below:
How to understand controlling behavior in marriage.
How to deal with jealousy in your marriage – Stop being a jealous wife.
5 warning signs of a toxic marriage – Toxic relationship patterns.
How to fight fair with your spouse – Fight in a healthy way.
7 common things that ruin a marriage slowly – Save your marriage.
How to deal with resentment in your marriage – Reduce resentment.