How I Stopped Trying To Control My Partner And Took Responsibility ...

Have you been attempting to control your partner without realizing it?

Have you ever justified taking on your partner’s emotional, relational, financial, or logistical responsibilities with:

• “I can do it better and/or more quickly, so I might as well just do it myself.”
• “They aren’t making it a priority, so I have to do the legwork for them.”
• “They won’t do it themselves, so I have to do it instead.”
• “If they don’t do it, they’ll have to face the consequences. I don’t want them to have to deal with that.”
• “I want to save the relationship but they don’t want to participate, so I’ll do the work for both of us.”

Controlling behavior is a hallmark of codependency, but the first time we come across the idea that we’re controlling, we sputter with indignation. Whether we’re “helping,” “generous,” “saving them from themselves,” or “doing it for our relationships,” many of us don’t realize that we use various tactics to influence our partners’ behaviors and manipulate the outcomes of situations.

How I Was Forced to Deal with My Codependence

As if from a great distance, I could hear my partner saying that he wasn’t happy in our relationship⁠ — and hadn’t been for a while, unbeknownst to me.

“Okay,” I said slowly, my heart racing. “Okay. Let’s talk about how we can work on it.”

My mind was already spinning with tactics and plans. He only stared back.

“I don’t want to work on it,” he responded, shrugging limply.

I had a choice. I could take his words at face value and accept his unwillingness. Or, I could try to fix our broken relationship single-handedly. My fear of loss was so strong that attempting to mend our broken bond felt like the only imaginable option.

And so I did.

Every night, I went to sleep with a highlighter and stack of self-help books beside my bed. I talked about my partner’s fears of intimacy in therapy and then dragged him to therapy along with me. I created a written chart of “argument rules” for us to follow when agitated.

I spent two long months effectively playing God, certain my methods would lead us straight into contented old age.

So when my partner finally broke up with me on the first day of my family’s annual summer vacation, I realized that my sense of control had been nothing but an illusion all along.

“You are afraid to surrender because you don’t want to lose control. But you never had control; all you had was anxiety.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

This was three years ago. At the time, if you’d asked me what I thought was doing, the answer would have been simple: I’m trying to save our relationship. But the truth was, I was attempting to control my partner’s feelings and choices to get my desired outcome. I was working overtime in the hope that his feelings and behaviors toward me would change.

As my anecdote illustrates, many of us try to control others into meeting our own needs. This is especially true if we grapple with codependency or have an anxious attachment style. Marriage and family therapist and codependency expert Darlene Lancer explains:

“Instead of taking responsibility for their own happiness, which would be empowering, codependents’ focus is external. Rather than attend to their needs directly, they try to exercise power over others and control others to make themselves feel okay on the inside. They think, ‘I’ll change him (or her) to do what I want, and then I’ll be happy.’ This behavior is based on the erroneous belief that we can change others.”