Control and Relationships

Even though you try to put people under some control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the best way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

This has been one of my favorite quotes since I first read it more than 30 years ago. It continues to form one of my core beliefs about healthy relationships---the more we try to control our partner in a relationship, the more unhealthy that relationship becomes. But, as the quote indicates, letting go of trying to control a partner does not mean ignoring him or her--that is the worst policy and usually leads to the demise of the relationship.

Control is about trying to force or manipulate a partner to speak or act in a certain way. It is about demanding or expecting a partner to be different than the way he or she is. It is about blaming a partner for our unhappiness. It is about criticizing a partner for being wrong, being stupid, not paying attention, etc. It is about threatening a partner with dire consequences if he or she doesn't do what we demand. It is not about love. What is more, it doesn't work. Instead it leads to an unhealthy relationship, filled with resentment and a desire to retaliate in kind.

Alanon has another phrase for what makes a relationship healthy in recovery---detaching with love. Detachment does not mean ignoring a partner. It does not mean letting go of awareness and concern about what and how a partner is feeling. It does not mean being silent when there is some dissatisfaction about the relationship. It does not mean becoming so separate that both partners are traveling down parallel tracks that never meet and never connect.

One of my early teachers said that he believed the essential feature of a healthy relationship was letting go of expectations while remaining connected. Detaching with love is another way of describing that. We give our partners a large, spacious emotional meadow where they can thrive and we watch them with affection and care. We accept them as they are, not as we think they ought to be or as we would wish them to be.

The word "watch" is tricky here. Alanon rightly emphasizes that playing detective, watching an alcoholic-addict partner's every move to see whether or not they are drinking/using or trying to head off any unwanted behavior, is not helpful to us or our partners. Alanon encourages members to place their focus on learning how to take care of themselves, since that has often gotten lost during the years of being partners with an actively using alcoholic or addict. Alanon also teaches us that focusing all our attention on our partner in an effort to fix him or her usually helps our partner avoid taking responsibility for actions and their consequences.

Sometimes watching a partner in the way I am describing leads to the conclusion that the partnership is not a healthy one and is unlikely to become healthy because of the partner's attitudes and behavior. When efforts to bring this observation to the partner's attention are continually met with denial, defensiveness, anger and blame, detaching with love in this kind of situation usually means letting go of the relationship. But this letting go is not a last-ditch attempt to control or force a partner to become what we want him/her to be---it is recognition that the time has come to detach completely from the relationship and to move on with our own life. We may continue to watch our partner, especially if there are children involved, but it will be from afar.

Step Eleven's emphasis on prayer and meditation is excellent advice for learning to watch a partner without ignoring or trying to control him/her. We learn to watch our thoughts and impulses to make our partners behave the way we think they should, and we find the space not to act on those thoughts. We learn to become more aware of the suffering our partners create for themselves and others without adding to their suffering or ours.

12-Step programs describe this process as one of letting go and letting God. Buddhism describes it as being mindful and practicing equanimity. Both of them recognize that trying to control our partner only makes matters worse.