Calling Her “Controlling” Keeps Your Marriage Broken | EP 44

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Is your wife actually controlling you, or are you just terrified to look at what is really going on?

Most men walk into this conversation convinced their wife is the problem. She micromanages. She criticizes. She tells you how to do everything. She never backs off. 

So you call it control.

But what if “controlling wife” is the story you keep telling yourself so you do not have to face the harder truth?

Host Alessandro Frosali breaks down why control might not be control at all. It might be broken trust. It might be years of you saying you would handle something and then not handling it. It might be your fear of criticism, shame, inadequacy, or not being enough. 

Or it might be her own wounds showing up in a way that feels sharp, tense, and impossible to deal with.

And yes, sometimes a woman really is toxic. But before you throw that label on her and call it a day, you need to ask a much harder question: are you actually being controlled, or are you avoiding responsibility?

You will learn why your track record matters more than your intentions, why two weeks of effort does not erase ten years of evidence, and why trying to change just so she shuts up will never build trust.

This episode is for the man who keeps pointing at his wife and wondering why nothing changes. It is also for the man who knows, deep down, that he might be part of the problem but has not wanted to sit with that yet.

Alessandro gives you a clear framework to tell the difference between a genuinely controlling woman and a woman who simply stopped trusting you.

Press play and hear the one question that will force you to look at yourself in a way you probably haven't been willing to before.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy. Always seek qualified guidance for your personal situation.

