Trying to Control Other People

If you're someone who tries to control other people there are two main things you'll gain by stopping.

The first is that you'll be someone who knows how to have healthy relationships.

The second is you'll be an emotionally healthier person, yourself.

There is a third possible benefit to not trying to control someone else; and although there are no guarantees, that benefit may be that the other person will love you more than he would if he you continued trying to control him. While there aren't any guarantees that someone will love you more if you stop trying to control him, there's a really good chance (close to, if not, a guarantee) that if you keep trying to control someone else he will not be able to love you at all. Why? Because it's a natural thing for hearts and minds to long to be free to live and love to the fullest, and attempting to rob someone else of a free heart or mind is attempting to rob him of what, in so many ways, is the very essence of the human soul and spirit.

There are, of course, a number of different kinds of love people can have for other people. It has been said that, regardless of the type of love there are two essential ingredients for love to be of the healthiest kind - admiration and respect.

If we truly admire someone we have no wish to change or control him. If we truly respect someone as an individual human being (just like we are), with his own need to be valued and respected as an individual with his own heart and mind, we have no wish to impose control over that person. If we truly love someone in the healthiest way we have no wish to try to control them. If you're someone who tries to control the people you believe you love, what you feel for them isn't a whole and healthy form of love. It's something other than love.

Some people who try to control someone else may limit their efforts to control to only those people they love (in their own way, even if not in the healthiest way). There are others who believe control is the way to manage a team of workers. Still others have personalities that make them try to control anyone and everyone with whom they have any dealings.

Some people, perhaps lacking in the kind of parental instinct that involves wanting to safeguard a child's independent spirit and emotional well-being, may believe that parenting is about having control over everything a child does. Parenting is about teaching a child right from wrong and encouraging his ability to use self-control. It's about being a leader - not a warden.

Regardless of the kind of relationship, a person who tries to exert inappropriate control over others is, at best, a person who doesn't know how to have a healthy relationship. At worst, he is abusive to his victims (even if he never harms them physically). Somewhere in-between, or somewhere involving both ends of the best/worst spectrum, this individual may have a personality disorder (for which there may be psychiatric help if the individual is willing to seek it).

With regard to someone suffering with a personality disorder, some of the benefits people who don't try to control others experience because they don't may not be viewed as "benefits" by a person suffering with a psychiatric disorder which causes his need to try to control others.

Trying to control other people is a futile effort for the person who keeps his attempts to control at least within the limits of non-physically-abusive behavior. Becoming physically abusive in an attempt to control someone else may be effective in a cruel and criminal way. Using verbal, emotional, and financial means to try to control someone else may work for awhile or in some ways; so a controlling person may not see how futile his efforts will inevitably be or the ways in which he will destroy the other person, his relationship with that other person, and - at least in some ways - himself. When all is said and done, however, the person who tries to exert inappropriate control over someone else will lose whomever it is he's trying to control.

He may not see it happening, because losing someone starts within that heart and mind that yearns to be free and has that fundamental human need to be, as well; and doesn't always show on the outside.

If you're someone who tries to control other people you may not see how they're pulling away from you (sometimes without saying a word) or how they're building up anger and resentment to the point where they can not love you (and may come to despise you). In their eyes you will become, at best, a jerk; and at worst, a monster. They won't respect you as a human being who knows how to have a healthy relationship and who respects other people. They may understand that you "don't know any better" or that you "love them in your own way", but they will also understand that you don't really love them in a true, health, and whole way.

In short, the benefit to stopping all your misguided, unhealthy, and futile attempts to control other people is to start knowing how freeing, healthy, and whole it feels to safeguard the freedom of someone else's heart, mind, and spirit - and in doing that, you may finally know what truly loving and truly being loved really means.