Four Ways the Need for Control Smothers the Flames of Romantic Love

Why is romantic love so difficult? Most people want a good relationship, so, what gives?

There’s a reason the French call orgasm, la petit mort, the little death. It’s a temporary death to the restraining ego. Orgasm requires letting go, and if you need to control, you can’t go there.

Let’s think symbolically about this. It’s not just about the Big O. It’s about allowing yourself to love so deeply that you transcend your individual self and connect with the other person, igniting passion and warmth. Together, the two of you are combustible. Letting go to come together allows a fire to catch.

But if you fear certain feelings that you would experience if you let go of control, that control will smother the sparks that lead to romance and sustain it.

You can’t force romantic love. You can only surrender to it.

While people who are usually controlling might allow themselves safe feelings of anger or righteous indignation, in love they encounter far more dangerous feelings such as vulnerability, uncertainty, dependence, fascination, and, of course, lust.

Call the fire department. Immediately.

Preludes to Smothering

None of us enter relationships with a slate clean of expectations. We’ve all had relationships before, whether with our parents, previous lovers, or even imaginary partners who made it look like love would be either abysmal or mind-blowing. And, as Romeo and Juliet can tell you, our families and our communities follow us into relationships, often creating trouble.

With or without us realizing it, these previous experiences often lead us to bring a need for control into relationships. That can be helpful in certain ways, especially in regard to controlling ourselves.

Self-control can be helpful to restrain ourselves from certain extra-marital activities which we won’t go into here, from lashing out about minor infractions our partner has committed, and from eating all that delicious banana bread before our partner gets to have their fair share. These are healthy examples of self-control.

But self-restraint and the need to restrain others can also smother the passion and warmth that you had hoped romance would offer.

Romance: A Culturally Loaded Idea

In addition to the personal experiences we bring into relationships, the concept of “romance” itself comes loaded with baggage about what happens in love. We’ve all learned about romantic love from mythology, literature, film and television, and we bring these cultural assumptions into our relationships as much as we bring our families. For better or worse.

For instance, the word “romance” originally referred to stories of knights rescuing ladies from physical distress and ladies rescuing knights from emotional distress, so it comes pre-packaged with prospects of relief, and burdened with potentially unhealthy expectations. Rescue fantasies bring the need for control with them.

How we manage our need to control can determine whether we create the relationship we long for. If we can bring awareness to our assumptions we’re more likely to enjoy the fire. Otherwise, our need to be in charge of ourselves or the other person will prevent the very thing we want.

How Does Control Smother Romantic Love? Let Us Count the Ways.

Here are four ways that control can smother romantic love:

1. Loss of Control: because of our own expectations we are unwilling or unable to compromise enough to give the other person what they need or want.

2. Self-Restraint: Imagining we can, and need to, control ourselves, we don’t present authentically.

3. Sculpting Fantasies: We imagine that we know better than our partner, and that we can teach them how they need to behave to make it a good relationship. We imagine that we can shape them into who we want them to be, and we end up disappointed.

4. Vicarious Gratification: We unconsciously fall in love with the other person because they are good at losing control, and we live vicariously through them.

These conflicts are universal and are described in many incarnations in classic stories—both shaping our expectations and giving us guidance. Literature, film and mythology provide us with both inspiring and cautionary tales that show us how to, and how not to, start and sustain the fire of romantic love. With attention to these we can avoid some heartache.

In the euphoria of new love we may feel that we are the heroes and heroines of romance and that we can willfully overcome any challenge that love poses for us. At other times we become identified with their tragedies and take on sabotaging roles. In either case, romantic love has a better chance of igniting and staying lit if we know what we’re in for and learn from the stories that have been handed down.

It’s inevitable that we fall into the power of these patterns, but it’s not inevitable that we continue to live them unconsciously and disastrously. Understanding the meaning inherent in these patterns can help us move toward wholeness and fulfillment, both within ourselves and within our relationships.

Let’s explore these four common pitfalls in more detail.

1.      We Don’t Compromise or Let Ourselves Take Emotional Risks

Let’s start with the most obvious problem that control causes in relationships: not letting go of what you feel you need. Entering into relationship almost always means that you’ll need to compromise, which of course is a well-mannered way of saying you’ll need to quit being so dang controlling.

You want to go skiing, but your partner wants to veg on a beach. You want to watch a documentary about human trafficking, but your partner wants to go to a death metal concert. You want to eat healthily, but your partner wants to compare every brand of ice cream ever to grace the glorious freezers of Stop and Shop.

Sometimes it’s the loss of the vacation, night out, or ice cream that’s the issue, but more often it’s the deeper feelings about loss of choice and loss of control that seem too dangerous or suffocating. If, for example, your parents were very controlling, it may feel like a boundary violation to let go of what you feel you need and give your partner what they want or need.

Romantic love also loses control to the other person in a deeper way. When we allow someone else to become profoundly important to us, we can no longer control everything in our life because they can change, leave or even die. If you have had major losses, this might be particularly difficult for you.

It’s not possible to have the bliss of romance without the risk of loss.

Even Hades, God of the Underworld, had to relinquish control and allow his bride Persephone to spend half her time in the Aboveworld, visiting her mother Demeter.

2.      We Over-Control Ourselves

We may love the other person so much that we pledge to ourselves we will do everything in our power to please them. We might imagine that with willpower and determination to be the perfect partner, our love can overcome any obstacles to a good relationship. This is usually unsustainable, for at least four very different reasons.

1. We eventually start to feel resentful about what we had been giving freely earlier in the relationship. All those years we froze our tuchuses on ski slopes when we could have been relaxing and rejuvenating on a beach.

2. This self-control can also prevent your partner from really knowing the real you. Would they still love you if they actually knew you? Better hide.

