How Power & Control, Shows-up In Marriage

Are you mistaking healthy leadership for control—or excusing control as care? We dive into the messy, everyday places where power shows up in marriage: the words we choose, the vows we made as kids to stay safe, the way we handle money, and how we discipline our children. Through our own story, we map the thin line between authority that serves the home and manipulation that steals free will.

We start with the roots: trauma, foster care instability, and family models that normalized dominance. Those early vows—like “no one will ever tell me what to do”—feel protective but later sabotage unity. When familiar cues appear in marriage, the past grabs the wheel. We get honest about how that dynamic created rifts between us, and how we learned to separate a spouse’s strong leadership from abusive control by asking simple questions: whose good is this for, is there room for dissent, and does this choice preserve freedom?

From there we tackle money and parenting with practical clarity. Combining finances can feel risky when trust is thin, yet secrecy breeds distance. We share how transparency, shared goals, and clear roles turned tension into teamwork. On discipline, we expose the trap of overcorrecting from past abuse—rejecting all firm boundaries in the name of “gentle” while creating chaos for the child and resentment between parents. Balance matters: consistent standards, mutual respect, and a united front that honors both voices.

We also challenge cultural scripts that either flatten every role or reward power plays. True authority doesn’t force compliance or demand proof; it invites input, owns outcomes, and keeps moving without dragging a spouse. If you’ve wrestled with control, dominance, or the fear of being dominated, this conversation offers a framework to audit your patterns, renounce harmful inner vows, and rebuild trust around free will, wise leadership, and shared purpose. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review telling us where you’ve drawn the line between leadership and control.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Topic: Power And Control
• 1:00 Personal Vows And Childhood Trauma
• 5:10 Self‑Sabotage And Marriage Rifts
• 9:00 Free Will Versus Manipulation
• 12:10 Defining Healthy Authority
• 16:30 Money, Trust, And Shared Finances

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:05

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Team Way. It's happening. So today we have another wonderful title for you or topic for you, and it's called how power and control show up in Christian marriages. Not Christian marriages.

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

Marriages, period.

SPEAKER_01: 0:24

Power and control. How they show up in Christian marriages. So how can you identify these types of um behaviors or these types of issues that show up in a marriage? Because sometimes you can be in a marriage and you are operating in these things or these things are being are being done to you, like power control or manipulation. And because you've been in a relationship for so long, you don't really identify you can't really identify or don't really recognize. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yes. Yeah. So how can we begin to identify when these types of things are happening in the marriage? And how is it that we can help, you know, walk these couples out of these type of behaviors? Because it can sabotage a marriage.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15

And that's male and female. So it's not just uh the husband or just the wife. It could be the husband or the wife that's operating in uh manipulation and control in the marriage. And sometimes it manifests because some people were abused as they were younger, taken advantage of. Uh their will was manipulated or uh didn't have the power to make free will choices because uh they could have had an abusive parent, could have grown up in the uh foster care system or raised by someone other than their biological parents, and they wasn't treated fairly. So you begin to make these covenants and oaths within yourself to be able to protect yourself. That's it. Because you know, I know, like for me, I I remember making a covenant and an oath when I was younger, because I grew up with all women, they was all strong-willed women. So I said, when I grew up, ain't nobody gonna tell me what I need to do. So that those types of covenants and oaths can cause you not to be able to do marriage the way God intends for marriage to be, which is from a biblical perspective.

SPEAKER_01: 2:38

And you know, you know, now that you mentioned that story of you making that covenant, you know, those types of things can come back and self-sabotage. You can self-sabotage your own success. So the fact that he made that covenant early on in his life, years down the line, he marries me. And so some of the things that I do or some behaviors become familiar to him. And he instantly pulls up that stronghold or that covenant that he made in his mind that no woman is gonna tell him what to do. So that created a rift in the marriage and the relationship that we needed to work out.

SPEAKER_00: 3:17

Oh, definitely. And so I think that's how some of the manipulation and control come because things that have been done to you or things that you have seen.

SPEAKER_01: 3:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 3:30

Because some people have seen manipulation and control play out in real time before them from what they seen modeled in marriages that they've seen.

SPEAKER_01: 3:41

And that's exactly what happened to me. You know, I grew up and I saw abuse and I saw, you know, a lot of dominance or male dominance. And so I made a covenant, even in my mind as a young girl, that that would never be me, that would never happen to me. I would never be subject to abuse, I would never be subject to uh male dominance. So anything that showed up that was any, you know, semblance of what I experienced, you know, it created another rift. So we had these things at play. We had these traumas that was, you know, in our own minds, and we brought them into the marriage, and then it created a level of dysfunction for us because we didn't identify it early on.

SPEAKER_00: 4:29

And and really control, and it's to a point, should only happen with children, and you only control children when they're younger, and when uh you're trying to protect them, you're trying to guide them, but as they get older, you begin to relinquish control because now they need to start making informed decisions based on the training you've given them growing up.

SPEAKER_01: 5:02

That's good.

SPEAKER_00: 5:03

And so no one, no adult should be trying to manipulate and control another adult. Right. And so, even though I'm the head of our home and the head of my wife, as the Bible says, you still have free will.

