You know what’s interesting about the way you phrased that? “Trust issues making me controlling.” You already put those two things together yourself. That’s actually pretty sophisticated self-awareness, and I don’t want to gloss over that.
Here’s what I see when someone comes to me with that pattern. The controlling behavior, the rules, the checking, the needing to know where things are and how they’re going—that’s not the problem. That’s the solution. It’s just a solution that creates a whole new set of problems.
Something inside you doesn’t feel safe. Maybe you’ve been let down before. Maybe the ground shifted under your feet when you needed it to be solid. So your nervous system, very logically, very rationally, starts trying to manage the environment outside you. If I can just control enough variables, I won’t get hurt again. Makes complete sense. I would do the exact same thing.
But here’s what happens to the person on the receiving end of that. They start to feel like they can’t be themselves around you. Like there’s a very tight ship they’re expected to run inside. And when someone feels like they’re not acceptable, like who they are isn’t quite good enough or free enough, they start to pull away. They’re less likely to come home on time, less likely to open up, less likely to stay close. And then, you guessed it, now you feel even less safe. So you pull the reins tighter. And they pull further away.
You see what just happened? Your fear of being abandoned is actually creating the conditions for abandonment. Not because you’re a bad person. Because the system you’re both inside is doing exactly what these systems do.
The controlling is never really about control. Underneath it, there is someone who is scared. Someone who is asking, very quietly, “Can I trust that you’ll still be here? Am I going to be left again?” That’s the real question your behavior is trying to answer. It’s just asking it in a language that pushes people away instead of drawing them close.
What would actually help is not to stop caring so much. It’s to get to that scared place inside you and start letting it be seen, rather than managed through rules and monitoring. Because your vulnerability, that scared part that doesn’t trust, that’s actually the most connecting thing about you. If your partner could see that instead of the controlling behavior that comes out of it, everything would shift.
The question I’d want to sit with you on is this: what are you most afraid will happen if you let go of the reins, even a little bit? Because the answer to that question is where the real work lives.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: How to Rebuild Trust After Lying: What Actually Works
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