When Control Is Doing Love's Job
Control almost always begins as care. It becomes a problem when it takes over work that only trust can do.
Nobody sets out to be controlling. Control starts as competence: someone had to keep the household steady, anticipate the mood in the room, make sure the thing didn't fall apart. Often it started when you were young and it was genuinely necessary.
The cost shows up later. A relationship organized around managing outcomes cannot also be a relationship where you are known, because being known requires that you stop managing how you are received.
Surrender, in the way I use the word, is not passivity. It is the decision to stop doing another adult's work for them and to tolerate the anxiety that follows. That anxiety is the whole practice. It is also the reason most people pick the wheel back up within a day.
Start small and specific. Choose one thing you habitually manage and don't manage it for a week. Write down what you feel in the hours after. You will learn more about your attachment history in seven days of that than in a month of talking about it.
What is on the other side is not chaos. It is the experience of being met by someone who chose to show up, which is not available while you are arranging for them to.
Psychotherapist, educator and organizational consultant in Los Angeles. He teaches Relationship Mastery, an eight-week live class.
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