Views shared by Alessandro Frosali and his guests reflect their lived experiences and opinions. Every listener’s journey is unique, and no therapeutic relationship is created.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Shut the Fuck Up and Listen. On this episode, we're going to deal with the simple fact of how you can deal with a controlling wife. Controlling wife. Because isn't it one of the worst things, right? To feel as if your wife is controlling every single thing that you do. And it could even be more than just controlling. She could be, you know, every single time you do something, she is limiting your ability to do anything. She's limiting your growth because she just wants to control it all. What a bench. Well, let's break this down because not everything might be as it seems. All right. So before we get started on this episode, I want to say thank you to everyone who has been jumping on the podcast the last little while. I've had some great messages with it. Get great messages in my emails about the podcast as well. And for a reminder of all of you that don't know yet, I have the better husband in two minute emails. This is a place with 21,000 men. There's probably going to be more by the time you listen to this. They get my emails every single week and they're using this as tools in order to get their relationship to be better. So if you haven't signed up for that, go ahead and sign up for it now. And I would use them in conjunction with this podcast because it's it's always just going to help you become a better husband in general. But anyway, controlling wife, we've got to get to a controlly wife. Now, why do I why do I speak about this? Because, you know, I recorded the last episode I did was an episode on fears, on these big fears, you know, and and this and and why, you know, what you're making your words mean leads you to, or what you're making something mean leads you to be defensive based on a fear that you have. And one of the things that came up was a little bit of control, you know, and then and my wife is controlling me. And it's a question that I always have. It's like, you know, I'm doing these changes and this, but but my wife is just so controlling. My wife just controls what I do. And I want to reframe it a little bit because I truly believe that the word control is such a strong word, such a strong word. Because if I'm in a relationship where my wife literally, literally, all right, let's let's actually imagine it, literally controls what I do. I'm dealing with a narcissist or I'm dealing with something I don't want to be in, right? And I don't believe that we as men don't have agency within our lives. And I believe that if we are in a situation where we truly are with a woman that controls us, grabs onto our balls and directs us into a certain direction, so to speak, then that is not a relationship, right? That is a dictatorship. And I don't believe you should be in that. So let's investigate what this control could be. And you can decide at this end of this episode, you can decide at the end of this episode if she really is controlling you, or there might be something else at play. So I've got three things that we're gonna go through. Number one, control. Well, maybe four things, but here we go. Number one, I truly believe that when we're dealing with a woman who who looks at you doing a certain thing, right? Let's talk about you might be doing the dishes and you might be doing it wrong, or she asks you to do something and you don't do it the way that she says you should do it, or anything like that. And then she like has to micromanage the way that you do that task. I think control is a little bit too strong of a word because I think one thing that we're forgetting, one thing that we're forgetting is you experience it as if you're being controlled, or a lack of freedom, so to speak, like your freedom's being taken away from you. But we've got to think about what she's experiencing, because one-sided ways of of dealing with things is not actually what's happening. So we're trying to like attribute us, we may be, right? Trying to attribute this word control onto a behavior that we experience, but that's actually not what she is doing. So let's look at what she is maybe doing, maybe, because it might not be the case, maybe doing, and let's see if this might be the case in your relationship. So if you've had a relationship that's gone on for a long period of time and you're finally stepping up into a role where you're actually wanting to do certain things in the household or something like this. And let's say there's been a repeated pattern of you not doing it away, I would make the argument in this case that it's not necessarily control, but rather trust. Trust. You see, trust is a huge thing within our relationships. And I don't believe like trust is necessarily given automatically. In actual fact, it's not. It's based on your actions in the past. And so what I mean by that is if you have consistently showed that you are untrustworthy or you do not do a task to a certain standard, right? Let's imagine this, then you are not going to be trusted with that task to do it. Now, let's say you've done a task really badly for 10 years, and then all of a sudden, for seven months, you do it really well. Would you imagine seven months is enough to overcome 10 years of evidence, so to speak, that you cannot do the task? Sometimes not. You know, and I think that's something that I really want to let husbands understand is not that, you know, I I don't want to I don't want a wife to have these behaviors of non-trust. It's not nice. You know, I'm not saying it's a nice thing, but we've got to understand where the behavior comes from. Because the moment we can understand the behavior, we can actually have a little bit more empathy for it. Or we don't have to take it as personally. Because the moment something becomes about trust. So let's put it this way. Let's say you, you, you, you in that situation, you have been doing really badly for 10 years, you've noticed it, and for seven months you really have stepped up, and yet she's still controlling. What you can control in that situation is your effort that you put within something. You cannot control the reaction from somebody else. And you can just understand that that's where the reaction is coming from. What I see half the time is that men step up for like two weeks and they expect their wives to shut the fuck up because it's really difficult for them. The fact that their wife is dealing with the consequence of the impact of their action for 10 years, five years, two years, whatever it is, they do they don't handle that. They don't want to handle that. So they would rather divert the whole conversation and say she's controlling rather than really dealing with it and going, oh, I just, I just don't like the idea that I was unreliable. I don't like the idea that I was inadequate. I don't like the idea that I wasn't good enough for her. I don't like the idea she keeps bringing something up. That's actually the truth that's happening for you, right? But that's a past pattern that's happening over and over again. So she, I want you to really understand that sometimes this controlling is to do with a past pattern. It's like the pattern of trust. She just doesn't trust you to do it over and over again. So how do we get past that? Well, like my real view within this is to really continue focusing on the action, continue focusing on that and not taking anything outside of that personally. You know, whenever