How To Know If You're Being Controlling Without Realizing It (QUIZ)

Is your behavior accidentally destroying your marriage? In this video, Kimberly Beam Holmes reveals one of the top predictors of divorce—second only to affairs—that most people don't even realize they are doing.

Control is a silent relationship killer. You might think you are just trying to "help" your spouse, protect your family, or make sure things are done "the right way." But to your partner, it feels like intrusion, intimidation, and a lack of trust.

At Marriage Helper, we see thousands of couples in crisis, and control is one of the hardest hurdles to overcome—but it IS possible. In this video, Kimberly breaks down the psychology behind why good people become controlling, the 5 distinct ways control manifests in a marriage, and gives you a 5-question self-assessment quiz to see if you are guilty of these behaviors.

In this video, you will learn:

• The Root Causes: Why fear, low self-esteem, and poor emotional regulation lead to controlling behavior.
• The 5 Types of Control: Intrusion, Intimidation, Correction, Disempowerment, and Emotional Coercion.
• The Self-Assessment: 5 honest questions to ask yourself right now.
• The Solution: Practical steps to stop controlling your spouse and start saving your marriage.

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Hidden Marriage Killer
• 0:20 Why Good People Control
• 3:10 Five Faces Of Control
• 9:10 Intrusion And Intimidation
• 12:40 Correction And Disempowerment

