How to Recognize The Signs of a Controlling Partner

Great awareness and activism article. Thank you for saying what a lot of women out there need to hear.

Great article! Ok, as a man, now I know how Im gonna try not to be… Thanks!

This is an important article. Well done!

We often think that abuse is either physical or emotional, but it can filter into all areas: financial, recreational, etc.

Any abuse of power in a relationship needs to be looked at.
It can be hard to spot because controllers are so skilled at rationalizing their actions or getting their partner to doubt their own take on matters.

I knew of a situation where a controlling husband wouldn’t let his new wife’s grown daughter into the home. When the wife said she felt that he was trying to prevent her from seeing her daughter, the husband rationalized his extreme behavior by stating that he wasn’t stopping the wife from seeing the daughter because she could visit her whenever she wanted. The wife tried to point out that that wasn’t quite the same thing. He would take no responsibility for his actions. Eventually the wife tired of the extremes and left the controlling situation, opting for a saner life.

Hi Marcos,
I’m so glad you found the information helpful. I was involved with a controller and felt that I was running around in circles and never getting anywhere. Reason simply didn’t work.

Yes, relationship abuse can be carried out against either partner.

Hello,Controlled Wife,

I’m glad you found the article helpful. There are wonderful resources out there and I encourage you to reach out for support. It helps to have a different “mirror” to evaluate your life and your relationships. With a controlling partner, they tend to control the mirror, limiting your outside associations, so that you have a hard time seeing clearly, being solely exposed to their “reasoning.” They want to make you dependent on them so that you never leave.

Another great strategy is to adopt a life plan and decide what what you will allow to happen to you and who you will allow into your personal space. By identifying clearly what you want for your life and how you want to be treated, it’s easier to stay on target. then don’t settle for less.

Be your own best friend, looking out for yourself and knowing you are worth it.

No one has to settle for being treated unkindly, being ignored, being insulted, or being controlled.

It takes great courage to make a break but, again, you are worth it and deserve better.

I just read this article after I hung up on my soon to be husband he asked me to marry him after a month we had to get married a week later I was talking to a friend and he wanted to now what we were talking about he sat on the phone while i was talking to her silent he does make it seem like women who want to try to communicate with him again mad the biggest mistake of there life and in each comment i heard women make about him it is about him treating them bad.If I talk to him about anyone he feels like I am telling them all of our business about our relationship.And i catch him he lies and he become upset and try to cover quick.Am I right or just nervous about marriage my grandparents knew each other for two weeks and got married and he is very close with his mom but it seems everybody around him does what he wants them to do please someone read this and tell me if I am right

Hello Making a Mistake,

A controlling person will often swoop in and try to get you to marry quickly. Don’t fall for it. You will be told that you are the love of their life but this is only a ploy to get you on board. A controlling person’s behavior will soon deteriorate and you will always be made to feel guilty. You will be blamed, accused, and efforts will be made to destroy your self-confidence.

A controlling person will try to eliminate your outside interests and sabotage your friendships.

When you think about it, how can a person profess to love someone they haven’t taken time to really know? How could a rational person want to spend the rest of their life with someone they’ve just met? Quick attachment is a red flag in most cases.

A relationship that is based in reality will survive a longer courtship period.

Does a controlling partner vow to change/do whatever it takes to win you back? I recently left my spouse with my young child and he says it’s destorying our child. After talking with professionals, I’m pretty certain I was brainwashed into his way of thinking all these years. He says he’s changed but it’s so hard to believe him because for so many years he didn’t care about me or himself. I thought all marriages were like this until I finally had the courage to leave mine. I would love to be a family again but I fear that he will fall back into the same pattern of verbal abuse/language once I’m back home.

This article has terrified me. It has made me realize my husband is a controller. What scares me is the fact that I have to leave and I have no-where to go. All of my support networks are cut and community support centres are full so I have the choice to either live on the street with my children or stay with my husband. Both choices are completely unsuitable. His control is exactly as in the article, but worse, i’m not even allowed to tell anyone that we are married. He wants others to think we are only living together. I don’t understand. What is his problem. Why does he feel the need to control? Is it a mental imbalance that causes men like him to be so unbearably controlling?

My situation with my gf is very similar to the article. Friends, even family sometimes are on the list of things I cant do anymore. I get yelled at all the time and I end up just flipping out and screaming back, falling into her trap because now she can claim I am the one with a temper problem. I get accused constantly about being with other women (not true), looking for other women (not true) and it has evolved to the point that I dont talk about married female coworkers because she will just lose it. I am at a loss because I do love her. Its hard to do this.