SPEAKER_01: 5:21

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 5:21

You have to choose to want to follow me or to submit to my leadership or my headship. So manipulation and control should never come about. Uh because God has given us all free will, and we know Jesus is our master, he's our Lord, but he won't make us do anything we don't want to do.

SPEAKER_01: 5:45

And it's really important for you to be able to identify strong, good leadership from someone who's being manipulative or being controlling. So I think it's important for you to make sure you can understand what the clear lines of abuse and dominance is as opposed to being a good, strong leader. I think that needs to be said because we need to go into that door. Let's go into that door because, like I said earlier, what I thought, you know, was any semblance, uh resemblance of what I went through, he was just actually operating in his authority as the head of the household.

SPEAKER_00: 6:24

God-given authority.

SPEAKER_01: 6:25

God-given authority.

SPEAKER_00: 6:26

But it was an abusive authority because I have the right to make this choice, but I don't have a right to make a choice for you. Absolutely. So you're free to make whatever choice you want. And when we do make choices, there are consequences with the choices that we make. But you can't make people submit to you, follow you, honor you, obey you, cook for you, be intimate with you, give you money, cook your food, put gas in your car, buy you gifts, whatever you want to put in there. Can't make them. You can't make people, nor do you want to manipulate because manipulate is still a form of control, is just a witchcraft type of control.

SPEAKER_01: 7:14

Right. So, so I said that to say to our audience for you to really think about, you know, the things that you're seeing and making sure that you're able to differentiate between good, healthy leadership and what's a stronghold from the trauma that you experienced in the past.

SPEAKER_00: 7:32

Because the stronghold of the trauma of the past can make you become manipulative, controlling, or resist a right, strong leader.

SPEAKER_01: 7:46

A good healthy authority.

SPEAKER_00: 7:47

Yes. Talk about that. Healthy authority.

SPEAKER_01: 7:51

A good healthy authority, one who is only standing in the God-given right that God gave as the leader in the head to make final decisions for the household as a husband to push the household into the right direction, uh, and not being self-serving and not being um manipulative or dominating in a way that takes away your sense of, you know, any uh opinion or your sense of, you know, uh vocalizing anything. You know, even though he's a strong leader in our home, I'm able to give my opinion, vocalize my thoughts and my perspectives for him to take those into consideration. But ultimately I realize that he's the one that makes the final decision. But that's good, healthy leadership, not, you know, lording it over. You have no opinion. Don't you don't tell me, you know, what you think. This is what we're gonna do. No bones about it. I don't want to hear what you have to say, you know, all of those things, uh, those type of leaders are self-serving because you have to take into consideration the opinion and the perspective of your spouse.

SPEAKER_00: 9:06

Well, I mean, you're a wise leader if you do that. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 9:09

Because there are areas that I can see that he's, you know, he has a blind spot that I can see beyond the blind spot that he probably never even thought about or uh or taken into consideration. So it's important to know the difference, you guys, between because I said nobody's gonna dominate me. But I had covenant. That was my covenant, but then I didn't have a true revelation of a strong leader in a husband at the time uh that I made that uh covenant in my mind. And so when I got married and he was being, you know, a healthy leader, making a decision, you know, I I remember the first time he told me, babe, you need to bring your mind, you need to bring your paycheck home. What guess what came to my mind? Ain't no man gonna ever control or dominate me. But all he was doing is saying, we need to put our funds together.

SPEAKER_00: 10:00

Because we building together.

SPEAKER_01: 10:02

So we're building together so we can get ahead. But in my mind, with my trauma-feel mind and that covenant and that stronghold that I made, I was not mature enough to differentiate between a healthy leader making a good decision to further our family and someone who's trying to dominate me and take control away from me. And that's what came up, and that's why I struggled with that. Because I'm like, I work for this money. What do you mean, bring it home and do what with it? So I'm thinking, where is that gonna lead me in this process? Like, how are you gonna take because that's that's mine. I had I work hard for this money. So after I got a revelation, I submitted to it and I put my total trust in God, number one. And I think that's a that's another subject we need to talk about because sometimes we put our trust too much in our spouse. We should put our trust solely, fully in the Lord that the Lord will cover us, even if our spouse makes a bad decision. You know, that's another subject for another day.

SPEAKER_00: 11:03

The spouse will make bad decisions because there's no one perfect, right? And then, especially if they're growing in their leadership, they're gonna make some mistakes. Right. So you want to try to uh limit the mistakes where the collateral damage is just not overwhelming, that it's difficult to recover.

SPEAKER_01: 11:21

Right. And so that's that's just where I had to learn how to trust God. And in when he told me to bring that check home, I just yielded and said, Lord, I just trust you that all of my needs are gonna be met and I'm going to be okay. Yeah. Uh, and then in trusting the Lord, I'm trusting his leadership.

SPEAKER_00: 11:39

And it wasn't like the check was coming home so I could spend it.