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

In this video, I am going to reveal to you one of the number one killers of marriages. And here's the thing. Once I tell you what it is, you're not going to want to watch it, but you need to, please, until the very end, because I guarantee you that you're going to learn something in this video that you didn't realize that you were doing that is destroying your marriage. And that thing is control. I would venture to say that of all of the marriages that we see at Marriage Helper, and let's face it, we deal with people that are in some of the most dire of situations. They are in the middle of a divorce. They have papers that have been served to them. They are currently separated. There are affairs currently going on. These are the situations we see. And while affairs are probably the most common situation that we see, control is a very close second. Control erodes relationships. And the thing is, most people don't even know that they're doing it. I guarantee you that by the end of this video, you're going to have an aha moment and you're going to realize that you have been doing some things that even though you haven't intended for it to come across as controlling, it has. And you need to stop doing it. In fact, I'm going to give you a quiz at the end of this video. Five questions for you to ask yourself to determine are you being controlling without realizing it? But first, I want to dive into why do people control? It's not because you're a bad person, more than likely. You're a good person who honestly is just trying to protect yourself. At its core, control is a method of self-protection. And so a lot of people control for one of three main reasons. It's control out of fear. I'm scared that you're going to leave me. I'm scared that you're going to abandon me. And so, since I'm scared, I'm going to try and control the situation. Sometimes people control because of low self-esteem. They have a strong need to be right. They have a strong need to be validated. And even if we look at the research of self-esteem, the lower self-esteem that someone has, the more likely they are to lie, steal, and cheat to protect the way that they feel about themselves. Now that's on a drastic level. But if we look at just a normal day-to-day life, I mean, think of people you know who are highly competitive. A lot of times they want to win because to not win is some kind of admission to themselves that they are flawed or that they are wrong. And so many times people with low self-esteem try to control in the marriage in order for them to feel that they are always right. And then the third reason that people can control is because they have a poor internal emotional regulation. They don't know how to be self-aware. They don't know how to identify their feelings. And since they aren't in tune with themselves, they begin to try and control everything around them for them to feel better. They're trying to control their external circumstances to feel better internally, and that's never gonna work. True peace is found within ourselves. So those are the three key reasons that people tend to control. But there are five ways that control tends to look. The first one is intrusion. Intrusion destroys autonomy and safety. What do I mean by intrusion? Intrusion is I don't trust you. So I'm going to follow you. I'm going to look in your phone. I'm going to tell you where you can go, when you can go, how long you can be there. I'm going to give you a certain amount of money and you're not going to have any more to spend. All of those things we're going to call intrusion. I'm trying to tell you how to live. And that destroys someone's sense of autonomy over time. That's why it can be absolutely devastating to relationships. The second one is intimidation. Intimidation stops genuine problem solving because ultimately intimidation is if you don't do what I tell you to do, I'm going to try and coerce you into doing it. It's where the husband is saying to his wife, if you don't get your bachelor's degree or if you don't get your MBA, you're never going to be hireable in the job that you're trying to do. If you don't do the things that I am telling you to do, it's a wife. We had a situation, a couple that one of our coaches worked with where the wife felt this moral superiority about a belief that she had. And she realized that her husband was going to a barber that believed the exact opposite of her. And so she started trying to coerce her husband and saying, if you go and continue to give money and pay money to that barber, then I'm going to do X, Y, and Z. It's intimidation. And it doesn't actually allow you to talk openly, freely, and vulnerably with each other about the core issues going on. It builds walls and it stops communication. The third way that we see control happen is through correction. When someone is constantly trying to correct the other person, tell them that they're wrong, tell them that they're stupid, tell them that they voted for the wrong person, tell them this, that, or the other, that is constant correction. You don't think like me, you need to change. And until you do, I'm going to beat you down with my words until you finally just get exhausted and give up. And that's what it does. Correction erodes self-esteem because over time, someone can only hear so much that they're not good enough before they begin to lose sense of their own reality. It's control. You're not accepting the person as they are, which is what all of us so, so deeply want. The fourth way that we see control happen is through disempowerment, which creates dependency. This is where you begin to similar to some of the other ones, you are pulling someone away. You're taking away their autonomy and their choices because you begin choosing for them, because you feel like they can't make decisions for themselves. This is where a husband is maybe wanting to do a different career path. He's wanting to change jobs, but the wife is continually saying to him, you can't do that. You need to stay where you are. You need to stay with what you know. You're not going to be hired over there. You're not good enough. You need to do what I want you to do. I'm going to empower you. I'm going to tell you the right decision to make. Maybe it's even in parenting where one parent feels like they know more about vaccines or about how a child should be disciplined or about how to treat ADHD or whatever it might be. One parent feels superior. And so they begin to make the other person feel like they don't know enough to actually be a vital part of working together to make a decision about what to do for the future. And so it creates dependency and once again erodes relationships. And then the fifth and final area of control we see is emotional coercion. Emotional coercion fosters fear and avoidance. It's where you just don't shut up. You keep telling your spouse what you want them to do and how they're wrong and how they're just overthinking things or overreacting. And you're manipulating them by guilt, shame, or fear into doing what you want them to do so that you'll be happy, but it completely fosters a sense of avoidance in your spouse where they finally give in, but it's just to make you shut up. They're so tired of hearing you talk about the same thing over and over that they just shut down. You think that they've finally seen your point. We see this a lot in religion, especially faith, like a Christian faith, where a man starts using the Bible over and over. We had a friend who years ago in his in his marriage, his wife was not wanting to have sex with him because he was very controlling in every other area of the marriage. And so in the bedroom, she also didn't want to be vulnerable and give herself to him. But instead of him trying to change himself and seeing what he was doing, he began to just cite scripture to her. He began to read out to Corinthians about how a man and a woman should be one and they should X, Y, and Z. And he just kept on and on and on until maybe she would finally give in. Not because she wanted to, although in his mind he was thinking, I finally got through to her. No, you wore her down until she lost all sense of wanting to stick up for herself. And she finally just did what she wanted because she felt control. No one wants to live in a relationship where they feel like they have to walk on eggshells, change who they are, and can't be accepted for who they truly are at their core. This is a key principle that we teach at Marriage Helper. Now, here are five questions that you can ask yourself to gauge whether or not you are being controlling without meaning to. The first one is this Do you frequently feel the need to check up on or monitor your spouse's activities, communications, or whereabouts when they aren't with you? It's question number one. Question number two, when a disagreement arises, does the issue usually end with you getting your way? Or does your spouse frequently change their mind in order to avoid an argument? Question number three, do you criticize your spouse's decisions about their own life, like how they dress, who they spend time with, what job they take, as if they were mistakes that you need to correct? Question number four, how often do you avoid helping your spouse with certain tasks, like doing the bills, household chores, or even parenting decisions, because you believe that you are the only one who can do them correctly? So you are leaving them out of helping you with it. And then question number five, if your spouse were to freely express an opinion that was sharply different from yours, would you respond by withdrawing emotion, by refusing to talk, or using silence to convey your disapproval? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are exhibiting control to some extent in at least one area of your relationship. And of course, the more questions of those five that you answered yes to, the more control is actively hurting your marriage. And it needs to stop. Here's the other truth that I will tell you of all the marriages that we work with at Marriage Helper, control is one of the hardest issues to help a marriage overcome. But it doesn't have to be. Here's what it takes to stop control in your marriage and to save it and turn it around. It takes you realizing you're controlling and that you need to change. See, the marriages that we work with that control is affecting them, they could all be saved, every single one of them. If one or both people in the marriage would take responsibility and ownership to realizing that they are being controlling. That's all it takes. And then actually changing your behaviors, changing the things that need to be changed in order to put your relationship back on track, in order to build trust, in order to make sure that there is healthy communication, that there are healthy ways that you talk to and show acceptance for each other. That's what it takes. So if you are sitting there thinking, I just realized that there is an area I haven't even realized that I've been controlling in, but I am. Here's the good news: you are not alone and there's absolutely help. We have programs, we have a key program for you to learn how to be different so that you can attract your spouse back, so that you can turn your marriage around and that you can have the marriage you've always dreamed of. You can't control your spouse. The only person that you can control and change is you. And if you've been a controlling person, you're in good company, most of us have to some extent. But the key is is hey, you've you've tried to control someone else. Use all that positive energy to control you and to change you to be the person that you need to be in order to have a great marriage. We can help you do that at Marriage Helper. You can book a call with someone on our team that can speak with you about what you can do now to change the future and the trajectory that you're on. Because the more that you continue to just keep being the way you are and continue to control, the worse your marriage is going to get. Take responsibility, begin to change the things that need to be changed. And it starts with you. We can help. Would love for you to book a call. Until next time, remember there is always hope.