LOVE: CONTROLLING ANOTHER PERSON IN A RELATIONSHIP

When one person is trying to control another in a relationship, they usually don't admit what is going on. Instead, their motivations are made to look like love. Isn't it loving to protect your partner, look out for her interests, oversee her wants and desire. Control is the way your ego solves the problem of fear. Whenever any of us fall into controlling behavior, one of the following scenarios is at work in the unconscious:

-we are afraid someone will reject us
-we are afraid of failing
-we are afraid of being wrong
-we are afraid of being powerless

In the name of love we all resort to these unloving behavior at one time or another. We say, "I love you" to someone yet secretly keep a tabulation of their shortcoming. In the name of love one person assumes power and the other gives it away. Instead of being drawn closer, however, the couple discover that they feel increasingly distant, for the one with the power becomes guilty or domineering, while the one without the power resentment and eventually rebels.

Most of us go into relationship to find security; we want to be with someone who makes us feel safe. Two people form a better unit of defense against potential hazard and tragedies than one. But being with another person, even in equal footing, doesn't resolve fear. Spiritually the answer to fear is simple: you are already safe. From the perspective of spirit all fear is a projection from the past, and as long as these projections continue, you will keep generating fearful situations to accommodate them. Whatever you most fear-------abandonment, rejection, failure, loss, humiliation--has already occurred to you. The threats you perceive around you now, or coming at you in the future, are the long shadow being cast by the past.

The reason romantic love makes you feel so safe is not that another person is there to guard you but that love is there to guard you. As infants we fused love with the presence of a loving parent. As long as they were there watching over us, we felt both loved and protected. When we grow up we realized that parents can't always protect you...but we need to remember that love still can. Needing to control life, either yours or anyone else's is based on spiritual desperation. When control is ready to loosen its grip, a definite relaxation takes place. The facade of the demanding, critical partner who is so quick to blame begins to melt, you start to feel love once more, not as an idea but as a sensation in your heart.