I work with somebody in in coaching at the Better Husband Academy or things like this, they're often the question will come from a lot of men, which is like, I've been working really hard for the 70 days, but I don't see a change in my life. And I'm like, wow, wow. So you changing or you working on this relationship is actually conditional to the fact that she needs to change. It's conditional. So you don't actually want to work on being a better husband. You're still tied and anchored to her emotional state. You're still tied and anchored to her emotional state. So you are only validated or the relationship is only validated based on her emotions. And as we know, you know, women's emotions do change a lot quicker than our emotions, a lot of the time. Well, not all the time, but you know, a lot of the time. And so with that being said, you know, like stop anchoring everything into that and anchor into your integrity as a man. If you say that you're going to work on certain things within your relationship, you're going to work on certain patterns of behaviors, work on those certain patterns and behaviors and make that part of who you are rather than part of what you're showing you to be, just so that she changes. Because here's another thing about the pattern of trust. If a woman sniffs out that you're only trying to change behavior in order to change her, she, her alarm is up. And for good reason. Because think of it this way. If you are just trying to change enough so that she shuts the fuck up, which is essentially what you're trying to do, you're trying to change enough so that she becomes more bearable to you, then that change is not going to last. That change is not going to last. Your behavioral change is not going to last. And so therefore, she is going to have her guard up. It's going to have her guard up, even if it's subconscious. Like I don't trust a man that literally I feel is just going to revert back to old habits the moment I get calm. So it almost gives her incentive to stay not calm for the longest period of time. You see, a woman often will get calm within the relationship or not feel like she has to nag, so to speak, or anything like that, when you just handle your shit consistently over time and it becomes part of who you are rather than part of what you're projecting or showing yourself to be. So that's the fix out of this. It's a really important one that you notice. So that's the main thing that I want to look at with control is is it that? And you can ask yourself, I'm not saying it is that. I don't know your situation. How the fuck could I know your situation? I have like, at this point in time, I have at least 4,000 or 3,000, 4,000 people that listen to every episode, you know, and 21,000 people that read my emails every week, but he two to 12 million that see my reels every every week on Instagram. Often people will go, oh, that's not my situation. I'm like, of course it's not your situation. You're a different human being. I don't know. So the whole point of this, I don't even reel off those numbers because isn't it absurd to think that you should need to hold, like, don't listen to this going, well, this is not 100% my situation. Listen to this and go, hmm, how does this apply to my situation? Is it a little bit? Is it a is it a lot? Is it exactly spot on? Rate yourself on that sliding scale. Could this be a a reason why you are looking at her as controlling past pattern of and and trust? Or it it could it be something else? Right, ask yourself these questions. I am not, cannot tell you your situation. Which leads us to number two. What are you making her actions mean based on your fears? So this was part what I did in the in the previous podcast about fears, but the whole point of this is to really understand that almost everything, even the word control, but the word control, if I asked you to go and get a handful of control out in the world, or if I asked you to even say, give me the meaning of control based on like five other words, okay? And I asked everyone in the world to give me the meaning of the word control based on five other words, everyone's five other words would be different. And in actual fact, imagine if we extrapolate that out into different languages, those other five words would be different. And then if you want to try and get the meaning of those other five words, right, with another five words, the list of 25 words that you have, I don't know if my maths is right there, but the list of 25 words to really like describe the word control would be so varied that you'd notice that there are just so many different meanings. So even within the layer of language, the meaning of a word is so esoteric. And we can put our own meanings on something. So I really like what I'm trying to get at here is when we use this word control is we're we're we're often being driven by what we're making it mean. Now, we need to be careful if we're making it mean or if we're being driven by a fear that goes underneath us. So last week I think I shared the the eight fears. And these eight fears were like a fear of criticism, a fear of rejection, a fear of shame, a fear of inadequacy, a fear of the loss of respect, a fear of failure, a fear of abandonment, a fear of not being enough. So if one of those, go back to the listen to the other podcast episode if you haven't already and and you want to tackle a little bit more into those, but imagine one of those is driving the show here, right? And so instead of realizing that if she does something that you think is controlling, it might actually be a fear of inadequacy of your part or a fear of shame or whatever, or a fear of not being good enough that's actually making you say that her actions are controlling. It's a dangerous thing to be led by your fears because your fears are going to try and create defenses so that you don't get hurt. And they're gonna often do that by attacking. And a great way of attacking is invalidating somebody by giving them a word like controlling, because all of a sudden you are not the problem. You don't have to work on your fear, you don't have to face your fear. All you have to do is just say she's the problem, she's controlling. That's that's why I can't change. But most of the time, the reason you can't change is because you don't want to face or confront your fears. So I ask you, does that resonate at all? If so, go and have a listen to that last episode on fear and really try and find out which fear would be you the thing. Now let's get to the last one. Another reason why I would not necessarily say it's control, right? Sometimes women can't let go because of their own ideas and wounds. And the interesting thing here is this is where you may be right. Maybe she is controlling, you know? Maybe she actually really struggles to let go of control. Really struggles. So I I even know with my wife, she had a father who who, for lack of a better word, or you know, I wouldn't say was the the best. Okay. A lot of a lot of things happened with her father. And and a lot of the dynamics that that a woman has within a relationship often comes from the father. And a lot of the dynamics that you have is often going to come from your mother, right? You, the relationship with you and your mother. But let's say my wife and her father, and and her father was like, he needed everything to be clean, but he would do it in such a mean way. And so my wife, like, she really think needs things to be clean, but it's almost like this like existential fear and dread of why it should be clean, right? Not