3. You might imagine that if you’re “good” enough you can sustain an unsustainable relationship with a partner with problems such as addiction, infidelity, and severe differences. That’s too much responsibility. It takes two to light this kind of fire.

4. You withhold affection. No oxygen, no fire.

The other side of this is controlling ourselves so much that we can’t allow ourselves to fall into love. Note that word “falling;” it’s the opposite of control. Think of the struggles of Dr. Spock in Star Trek, Don Draper in Mad Men, and Sheldon Cooper in Big Bang Theory. They had a hard time falling.

3.      We Try to Control and Shape the Other Person

Trying to make our partner who we think they should be is a theme in many timeless stories. Some end happily, others tragically.

The happy endings can be seductive and deceiving. An early version of this enduring story is Pygmalion, the ancient Greek tale of a sculptor who creates a statue he falls in love with. The story was retold by playwright George Bernard Shaw in 1913, and later adapted as the musical My Fair Lady. Professor Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can turn Eliza Doolittle from a common woman into a fair lady.

In all three versions of this story, we are warned of the difficulties of trying to shape someone else, but we are also assured that everything will be fine in the end.

Don’t believe everything you read.

Trying to make your partner into someone they are not will backfire, not forward fire.

Consciously we may feel that our mentoring is for their benefit, that they will be better off if they just do what we think they should do. This is a rescue fantasy: Imagining that our love will heal the other person, we may enter relationships that are unsustainable.

We have a hard time letting the other person think they are right and feel we need to correct them. Otherwise they might think we are wrong, and of course that would be a huge problem.

Sometimes, in a misguided effort to educate our partner, we withhold the affection which they need to feel happy and secure.

The story Beauty and the Beast is similar to the sculpting stories. It assures us that love can heal the spell that has been cast on our partner. This sounds romantic at first, but dark control still lurks beneath the surface.

A related mindset is FOBO (Fear of a Better Option). FOBO leads to constant comparing, scrutiny and eventually rejection of potential partners. All of which put out the fire.

4.      We Seek Loss of Control Vicariously

I’m frightened by the devil
But I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t

Joni Mitchell, “A Case of You”

Literature and mythology are filled with examples of stern characters, stereotypically males, who fall in love with women who are more spontaneous, fun-loving and emotional, hoping that they can enjoy these emotions through them, without having to give up their righteousness, rigidity, or risk-aversion. These examples, like the “sculpt your partner” cases, can either encourage us to follow suit, or warn us against it.

For those that have a tendency to control, falling in love is like falling into an entirely different realm, one where the usual restrained life is left behind. We’re overcome by feeling and it may feel like a wonderful, even supernatural, relief from the regimented life we usually live, not unlike the high we get at first from drugs and alcohol.

Which can all feel disturbingly out of control.

One short-term solution to this problem is to let the other person have those feelings, as a surrogate, while you enjoy them vicariously from the safety of the sober sidelines.

Some people seek out partners who lose control for them; they get secondhand gratification watching their partner live spontaneously whatever they don’t allow themselves to do. It’s a compromise. They stay close to freedom, but don’t have to suffer the anxiety of losing control.

Many people are driven to psychotherapy not by a conscious desire toward self-improvement, but because they don’t want to lose their partner—because that’s their only link with a less-controlled way of living.

There is a secondary payoff for being the controlling partner: they also get to be the strong, righteous one while their partner seemingly flails out of control.

This may even operate as a shadow side of what poses as romantic love: controlling the other with seduction and manipulation while you stay cool as an ice cube.

But this arrangement has a short shelf life. Such emotionally unilateral relationships usually don’t remain satisfying. They often lead to a dead end, or at least it does for anyone who wants to evolve and grow. We’ve all seen couples who stay in this kind of relationship, at a cost to both partners.

The controlling partner may tire of the escapades of the uncontrolled partner. And the more spontaneous partner may tire of being controlled. Then either one may wake up, as if from a dream, and ask, “What have I gotten myself into?”

If the restrained partner learns to let go themselves by being with a more spontaneous partner, both benefit. But too often the restrained partner feels too insecure about their goodness or lovableness to give up control. Both partners suffer.

Tending the Fire: Learning from and Celebrating the Chaos of Passion

Romantic love requires a mindset very different from the controlling one, a mindset characterized by openness, allowing, and flexibility. Valentine’s Day and anniversaries can serve as opportunities to celebrate and welcome what feels like the chaos of passion—including those deliciously dangerous feelings of being out-of-control. It’s like finally getting out of the prison of control.

When we find ourselves in a difficult relationship situation we can ask, what am I in this for? What have I been unconsciously trying to work out? Falling into romantic love, in addition to all the obvious reasons, may also be motivated by a desire to learn to lose control.

Relationships can motivate us to let go. The normal dictates of the ego, such as prudence, sensibility, and getting a good night’s sleep get to take a break. We get to feel with a depth and sweetness that we rarely experience. It’s intoxicating and frightening at the same time.

Here are four suggestions about how to nurture the flames of romantic love rather than smother them:

 1. Savor how good it can feel to make them feel good.

 2. Sit with the feelings of vulnerability that love brings, rather than put up a wall.

 3. Recall what you love about your partner as they are.

 4. Allow yourself to have the feelings you had expected your partner to carry for you.

Each of these steps is like giving oxygen to the flame. May it burn brightly for you and your partner.

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If you’re feeling controlled by your partner, but aren’t ready to give up on the relationship, check out my post about how to get along with someone who is obsessive-compulsive, and my series of posts about the roles of rescuer, victim and persecutor in relationships.

And if you haven’t yet read the Healthy Compulsive book, give it a try. It will give you a solid foundation from which to use your control in an adaptive way.