My daughter has been married for 5 years to a controlling man .I thought by now she would’ve seen what he was but no not yet. We have tried everything with them but she always takes up for everything he says and does. She has not seen her most of her family in about 6 years but we were trying to see her a couple times a year. He uses a lot of things we did wrong when she was a child but we’ve apologized for all those things .She was here for Thanksgiving 2006 for 3 hours and then they had to leave. We saw her last September on her birthday. We asked if we could come and visit her at Christmas and she said they didn’t have time. Two weeks ago I had heart surgery and my husband told and asked her to come. She didn’t call so he called her 2 days before my surgery and she said no that he couldn’t come due to his work. My husband finally told her what he thought about the situation. The day she wrote us a 5 page e-mail stating how her childhood has been ruined and his family is like a real family. He always says no one likes him. She is not the child we raised. It looks like he wrote the letter and she filled in all the blanks. He is studying to become a Christian counselor. We have decided to completely pull back from her. We’ve tried everything else. We’ve talked to many counselors and they said , yes they have a very unhealthy relationship. I feel she knows what she did was wrong but she is trapped. We hope and pray that maybe one day she will see it. We know he is pulling all the strings but she has to see it for herself. We pray for her everyday that God will pull the blinders off her eyes. I know that he will in his time.

Hi Amy,
How sad that your daughter is ensnared. It sounds as though he is controlling “the mirror” so that your daughter is confused and sees only what he wants her to see. This is all part of the control.

About the only thing you can do is keep telling her you love her and that you will be there for her, if she ever decides she needs to make a break.

He will intercept letters, listen in on phone calls, and do everything possible to keep her under his thumb. It’s too bad you couldn’t somehow speak to her when he isn’t around to control matters.

Hi Hani,
Yes, living with a controller can be very difficult because personal freedom is so curtailed.

I am 22 yrs old i have been married for 3 years, i feel as if there is no hope left i have two kids but my husband is very mean he call me 10 times in a half hour all day if i leave i have to ask him permission i have to tell him where i am going who i will be with and exactly how long i will be there if im late he will yell at me and make me feel like i am P.O.S my husband wont let me work. at one point in time i applied for a job where he work but he said he dont want me there because his ex works with him. i try hard but to him i always am a failure. he continuously tells me i am a fat cow and i cant do any better than him and i have gotten to the point that i believe him i need help

Hi Athlyn, I was in a relationship where I was told I was being controlling and after reading many of the signs or symptoms can’t deny that I am to a degree. I couldn’t recognize it in myself but I do (I think) recognize it in my ex-girlfriend. We were basically doing the exact same thing to one another and she would call me controlling. One of the biggest problems I have or had is vagueness in an answer. I was told that I upset her and was told how I did this. Which, I believe is good. However, when I tried to correct what I had done to upset my ex-girlfriend, I was always wrong. How could I be wrong every time? It seems like her meaning was always changing and I was left feeling miserable because I couldn’t find a way of fixing what I had done wrong. I was told that she wanted me to see my older children and that she would never stand in the way of my going out with them but, again, if we had an argument something that would always pop up was that she was always placed second. Now I’m left feeling guilty because she is making me choose her over my children. I was physically hit all the time, yelled at nonstop, told how I was to blame for all our arguments. Even when I tried to make up and apoligize it had to be immediate. She didn’t allow me time to think of what I had (or had not done). It was constantly, you’ve done this, this, and this wrong you need to apologize. I would try to see it her way and apologize and she would say my apology wasn’t accepted because she had to tell me I needed to apologize. What is the point of telling someone they need to apologize, on their terms, then not accept the apology? I feel as if I was being provoked into a negative action. To me, it seemed like her feelings towards me were so small it seemed phony. The words and actions were never consistant with one another. My ex-girlfriend told me she loved me more than anybody she had ever loved before. If it was love why did it seem so shallow, as if there was an emotional disconnection? There is much more to this that I will share with my counselor. I also want to be free of my controlling nature. Much of which is caused by fear and feelings of insignificance. How do I stop my controlling behavior? I feel like I was her prey actually. I was still emotionally unstable and she swooped in for the kill. Prior to meeting her I had been married for 22 1/2 years.
Thank you for your time.

