What Control Costs Us in Relationships

Many of us high performers learned how to use controlling behaviors to escape our childhoods. We focus on getting things “right,” on being “good,” and we find relief in the rewards that follow.

Controlling behaviors are a phenomenally rewarding strategy, until we want to enjoy intimate relationships. Then, the same skill that helps us excel professionally starts to destroy our ability to connect to the people we love.

When we reach for controlling behaviors in our relationships, we often end up confused that they don’t work. But control is the opposite of intimacy. We must learn how to get out of our own way before we sabotage the love we’ve worked so hard to find and build.

Instead of changing, though, the controlling part of us might reason that the conflict and our discomfort would easily resolve if our partners would “just” do things the way we want them to.

We attempt to correct them in a bid for connection that creates the opposite effect.

Only when se see that our controlling behaviors don’t serve us, and are something we’ve long outgrown, can we start to architect our way into other options.

After all, controlling behaviors in relationships only lead to pain and harm.

But solving this isn’t about judging or coming down hard on the strategies we learned in childhood. If that worked, we’d be in a different place already.

Those of us with complex trauma (CPTSD) from childhood learned how to use controlling behaviors to create a sense of safety. And this usually happened so early in our lives that we can't imagine another way.

If CPTSD is a newer frame for you, start here on what complex trauma actually is.

Controlling behaviors can feel like such a core part of us that we don’t believe we could ever change. Since having control has often helped us excel in the world, why would we want to change strategies?

When our early home environments were neglectful, abusive, or chaotic, taking control became a substitute for connection.

When our earliest relationships were painful and didn't meet our needs, we learned to try to meet them on our own by exercising control. After those childhood experiences, why would we trust anyone else to know how to get it right?

It’s too risky.

In intimate relationships, controlling behaviors can look like one partner always knowing what's best or being perpetually demanding and unsatisfied. It might seem like nothing is ever "right."

It’s essential to understand this pattern is not anything a partner can fix, no matter how hard they try.

There is no way to get it “right.”

This can be devastating for a partner on the receiving end of control, who often collapses into freeze or fawn, which are also stress or trauma responses. We might desperately people-please to try to appease the controlling one or give up and stop trying because we “never get it right.”

If you recognize yourself in the fawn response, here’s more on how fawning collapses our sense of self.

The best thing a partner on the receiving end of controlling behaviors can do is start to push back and set limits on their partners’ behavior.

The way out is to see controlling behaviors as a stuck nervous system state that needs accountability to heal, so we can both experience the warmth and reciprocity of healthy relationships.  

In my work as a trauma specialist with individuals and couples, I see many relationships pushed to the brink of breakups because one partner is locked in controlling behaviors.  

When this happens, the only way we know to feel secure is by pushing our partners to see or do things our way.

Of course, this backfires. There’s no intimacy when one partner dominates the other.

But that doesn't stop us from doubling-down on controlling behaviors to the detriment of ourselves, our partners, and our relationships. We need to build options for something new and different to emerge.

We need to stop using the same strategy that helped us escape our childhoods in our adult intimate relationships. 

We need to gently demote the safety strategy of control, that we often learned in childhood, so we relate to our partners in more accountable, empathic, and vulnerable ways.

The Impact of Controlling Behaviors (and How to Change Them)

Long-term, controlling behaviors impoverish our relationships and drain the quality of intimacy from our lives.

The false idea that we always know best is implicitly grandiose and shames our partners.

When we enforce our views on them, insisting they say or do things our way, we might be trying to bring them over to our way of seeing things to feel less alone. 

But it has the opposite effect.

Even if we're not immediately aware of the harm and pain our controlling behaviors cause in our relationships, there's always an impact.

When we override and dismiss our partners' needs, boundaries, and preferences, the relationship suffers and so do they.

Partners experience controlling behaviors as intrusion, because we are overriding their boundaries and pushing their limits. It’s overwhelming, and the inevitable cost is their retreat, collapse, and withdrawal.

This isn’t a conscious choice, but rather a predictable nervous system response to relentless pushing and shaming. Their needs disappear, their voice goes quiet, and they stop trying.

The way back from this is to take accountability for our impact and learn how to quickly and effectively step out of controlling behaviors. The intimacy we long for comes from collaboration and connection, which can never happen when we are pushing to get our way.

Here’s how to shift:

1. Notice and question the grandiosity of "knowing what's best."

When you see yourself slipping into controlling behaviors, get suspicious. What activated you into this strategy? What are you trying to get? What do you need? How are you going about getting it? Interrogate, with care and gentleness, the part of you who insists on using control to get what you want. 

2. When you feel stressed and controlling, interrupt your nervous system response.

Imagine you can stand between your urgent desire to control and your partner. Contain the inner urge to inflict controlling behaviors on your partner. Get to know what it feels like to set clear limits on this part of you, without harshness or self-judgement, while offering this part your guidance and care.

Setting limits on a part of yourself is its own kind of boundary work. Here’s more on the two types of boundaries.

3. Do trauma work, including couples work, to heal the relationship dynamic.

Controlling behaviors have a lasting impact on our partners and relationships. Even when we clean up and change the behavior, the damage done often needs focused support to heal the harm we've created. This can be individual work, but it’s most effectively done in the presence of our partners, to co-create the empathy, vulnerability, and accountability required to heal.  

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No matter how much damage controlling behaviors have done to your intimate relationship, you can learn how to heal.

You need to step away from old strategies and lead yourself there.

If you don't, the fights will spiral, you'll say and do things you later regret, and you won't have an off-ramp when conflict happens. You'll just have your lonely strategy of control — and all the harm it perpetuates.

If controlling behaviors are one of your safety strategies, I hope you'll take the next steps to shift it.

When you do, the closeness you create in your relationships will slowly relax and heal the part of you that has, for so long, felt alone.