Ten Ways Control Issues Can Harm a Marriage
By: Nancy Wasson
Is your spouse too controlling? Are you too passive? Or are the roles reversed? Either way, if decisions in your marriage are normally a “tug of war” struggle and the same partner either almost always wins or almost always gives in, then your marriage is being impacted by control issues.
Control issues refer to who’s in control, who’s in charge, or who’s getting their way. What’s at stake is the power in the relationship and how differences are resolved.
It’s impossible to completely avoid all control issues in a relationship. Whether you have serious control problems in your marriage will depend on the frequency and intensity of the control issues that arise.
But significant control issues are harmful to a relationship. Here are ten reasons you need to be concerned if you have unresolved control problems in your marriage:
1. Control issues set up a parent-child relationship or dictatorship in the marriage. This shows a lack of trust and respect for the partner’s feelings, preferences, and judgment.
2. Relationships based on “one-up-man-ship” are constructed on the “winner-loser” model. This isn’t what you want to have in a healthy relationship. You want to create a “win-win” model.
3. The “winner” of the control struggle is viewed as “strong,” while the “loser” is viewed as “weak.” This dynamic isn’t helpful to your relationship. It tears down your feeling of closeness and intimacy instead of building it up.
4. By stifling individuality and freedom, you run the risk of smothering and stifling the very things that you value most—your spouse and your marriage. When one person makes the majority of the decisions, new ideas and honest feelings and reactions are suppressed.
5. Control issues contribute to increasing the anger, resentment, and bitterness in the relationship. This is the natural spin-off of feeling disrespected or controlled by someone else.
6. Thinking your mate should be just like you harms your relationship, as does viewing your mate as an extension of yourself. This squelches individuality and freedom and keeps your mate from living up to his or her potential.
7. Passive partners often become passive-aggressive when they are in a relationship with a more controlling partner. This gets in the way of honest, direct communication. They “forget” to keep a promise to the spouse or conveniently sabotage the spouse’s efforts in some way.
8. An overly-controlling spouse sets up dynamics in the relationship that encourages the more passive partner to sneak around and hide things rather than risk confrontation. For example, a passive spouse may secretly phone a friend who she (or he) knows the partner doesn’t want her to have any contact with.
9. Control conflict in a marriage encourages the game of “catch me if you can.” In this game, the passive partner tries to defy or get around the controller’s rules. This can become a game of sorts within the relationship.
10. Unexpressed anger and resentment accumulate, and eventually the passive mate may rebel and decide there’s nothing to lose by becoming defiant or ending the marriage. This brings out the controlling tendency of the spouse even more, and his (or her) efforts to control the “rebellion” make things worse. Any vestige of being on the same “team” is now gone, and the partners can feel like adversaries.
Trying to control your mate—actions, thoughts, feelings—will always boomerang eventually and will have a harmful effect on your relationship.
It’s important to understand the relationship dynamics that are created when power and decision-making is out-of-balance in a marriage. That’s the first step to becoming more aware and knowledgeable about the subject so that you can evaluate your relationship and decide if you need to make any personal changes.
Nancy J. Wasson, Ph.D., is co-creator of Overcome Control Conflict with Your Spouse or Partner, available at http://www.ControllingSpouse.com She is also co-author of Keep Your Marriage: What to Do When Your Spouse Says “I don’t love you anymore!” which is available at http://www.KeepYourMarriage.com, as well as a free weekly Keep Your Marriage Internet Magazine . Dr. Wasson offers telephone and email coaching to individuals and couples who want to overcome relationship problems and create a rewarding, loving partnership.