To think controlling partners don't always realise...

[Confused1012024]

Name change for this one.

Do you think that partners who are controlling do so internationally, or do they just genuinely belive that their way is the only right way of doing things and if you do it differently you are wrong/stupid?

Their withdrawal of affection isn't an intentional punishment, just a natural consequence of not doing things how they like it done.

I'm sure we all have things that annoy us that our partners do but at what point does the want to get them to do it right/ their way become controlling?

I hope that makes sense, I'm a bit confused at the moment...

There's usually a power imbalance in the relationship. The abuser is always right. Anything that goes wrong cannot possibly be their fault. A 'normal' resolution would be to discuss things, that won't happen as blame has already been apportioned. It is the other person's fault and they must be made aware of this and punished / corrected.

Withdrawal of affection and the silent treatment seems to be the method of choice in non physical abuse. It undermines the recipient to the point where they lose confidence, self esteem etc and end up fearful of doing anything that might cause displeasure (walking on eggshells).

There is a complete lack of accountability and responsibility on the abuser's part.

If any of this sounds familiar, leave. It's a horrible way to live.

My ex-h would sulk and ignore me for days. When I asked what I had done wrong (sounds mad now that I always thought it was my fault), he would just sneer and say that if I didn't know, he wasn't going to tell me. When I replied that I couldn't put it right if he didn't tell me, he would just laugh at me.

I think now he just enjoyed the power trip. When everything else was out of control because he'd fucked up royally in his business, he could always make himself feel better by doing something to me.

@BertieBotts thank you so much! That has definitely given me a lot to think about.

God, I know someone like this. Scheming, spiteful, pointlessly petty, incredibly manipulative in quite carefully thought out ways, massively insecure which is played out in controlling, territorial hubris and mind games, emotionally parasitic, Machiavellian in the level of underhand engineering of situations in her favour, sinister in all.

Yes, this reminds me of a couple in which the DH is quite controlling in what he will allow his wife to do eg doesn’t like her going out without him in the evenings. She’s accepted it - anything she wants she gets, and she seems to be happy with that.

His mum walked out when he was about 7 or 8 . She says he’s fixated on the fear that she might leave him. He particularly doesn’t like her mixing with divorced women.

Grey rocking isn't silent, for start. Instead you're trying to keep the atmosphere light, by talking pleasantly about trivial things and avoiding topics or disagreements that could blow up and lead to you being abused. It's a survival tactic usually used to reduce conflict because they can't immediately get away from the abusive person.

Silent treatment is mostly silent, any responses are short and sharp, deliberately not smoothing things over but instead making it very clear you are unhappy with the other person but are not willing to talk about it. It is used repeatedly when conflict arises and often becomes its own source of conflict that can distract from the real issue. There's no underlying plan to leave - usually it's a tactic to continue controlling the other person so you stay together but they behave in a way you want.

In this example I don't think it matters, they're both gigantic issues in a relationship.

They don't think there's any point as you won't see their point of view = they have mentally checked out of the relationship, or they don't consider your opinion worth listening to.

It's contempt basically. John Gottmann has contempt as the biggest of the "four horsemen" of relationship failure.

Generally you don't grey rock people that you want to spend time with and enjoy being with. It's a survival tactic for dealing with unreasonable people that you have to interact with.

Of course they know or they wouldn’t know that behaving in the way gets them the results they want from the other person. They wouldn’t do it otherwise.

@BertieBotts I agree an excellent post, and I feel if this is from your own personal experience then it’s exactly the same as mine.

My analogy was that I felt like the annoying junior employee that the CEO (my husband), would have liked to sack. But he couldn’t because I was one of the original employees (wife), and I did all the grunt work and admin and most of the work (house). I should have been a senior employee with the same status as him, but as I said I was an irritating junior employee with too many opinions for his liking. So he just made my life hell until I resigned (divorced).

To the original poster - Do they know? - some do, some don’t, some do it some of the time. Some do it instinctively because it works.

The real question is how do they make you feel? Do you feel belittled, dismissed, unimportant, most importantly do you think he thinks you are his equal? I read once that if you start thinking to yourself “if only I could find the right combination of words to say to him, then he’ll understand” The thing is he understands all right, he just doesn’t want to.

In all relationships there should be give and take. If he does something that upsets you, and you explain this calmly. Then he should take time to consider that even if he doesn’t feel the same way, he could adapt his behaviour because it matters to you, and because he loves you.

Matthews Fry’s blog “she divorced me because I left my glass by the kitchen sink” explains this well.

