I've been thinking about love versus control lately.
My guess is that this is the root of many parenting and relationship problems. I think of the types of kids in treatment whose parents want to dictate their children's every move. It can be in work relationships, too. Think of the micromanager or the screaming boss. By control, I don't mean self-control or self-drive, that type of thing. Control is not to be confused with leadership, either.
People can be controlling or they can be loving. People can have control in a relationship or that can love. They cannot have both. Very often people who are controlling think they are loving, when in fact, they are not.
Controlling someone says: I don't trust you to be who you are.
Loving someone says: I trust you to be who you are, and I trust myself to be myself. We have respect for each other.
Controlling someone says: I am afraid you will mess it up or make a mistake.
Loving someone says: Mistakes are part of being human. Mistakes are okay.
Controlling can be horrible, like beating someone who disagrees or misbehaves, be it a spouse or child. It can be a deranged and screaming co-worker or boss.
Controlling can look nice when it really isn't. I can be doubting, undermining, questioning, worrying that the other person will fail or make them look bad.
Love is faith in the other person, and believing they are okay the way they are.
Controlling and loving most often materialize in our lives when there is conflict. Do we insist on getting our way at the expense of the other person's humanity? Or, do we disagree and have faith that it will be okay if the world doesn't go our way? That we can love someone and disagree with them, that the two are not mutually exclusive?
Likewise, when people are controlled, they don't feel loved. They might feel small, insignificant or unimportant, as if they only exist to make the other person happy. Their own happiness is immaterial compared to the controller's happiness.
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