Mark

I’m a stay at home mom to two little boys (3 & 1). The house is never clean enough, when he comes home he’ll look around and shake his head. He says watching kids isn’t that hard, yet when I get a chance to go out (ex: a friend’s scentsy, pampered chef part, etc) he will call repeatedly, and ball me out if I didn’t pick up quick enough. And if it goes on longer than I said it would, and don’t call, I’m reemed. If I share any of this to my friends or sister he says I’m talking about our private info. To make matters worse, we did go to a counselor, he did most of the talking, when I piped in the guy asked my husband if I always talk over him…we never went back since it wasn’t covered (like I thought it was) under our insurance. I feel so trapped… Thank God, I’m going back to school in a few weeks.

Hi,
I just left a controlling relationship that I was in for nearly two years. He has most of the signs listed above. As the relationship progressed, he made me feel like a POS. Was told that I couldnt finish school without him. I was his soul mate, his bff and turn around and call me names (bad names) and apologize and buy lots of gifts and make love to me over and over. For every gift or trip he gave me there was a guaranteed accusation or putdown. He enjoyed throwing me out of his house with my daughters, threaten to have me arrested to finally not let me take anything because he wanted me to come back to him and not let me leave.(according to him).
Ultimately, I came back to his house for Christmas and planned to end the relationship without his knowledge. The first day he went back to work and I was off, I packed all my stuff and walked out of his life! This is my second bad relationship…I’m thru with men!
Now I know why has 2 exwives and a long list of ex girlfriends…

It is so true that a man can be controlled too by others, including his parents and his fiancee. I met my fiancee about 18 months ago and we were dating.

Things were seemingly okay, until a few things happened.

After being with her for 2 months, she showed a medium grade temper and later a full-fledged temper.

1. We went together to a club where I met an acquaintence, herbrother and her friends. After introducing my then serious girlfriend to everyone, I commented to her in a humourous way “don’t you think that that girl (a friend of the acquaintence) over there is kinda cute?” I had zero intentions of meeting or talking to that girl. My GF got angry and stormed off to pay a part of my bar tab (we drank together) and left the club in 18F weather.

2. I went with her to her office party (a big anti-virus company and wore a reasonable outfit. I wore black dress pants and a white patterned formal half button up (Tommy H) shirt which was designed to be worn untucked. Firstly, she criticized my shirt and said it was an not good enough.

Later on in the evening I took a little bit of each dessert in my plate and made a small talk subtle comment to those sitting at our table (her colleagues and their spouses) about how the plate full of dessert would cost $25 at a cafe. My then GF grilled me when we left the party.

Thing is when she gets angry, I almost automatically apologize for fear of losing her or seeing her upset.

3. She met my family 3 months after, first met my mom twice, then met both on the 3rd meeting. on the 2nd meeting, it was her dad’s 3rd anniversary of his passing. My mom was shooting off about all kinds of things and not having met her dad who was a high ranking official in a foreign services office, my mom was not understanding and kept saying “oh he’s a clerk, he’s a clerk”. So that came across as a put down/hurtful to my GF. Thing is, every job or career is respectable in its own way to me, so may not be offended as much as my GF was.

4. We got formally engaged 2 months later.

5. Anyways, I know have a fiancee who doesn’t want to get married, even though we love each other she doesn’t want me to have my mom be involved if my fiancee and I have kids b/c my fiancee thinks my mom is evil and might tell the kids bad things about her and that she’s afraid should that even happen that the kids will hate her.

6. 5 months later, exactly a month before the wedding, my fiancee’s mom, my fiancee, my dad, my mom, my slightly younger brother and my paternal grandfather (90 something) were over at my parents’ house.

I let my grandfather mediate/understand calmly and collectively the remaining tasks for the upcoming wedding. My fiancee’s mom was saying things, including blaming my mom to an extent, about suggesting a rescheduling of the wedding a few months ahead. (The reason being that our really close relatives in the US were going to potentially lose their jobs if they came for even 3 days). Then, my mom felt threatened because she felt misinformation was being given, my mom stood up and closely confronted her mom went hysterical (Without using any curse/cuss words) and at a high decibel and enthusiasm/energy that she (my mom) was being blamed unfairly. What could be the problem was that several things got procrastinated especially on my fiancee’s side such as the brother telling us a list of things that were needed to be done and things he was quietly and unknowling arranging, as well as needing to pay further deposits for the hall as per the contract. On our side, we gave verbal invitations 2 months before the wedding and just needed to print formal cards and alter my suit/outfit. Well my mom’s energy towards her mom was honestly very scary and uninterruptable/unstoppable to an extent. My brother and I both had to remove her. We felt overpowered, so we said to my fiancee/her mom without putting much thought into our words, “Can you please leave”, we did not say “get out” or “never come back”. So then everyone except my mom and younger brother gathered outside in the front porch and still were talking in a relatively civilized, though shocked manner.

