Control and Abuse is Not Normal in a Relationship

Without realizing it or understanding why, we sometimes choose a partner who treats us exactly as our parents treated us. If we are fortunate enough to have grown up in a healthy, warm environment, we will be drawn naturally to relationships that re-create that emotional climate.

But if our parents were critical, unavailable, or scolding, for example, those behaviors will become a part of our definition of love and we will seek relationships with people who treat us the same way.

When parents behave in ways that make us feel unhappy, insecure, or fearful, then tell us, “I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t love you,” we may grow up believing that we need and deserve abuse or punishment to keep us in line, to keep us lovable.

Unfortunately, this dynamic typifies many fathers’ relationships with their wives and children, and you probably come from a home where some degree of control occurred , so you may consider “being controlled” normal.

This control may have been as simple as your father yelling at you about not doing your homework or criticizing your mother for her weight. In any case, it’s important to remember that normal is not the same as healthy.

When people maintain strong, healthy boundaries, their emotional responses have boundaries, too. Healthy people can distinguish between a reason for someone’s bad behavior (”He came from an abusive home”) and an excuse for it (there is none).

They see controlling behavior as abuse and love as love. They do not link them together in their mind. By not doing so, they give themselves the permission and the power to respond to the abusive control appropriately, with anger, not free, unconditional forgiveness.