Finally ref the silent treatment. I read there are two sorts. The first is when the person is too overwhelmed, too upset or emotional and they just don’t want to speak or engage with the other person until they have calmed themselves and smoothed their emotions. This usually involves going somewhere alone.

The other sort is the punishment one. They won’t talk, but they make sure you can hears their huffs and puffs. If someone comes to the door or phones them, they sound happy and chatty. They can turn it on and off at will.

As others have said, if they can regulate their emotions with others, but not you. It’s probably abuse.

In my experience, the abuse was a combination of learned survival behaviours and genuinely believing that he was right, therefore anyone who disagreed was wrong and needed to have that pointed out to them.

Sadly, he absolutely knew that the way he was behaving was coercive and controlling, he just didn’t care enough to change. It suited him, why would he? I even confronted him about it after we split and he just shrugged and said “I don’t mean it”. He genuinely just did not care about the effect his behaviour had on others, it was always - and I mean always - about what he wanted.

They see you like you or I see a television or a car. It doesn't necessarily occur to them that its wrong because you're just an object in their eyes. At best, they don't care about hurting you. At worst, they enjoy it.

You're so far beneath them, like an ant they might squish whilst taking a walk. So whether or not they do it deliberately or just vecause you happened to be in their way, you'll get squished all the same. And they won't care.

They all lack empathy.
But they have a spectrum for malignancy.

It's like...robot orrrrrr evil robot. Which is probably why they see others similarly. Because they themselves are empty tin cans.

I have been accused of being controlling in the past because I have certain household standards
Im not talking anything unusual but things like last person to get out of bed makes it, putting dirty washing in laundry basket and cleaning toothpaste off the sink!
I decided many years ago it was better to live alone and only engage in relationships with others who could respect my standards when visiting my home
When I visit others homes I follow how they wish to live - although one ex lived in such a mess I stopped staying over as it became a health and safety hazard
my other experiences of controlling men have been where they try and tell me who my friends or family should be and how often I spend time with them
Another exDP used to try and get me to change my job and on occasions after a row would hide my car keys to try and stop me going to work

You can't really control someone unintentionally. Sulking and manipulation, withdrawl of communication are concious classic acts of control. They are willingly acting that way. I personally, if there was a disagreement, would get over it in a few minutes. If it gets a bit heated one of you leaves the room and then you both reconvene and make up ideally. I'd say men are more controlling than they'd like to admit, but they know they are doing it. If they acknowledge it they might have to think about their actions. But if you think it's unintentional then they will never ever stop doing it.

I think lots of people are very unaware of the short comings so yes I agree lots of people won’t realise.

control can be a trauma response / coping mechanism (altho an unhealthy one) so again I’m not sure people will be aware…

doesn’t make it any less damaging to the person on the receiving end tho!

I believe strongly that some (definitely not all), controlling or emotionally abusive people genuinely don't know because they have seriously disordered thinking. The dog analogy is a good one too. These people don't have sufficient empathy to understand other views, nor do they care enough to try.

Then sulking is a good example. The abuser will often claim they are not sulking, but rather "need time to process" or "I can't talk when I am upset". He/she may genuinely believe this because the sulking comes as a result of believing they were wronged in the first place. This is then compounded because they cant/won't see how manipulative the behaviour is. They also think it is TOTALLY REASONABLE that they will not stop sulking until either the other person has a) accepted responsibility for upsetting the sulked and/or b) promised to behave differently in future. Because, again, to reiterate - their disordered thinking means they genuinely believe they did nothing wrong in the first place.

To use the example of a colleague of a pp who was v controlling of her partner due to her anxiety... if he, then, goes out for drinks and is having a good time so texts to say he is coming home later, she believes that is unreasonable of him. She will be angry and hurt and may be "unable to talk to him" for days because she is upset. After all, he knows how anxious she gets, why didn't he respect that?

She simply cannot see that her behaviour is a problem. All this is exacerbated as often the controlling party thinks they are the victim.

I'm also bemused by the suggestions a woman getting frustrated about domestic chores is controlling?! I mean, sure, sometimes someone is ridiculous and has a go because they like the glasses put a certain way or whatever, but a) these women are seldom using sulking or other controlling behaviours to ensure their partner does it "right" in future and b) most of the complaints from women about this stuff is about men simply not doing it all all or doing it so badly. It's women who are picking up socks amd doing all the cleaning, while also doing all the thinking and always being the "default" parent.

People are so often acting on emotions – there may be some cases where these manipulative behaviours are used in a cold, clinical way, but I’d expect the majority are responding to emotional impulses and unconsciously learned strategies (whether modelled by abusive caregivers, poor behaviour management by parents or developed as survival strategies in emotionally unsafe environments, etc.)