Well that was around the 9th of the month, about 6 months ago.
I immediately left my house and talked to my fiancee after she left and drove to her area, about 40 mins drive. After meeting her for a few hours late at night, she said I should run away from home and stay in a hotel for the night (she wasn’t sure if she should invite me up to the condo where she was staying with her mom and brother b/c unlike in the past, she wasn’t sure how they would feel. As for the hotel, I did not stay at one, I went home where my parents live (at about 2am) and stayed there.

My fiancee was pissed and said “you basically approve of their behaviour b/c you stayed at their house last night”.

After that day, her mom (at least) indirectly basically called off the wedding for the short term.

Anyways, now about 6 months later, she everyday mentions complains and blame towards my mom and my parents and says they are bad people, even if I agree, she still does this every single day and uses every possible swear word or degrading statement including slut, whore, gutter people, F***, sh*t, etc. She does this even when a day comes by and I can’t meet her. She is mad b/c she is overly sensitive to what other people think of her and is angry she thinks she is a laughing stock to her relatives and family friends. I told her “it only matters what people think of you if you are doing something to hurt other people or are committing an illegal or immoral act”. She is a bit insecure about herself, her weight and if she’s still desireable, but also sometimes confident at least when it comes to work.

She stills loves me and enjoys my companionship and hugging/massing her head/neck and other intimacies. Though she says she doesn’t want to get married to me as long as my parents are alive or that I would like for my parents to be grandparents to be actively involved in a positive way should her and I have kids together.

I’m not sure if this is a controlling relationship, but she sticks strongly by what she says, very tough to convince. I love her to death and will miss her if I have to part with her. At the same time she feels the same way.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

It is so true that a man can be controlled too by others, including his parents and his fiancee. I met my fiancee about 18 months ago and we were dating.

Things were seemingly okay, until a few things happened.

After being with her for 2 months, she showed a medium grade temper and later a full-fledged temper.

1. We went together to a club where I met an acquaintence, herbrother and her friends. After introducing my then serious girlfriend to everyone, I commented to her in a humourous way \\\\\\\”don\\\\\\\’t you think that that girl (a friend of the acquaintence) over there is kinda cute?\\\\\\\” I had zero intentions of meeting or talking to that girl. My GF got angry and stormed off to pay a part of my bar tab (we drank together) and left the club in 18F weather.

2. I went with her to her office party (a big anti-virus company and wore a reasonable outfit. I wore black dress pants and a white patterned formal half button up (Tommy H) shirt which was designed to be worn untucked. Firstly, she criticized my shirt and said it was an not good enough.

Later on in the evening I took a little bit of each dessert in my plate and made a small talk subtle comment to those sitting at our table (her colleagues and their spouses) about how the plate full of dessert would cost $25 at a cafe. My then GF grilled me when we left the party.

Thing is when she gets angry, I almost automatically apologize for fear of losing her or seeing her upset.

3. She met my family 3 months after, first met my mom twice, then met both on the 3rd meeting. on the 2nd meeting, it was her dad\\\\\\\’s 3rd anniversary of his passing. My mom was shooting off about all kinds of things and not having met her dad who was a high ranking official in a foreign services office, my mom was not understanding and kept saying \\\\\\\”oh he\\\\\\\’s a clerk, he\\\\\\\’s a clerk\\\\\\\”. So that came across as a put down/hurtful to my GF. Thing is, every job or career is respectable in its own way to me, so may not be offended as much as my GF was.

4. We got formally engaged 2 months later.

5. Anyways, I know have a fiancee who doesn\\\\\\\’t want to get married, even though we love each other she doesn\\\\\\\’t want me to have my mom be involved if my fiancee and I have kids b/c my fiancee thinks my mom is evil and might tell the kids bad things about her and that she\\\\\\\’s afraid should that even happen that the kids will hate her.

6. 5 months later, exactly a month before the wedding, my fiancee\\\\\\\’s mom, my fiancee, my dad, my mom, my slightly younger brother and my paternal grandfather (90 something) were over at my parents\\\\\\\’ house.