SPEAKER_01: 11:42

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 11:42

It was coming because we needed to, in order for us to survive, we needed both incomes. And so I think we have a lot of you all out there that are still divided in your your finances, which is a big deal. Yeah. And you're you're having trouble being able to go to the next level. And I still think it goes back to manipulation and control and a lack of trust. Because when you feel somebody's manipulating you or controlling you, you're you're gonna have a lack of trust in being able to follow or to submit that to that type of leader. Right. And so that trauma that you have in your past is so important that you make sure you'll deal with those things. Because sometimes we're not actually dealing with that person, we're dealing with what we perceive as this person representing to us because they may be representing what we saw modeled or what we saw happen to us in our past. And now here they are as this strong leader, or or they say something similar to what somebody else said, and you put them all in the same boat, and and it's causing your marriage to be stagnant. And so we need to look at what real control looks like.

SPEAKER_01: 13:04

That's right. Real control looks like you're taking away the person's ability to choose. Yes, that's real control. Um, real dominance means uh you can speak more to it, can come on a male or female, but in terms of female, real real dominance means you're taking away the husband's responsibility or role to lead. You're taking on leadership role. You just take the wheel. You're dominating every area, you're dominating the children's uh discipline, you're dominating, you know, what happens, you know, in the finances, you know. Wow, you know, there's a healthy balance to all of that. You know, sometimes you may, you know, be the best person to deal with finances, but we're talking about identifying what real dominance, real manipulation is. And so we're just trying to give you some practical examples.

SPEAKER_00: 13:57

I wanted to go back to when you talked about taking control over the children's discipline, because some people have experienced real abuse in their childhood. And so the Bible teaches us that iniquity is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod should drive it far from them. Right. And so some uh some of the spouses that experience abuse, they don't believe in spanking at all and discipline at all. And so now you control or manipulate the process when it comes to discipline the children, and you only try to do this this new phrase, what they call it, gentle parenting. And your child is not one that you can just gentle parent. You can't just you trying to punish them or sit in time out or count to 10 and all that. No, your child needs a discipline with spanking, and so because your own brokenness, you manipulating the discipline process and won't allow the other spouse to be able to do what the Bible teaches us to do, and and it's what those are forms of manipulation and control that happens all the time, and until it's not until years later, they realize the damage that they have done to the child.

SPEAKER_01: 15:21

Yes, I should have let him discipline him, I should have gone ahead and let her discipline, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 15:27

So I've heard we've heard those stories. I didn't let them and cause I I was afraid they were gonna hurt them because what I went through. See what you went through. Are you that parent? Are you doing what happened to you? So you gotta look at we're trying to do it the right way. Now you're going from one extreme to another extreme, right? So because you experience abuse, now you go on the into the ditch on the other side that now I'm not gonna do anything. And and so that's not right. And we see it happen all the time where people, because you went through such traumatic things, you want to now save your child from experiencing anything in life that could help them have a healthy development growing up.

SPEAKER_01: 16:22

The Bible says, I believe it's over in Psalms of Proverbs, that God hates a false balance.

SPEAKER_00: 16:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 16:27

And so when you're not Proverbs. In Proverbs. So when you're not balanced in these things, then you're you're creating a chaos because of the unbalance. And you're thinking you're saving a situation when in actuality you're actually creating a greater chaos because a false balance is going to create chaos eventually. So be sure that you identify all of the traumas and covenants and things that you made in your mind that's being perceived as dominance or abuse or manipulation, and make sure that you're rightly, you know, able to discern what's what, and that is if that it's not your own issues and traumas and strongholds that's showing up.

SPEAKER_00: 17:14

But not not only that, also we have to be careful that we don't allow culture to seep into God's standard of marriage because culture wants to challenge all authority. Oh, absolutely. And so culture feels that everybody has an equal voice on every situation, and and it's it's hard to submit or to honor authority. So you gotta make sure that you don't allow culture to dictate how you deal with that's so good, with with uh with what God's way and order and standard is.

SPEAKER_01: 17:56

Absolutely. I think that was definitely worth the whole podcast to say because culture, popular culture, always tried to seep and force its way into against what the known standard and values of God is. So you have to be very careful and protective uh to make sure that that doesn't happen in your marriage.

SPEAKER_00: 18:17

And then so you got men that are overbearing because they're trying to prove their authority. When you are in authority, you don't have to prove your authority. You already have the authority. You already had it. So I'm gonna tell you how I operate and how every leader should operate. So I am already the head. So if I'm leading my wife and she chooses not to follow, I am not going to drag her into following me. That's dominance and that's her beats. That's exactly right. I am going to keep moving in the direction that I am leading, whether she's following with me or not. Because I have, I'm well within my right to lead this way. And if she chooses not to follow, she's gonna be left back there, and I'm not sitting here and waiting for her to manipulate me to go in a different direction.

SPEAKER_01: 19:21

That's good. Yeah. That's very good. That is very good. All right. Well, we hope that you guys have received a lot of nuggets and how to identify dominance, control, and manipulation to make sure that you're not sabotaging your own marriage with thinking that just because your spouse is standing in their God given right, that they are operating in that. So we want to make sure that we gave you guys this, identify those things, and move forward so you can have a great, successful marriage. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 19:51

God bless you.