I think in a lot of these cases people are subverting emotions they can’t handle.

That doesn’t make it their partner’s problem.

I wouldn't spend any time on the why of people like this. I would focus on the effect. That is what controlling people do, get themselves and their needs in first. Yours are not important.

Why is just part of emotional engagement - empathetic people naturally engage with this, but to their own detriment. While you are thinking on why, the controller has achieved what they really want - you thinking about them above everything else, including your own needs.

Thank you all so much!

There are some very interesting points and points of view on here.

What prompted my question last night is that I'm currently being given the silent treatment for not getting my child to bed until 9 last night as they get agitated being left alone. Apparently I mollycoddle them and my H was waiting for me to finish before cooking dinner - I put it down to him being hungry and feeling a bit neglected as he was sat by himself (poor lamb!)

Today I am getting the silent treatment again, this time because it took me too long to get ready to go out and we ran out of time to get everything done. (I wasn't aware we were on a tight schedule as he hadn't mentioned that before - which apparently makes me stupid for not realising)

These are not two isolated or new scenarios. It's weekly at least where I have done something 'wrong' and get criticised or given the silent treatment.

i dont want to be controlled so I've told him he can carry on behaving however he wants and it isn't going to affect me. I said I'm not entirely sure what he is trying to achieve with it but if it making him feel better then crack on!

I'm just going to carry on doing my own thing and if he decides that my lack of compliance is too great they hey ho, off he goes. I will not be a pet dog!!!

Here the thing though ip, you're potentially falling into a trap of thinking that if you 'stand up to' abuse, you are not being abused. That if you 'don't let it bother you' you are no longer a victim.

The only way to stand up to abuse is leaving the abuser.

And it's all very well saying 'he can leave me'. But why would a cat leave a mouse? Do you think if a mouse goes 'I'm just not going to act like a mouse anymore', the cat will free it?

Not going to happen.

I mean its possible he may act like he's GOING to leave you. Leave briefly even. Just to get you back under the thumb. But the truth is, they rarely leave their victims because that would mean leaving their kushy life and someone they trained up to tolerate their shit (even if they seem to be "temporarily" standing up for themselves).

All saying 'do what you like, I'll just ignore it' does, is wave a red flag at the bull
It'll make them think of new ways to upset you.

Don't set boundaries for others. Set them for yourself. If someone treats you badly, respect yourself enough to leave.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking 'I give as good as I get' or 'ill just not let it bother me'. You're still being abused irregardless.

If he kicked dog and the dog bit him, does that mean the dog is the abusive one? What if he kicked ad dog and the dog continued to stay by his side...does that mean he's not abusive? Do you think he'll stop kicking the dog? Do you think the dog will just learn to ignore it? Why should it? That's not toughening up, it's just a tragedy.

Is your child also your H's child?

I would urge you to think about the effect witnessing this kind of relationship dynamic is having on them. Ultimately, the relationship sounds extremely unhealthy.

If there are still emotional abuse/coercive control support threads on the Relationships board, I used to find those extremely helpful.

For those who asked, my long post is based partially on my own experience but also the experiences and wisdom of other MNers, learning/understanding/processing I've subsequently done about what healthy relationships look like (excellent website for this called Baggage Reclaim) and general reading about relationship abuse (e.g. Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That) as I am fascinated by what makes people act in deviant/unhealthy ways.

Honestly, twats don't know they are twats. Do you think Donald Trump (insert twat of your choice) realises what a bell end he is? Nope.

Whether or not they recognise they are controlling, their inability to reflect on their behaviour and realise how awful and damaging it is is part of their problem. If they were ever self aware enough to believe what they were doing was morally wrong, they wouldn't be half the twat they are.

It's a snake eating itself kind of situation.

But that doesn't mean their behaviour is in anyway acceptable or that they should not be held to account for it or that they deserve to have a partner stick by them.

Does it matter if he knows he's being controlling? The point is that he's a big man baby who is extraordinarily entitled and thinks that your attention and focus should be 100% on him 100% of the time.

If he's not your child's father, I'd say get rid of him asap. If he is, you probalby still need to get rid of him but it's more complicated.

Yes I do agree OP.

I am someone who is certain my way is correct, I still am and time has proven this to be true. But I’d get annoyed at DH not realising this and by default become agitated and may appear controlling. However I went to therapy when it came up and completely changed my ways. So I think it’s also important to have self awareness and be willing to develop.

OK no this is just abusive.

I think you are right to a degree, it's easy to think we all have brains that work in the same way, but we really don't. It would be nice to think we are all self aware and can compensate for the brain we have, but it's not always the way.