I let my grandfather mediate/understand calmly and collectively the remaining tasks for the upcoming wedding. My fiancee\\\\\\\’s mom was saying things, including blaming my mom to an extent, about suggesting a rescheduling of the wedding a few months ahead. (The reason being that our really close relatives in the US were going to potentially lose their jobs if they came for even 3 days). Then, my mom felt threatened because she felt misinformation was being given, my mom stood up and closely confronted her mom went hysterical (Without using any curse/cuss words) and at a high decibel and enthusiasm/energy that she (my mom) was being blamed unfairly. What could be the problem was that several things got procrastinated especially on my fiancee\\\\\\\’s side such as the brother telling us a list of things that were needed to be done and things he was quietly and unknowling arranging, as well as needing to pay further deposits for the hall as per the contract. On our side, we gave verbal invitations 2 months before the wedding and just needed to print formal cards and alter my suit/outfit. Well my mom\\\\\\\’s energy towards her mom was honestly very scary and uninterruptable/unstoppable to an extent. My brother and I both had to remove her. We felt overpowered, so we said to my fiancee/her mom without putting much thought into our words, \\\\\\\”Can you please leave\\\\\\\”, we did not say \\\\\\\”get out\\\\\\\” or \\\\\\\”never come back\\\\\\\”. So then everyone except my mom and younger brother gathered outside in the front porch and still were talking in a relatively civilized, though shocked manner.

Well that was around the 9th of the month, about 6 months ago.
I immediately left my house and talked to my fiancee after she left and drove to her area, about 40 mins drive. After meeting her for a few hours late at night, she said I should run away from home and stay in a hotel for the night (she wasn\\\\\\\’t sure if she should invite me up to the condo where she was staying with her mom and brother b/c unlike in the past, she wasn\\\\\\\’t sure how they would feel. As for the hotel, I did not stay at one, I went home where my parents live (at about 2am) and stayed there.

My fiancee was pissed and said \\\\\\\”you basically approve of their behaviour b/c you stayed at their house last night\\\\\\\”.

After that day, her mom (at least) indirectly basically called off the wedding for the short term.

Anyways, now about 6 months later, she everyday mentions complains and blame towards my mom and my parents and says they are bad people, even if I agree, she still does this every single day and uses every possible swear word or degrading statement including slut, whore, gutter people, F***, sh*t, etc. She does this even when a day comes by and I can\\\\\\\’t meet her. She is mad b/c she is overly sensitive to what other people think of her and is angry she thinks she is a laughing stock to her relatives and family friends. I told her \\\\\\\”it only matters what people think of you if you are doing something to hurt other people or are committing an illegal or immoral act\\\\\\\”. She is a bit insecure about herself, her weight and if she\\\\\\\’s still desireable, but also sometimes confident at least when it comes to work.

She stills loves me and enjoys my companionship and hugging/massing her head/neck and other intimacies. Though she says she doesn\\\\\\\’t want to get married to me as long as my parents are alive or that I would like for my parents to be grandparents to be actively involved in a positive way should her and I have kids together.

I\\\’m not sure if this is a controlling relationship, but she sticks strongly by what she says, very tough to convince. I love her to death and will miss her if I have to part with her. At the same time she feels the same way.

We meet each still almost everyday if not, at least 5days a week and her mom and her brother are still relatively cool with me when I visit at their house or business unit.

About me: I\\\’m a nice guy, very caring, friendly,decent looking, unbiased, respectful and persistent. I feel that she is the one, but too much confusion exists.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

This is a good site, thanks for some insight. I have a daughter in law who, since coming on the scene has managed to manipulate my son to the extent that now 6 years into their relationship he has no contact with any women who loved him prior to her coming into his life, except for his 8 year old daughter.

He left his wife and family for her. I felt he should have fought to keep his family together, his wife of the day wanted to go to marriage counselling but after one session he refused to go again. I imagine the current wife had some input into that decision.

In the beginning she filled all the gaps in his life, she made out she wanted all the things he wanted. One example was she claimed she always wanted to own the same sort of car he was driving, yet she was old enough to have a driving licence but did not know how to drive. Alarm bells began to ring in my head.

Next thing I know everything is my fault, and things I did when he was growing up, little errors any parent makes like a slip of a word or a misjudgement along the way, turns out to be a major issue all of a sudden and the reason for his problems.

