Control Issues and Affairs

Affairs will bring out the worst in you and your spouse. It will bring out anger, jealousy, resentments, revenge,

sadness, hurt and many other unpleasant sensations. You will find yourself feeling a wide range of emotions in reaction to the affairs.

When those emotions flare up, how will you and your spouse react? For many of you, chances are one of you will resort to ‘control’ as a way of dealing with those issues.  In many cases, the tendency of attempting controlling situations will come without even thinking about it. It may even make sense to you in terms of ‘how do you deal with an out of control situation? ‘ and you answer with “use more control!”

You may have even said out loud or to yourself statements such as “Get a grip!”, “Get CONTROL of yourself!” or some other statement about regaining control when faced with affairs. Some of you may have gone the opposite direction commenting on how things are out of control, or your ship is sinking, which triggers the alarms and calls for control that way.

Initially control may work. Over time there will be more issues popping up that you can not control. Not only will you not be able to control everything, those areas you can not control will trigger large reactions from you. There will be a double-reaction, the reaction to the trigger and the reaction to realizing you are not in control after all.

That second reaction is the one that will rattle you to your core. It reminds you that you are not in control at all and brings the fear of being out of control. The fear of being out of control is often associated with the ‘unknown’. Facing that unknown often brings fears and terrors with it. You may not be sure of what you are afraid of, you just know that it is scary.

Control is also addictive. The more you have, the more you will want. There is a linkage between control and addiction. Addictions by their very nature occur when things get out of control. The typical response is attempting to use control to curtail what is out of control.

The problem is that control has an inverse relationship to love and its spontaneity. Since love and spontaneity are crucial to the health of relationships, forces that choke them out are a personal threat. Control and love do not play well with each other. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other. I often tell couples that “The opposite of love is not hate, but control”.

Let that sink in for a moment.

In the aftermath of affairs, there will be many choices in front of you. You will have to find new ways of motivating your spouse and those around you. Your choices for how to motivate them to do things will either be through ‘control mechanisms’ or ‘love’. Sure, there may be some fancy techniques and methods, but the motivation behind them will either be control or love.

Your spouse will sense what your motivation is, much like you see what their motivations are. Although you see the motivation, they may not. People often have a blind side when it comes to seeing their own motivations, especially those related to control issues. They may know what their motivation is, yet they do not want to admit to others.

The tendency to want to control things often has its origin in insecurity issues. When people do not feel safe and secure, they often resort to using control. (This is why I emphasize the need for creating an atmosphere of safety as part of affair recovery in the Affair Recovery Workshop). There is also a tendency for people to want to play ‘god’ with their lives.

This tendency to want to play ‘god’ is rampant in modern culture. With all the technology gadgets including smart phones and computers, they are used to being in ‘control’ and exercising that control. The thinking is that they can control game environments, so why not control the real world in the same way especially when an uncontrollable threat like affairs occur.

The minds of technology users are so familiar with resorting to control, they do it without thinking about. The shift to ‘control mode’ occurs automatically. They have been trained by the games and gadgets to do so, and they carry out the programming in their mind to control the environment or the threat itself.

The program to control may work in the gaming world, but it fails in real life. Spouses want to be loved, NOT controlled. When control is used, it crushes spontaneity. Control also wounds sensitivity. During a time when the two of you need greater sensitivity toward each others needs, the control behavior squashes it like a steam roller.

The first step to countering the “Control Reaction” is to slow down your brain. If you can not stop your initial reaction, at least slow it down. Think, Feel and Consider what is going on and what your response will be. The more you can slow down the automatic reactions and desire to control, the more time your brain has to actually understand the problems and solve them rather than just react to them.

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrah

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