a not a like, we we really need a nice house and let's let's make sure we do this together. It's like if you don't do this, like, like there's this tension within her. And so she gets almost a little bit mean with it, right? And so I could literally just sit there. And here's the thing, I can just sit there and go, I have a controlling wife. What a bitch. I'm not gonna change anything. Or I can look for the truth in it, decipher what is the truth in it. Okay. Actually, I think we really need, I do agree, actually, I would really like a clean house because it makes us better. It makes us clearer in the head. It actually social standings, it makes us higher, it actually also likes we can have better brain functions. And it's really fucking nice to have a clean home, right? Loads of different reasons to have a clean home. And it also disciplines you in order to not be so messy in the future. So brilliant reasons to have a clean home. In actual fact, you're always gonna lose if you start saying you shouldn't have a clean home or whatever. Have a clean home. Okay, cool, that makes sense. But the angry tone attached to it, that's her shit. That's not my shit. That's her shit, that's her wound. Now, when something is her shit, I can I can easily just say, Well, that's her shit, I'm not gonna look at it, blah, blah, blah. Or I can actually understand that I am the only person in this world, the only person in this world, as she is for me as well, that can show her a new way of handling something. Right. And if I get defensive and I start going, well, you're just a controlling, can you just stop being controlling woman? Right? I'm not on a team with her. I'm an like we're enemies. I can literally be the only person, I can literally help her through this process by showing her, hey, like I'm in here with you. We don't need to have this this the strength and the anger here. And how do we do that? We don't do it by by by telling her to stop, but doing it by showing her she's safe. Because here's the thing, like, whenever somebody has a wound, dealing with that wound is not let's put it this way, if you have anyone who's ever been wounded, let's say physically wounded, the answer is not to come up to them and say, hey, stop feeling pain. Stop feeling pain. Right? Stop feeling pain. The answer is often to to to soothe pain and to show them that they're safe within that. Like even if I imagine like a wounded dog, you know, like a wounded dog that doesn't feel safe around you, you get your hand close to it, and then in the moment you get close to try and heal the wound, like it, it will bite you. Right. You can have an option of kicking the dog, tell the dog to fuck off, don't bite me, or you can get a little bit of tougher gloves and show the dog that you are safe. Right. Now, again, I always use that analogy, and I only use that analogy because Julia and I once rescued a dog that really did that. And I had to learn to get thicker gloves in order to heal this dog until the point where the dog actually eventually felt safe enough around us to be able to spend time with us. But and then then we got it adopted after that. But and so, yeah, anyone listening, I'm never saying that your wife's like a fucking dog. So please don't take me out of context. But my point is that wounds from your wife, like, yes, they are her shit. And yes, there's truth in that. And yes, you have wounds. Like just the last bit about your fears, it's probably based on your wounds too, right? But understanding that your wife has wounds makes you realize, oh, that's why she struggles to let go of control. Now, does that mean that you need to tolerate it and blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah? It's not really about tolerating it. It's not really about getting on your hands and knees, because here comes to the end of this podcast episode. Everything, all of these things, if the past is a pattern that's repeated over and over again and and you're actually dealing with an issue of trust, if you have fears, if you have fears that are, that are stopping you and making you mean, making her actions mean that they are controlling based on your fears, or if she has wounds that that that give her tendencies of controlling, all of these are your both of your responsibility as a team. Now, teams don't work like this. I will only work if you work. No, they don't. They work when you start working on all of it, regardless. And letting go of the idea, like to show somebody that you're in a team is a is a huge amount of surrender and sacrifice. It's a huge amount of surrender and sacrifice. And people keep thinking, well, team means I put 50% in, they put 50% in. No, you both put 100% in, right? And when they don't put 100% in, you still put 100% in, right? And it's only over time that you start realizing, okay, do I have a partner that's, that's, that's putting in 100% or not? And then you get to make the decision whether you want to stay in that team or not. But from my point of view, it's not um, I will only change if you change. You should look on your shit. Like all of this is your responsibility to help the team. Because if your wife loses, you lose. If you lose, your wife loses. You two are in a team together with this. There is no winning against your partner. There's no winning. You win with your partner or you lose together. That's it. So if you have a controlling wife, and here's the last bit that I will say with this: if you've come through all of this and you realize, okay, well, no, it's not a, it's not the past action. She's just controlling. No, it's not my fears. She's just controlling. Oof, she's actually just controlling, and I don't love her for it. And I don't want to find out why. And I don't want to give her space and I don't want to care about it. And I don't want to ask her questions, and I don't want to give her grace. I don't want to do any of that. She's just controlling and she's a bitch. Then I would say, what is the shit inside you making you stay? Otherwise, it's probably one of the other three. Start working on it as a team. All right. It's another episode of shut the fuck up and listen. Please make sure you have subscribed. We're trying to get this podcast up to try and get into every household across the world so that we can help the world become better men. We have more conscious men, better husbands. That's how we're going to do it. And if you haven't signed up already, join my better husband in two minute emails. These emails are designed to help you be and like get the marriage better just within two minutes every week. And I even get couples telling me how they read these emails together and talk about their patterns because I've created a language that we can talk to couples with. I mean, I haven't created shit. I've just written emails, but understanding your problems, understanding the patterns. I deal with this shit every single day. I love working in this and I love helping your marriage become better and I love helping men become better themselves. So if you haven't signed up yet, go and do that now. Otherwise, I'll see you next time on the podcast. That's the episode. That's all I've got for you today. Just want you to remember you're not alone in this. Make sure you subscribe to stay connected, of course, and comment your win, you know, because every time a man sees other men winning, they don't feel alone anymore. And I love that. Tools are in the show notes, starting with the better husband in two minute emails. Let's build this together. I'll see you next week.