After all these years of keeping them at arms length because dealing with them is like walking on eggshells constantly, he finally tells me not to contact them ever again. The drama was created after she obviously must have alerted him to an innocent comment on my facebook page about taking my grandkids (his kids) camping, He has told me he doesn’t bother with facebook, yet he posts a reply, I am email alerted to this yet what shows up on my page ( which is nasty) has been altered from the email notice ( which is nicer).

I have to contact him via his work email or phone him on his mobile while he is at work or I don’t get to deal with him. She is always there if I phone home and feeds him what to say. I did send him private emails to his work over this and said there was no problem ( as he wanted the kids the same time as camping). But still he posts on facebook. Or rather I believe she posts on his behalf.

Is there a terminology for this sort of woman’s problem?, that she is so insecure in her self and her relationship that she has to select who can be in her husbands life. Of course there is more in the history of this relationship than I can mention here, but the long and the sort of it is that he is under her control and can’t see it. He worried at one time that all his friends had deserted him following taking up with her.

He verbally abused me and my dying husband who had been his father since he was 9 and blamed us for most of his problems. We tried to hang in there hoping he would see what she was doing and get over her. But I am over it, I respect myself more than that to allow her to control my life. It is sad as we once had a great mother son relationship, He had wonderful fun with his sisters who are also ostracized.

I guess now he only has her in his life and she should be happy, but somehow I doubt this will be the end.

I have a friend who has been married for almost 20 years. Her husband quit his job shortly after they were married and they bought a house out in the country. He says he works from home but his work and income are minimal. She has supported him all these years, struggling to make ends meet. He controls the money, he always has money to do the things he wants to do, a lot of get rich quick schemes, but she has to budget. She is allowed a certain amount of money each week for groceries and gas, and because of living in the country she drives almost an hour on the highway to get to work,another hour home. Her allowance hasn’t gone up in several years but the price of everything has. She called me one night on her way home hoping she could make it there, they have a 5 gallon gas can at home she was hoping she could use to fill up with until she got her next weeks allowance, and if she ran out of gas she wanted to know if I could bring her some so she wouldn’t have to tell him. He allows her to see friends, we go on weekend trips together, I often make sure I take extra money just so she can be sure she won’t run out. Her family dislike him intensely, but she is allowed to see them. He monitors her e-mail and mail, she isn’t allowed to use the computer unless he monitors her activities, telling her that when she gets her own computer, she will be allowed to do what she wants to with it. I say she is allowed to see friends, but the last time I had a chance to go out to where she works to eat lunch with her, he knew I was coming and he called and talked to her almost the whole lunch period. He frequently calls on the weekends we are together (we go to concerts) and if she doesn’t call him, he calls and yells at her. He has a foul temper and frequently takes it out on her (he needs an outlet and I’m the only one he can yell at). When he calls and yells at her, for example, we were out spending the day together and his truck broke down. He called her and blamed her for it, saying if she had just stayed home, it wouldn’t have happened. Wanting her to come home and get him and tow his truck home. She drives a little car and he drives a full sized truck, there’s no way that car could tow him home and he knew it. I could hear him over the phone, not just the voice, but the words, I was appalled and I told her so. If my husband talked to me that way, I would have done more than apologize to him for leaving. Once on a trip, he decided we should take an extra day to come home, these plans had been made for weeks, he decides this the week before we were leaving, knowing full well I couldn’t take off work with such short notice. She cried when I told her that I couldn’t take off the extra day, saying “What am I going to tell him? You two are putting me in the middle.” We went as planned, because special plans had been put in place by the people we were going with for me to go at all, and she would have looked bad if we changed things and I couldn’t go.

She says he treats her better than anyone ever has. I say that is true, and it’s a sad commentary on her life more than a compliment to him. He sister says the same thing. But nobody thinks he is controlling, except me. What do you think?

I have been in a relationship with the same woman for the last 15 years. She has 2 boys from a previous marriage who are now 22 years old and 16 years old. The 22 year old is currently living with his father.

The relationship has not been an easy one and has had it\’s moments. I realize now that there has been a lot of Head-Game Playing with me. She is constantly blaming me for her predicaments that she has incurred in her past life with me. Where do I begin?

All the problems start when I tried to discipline the kids for things they should not have done or when they were not doing their homework. She would literally say in front of them that it is just School and it is not that important. Her oldest son works in a Retail Store for $10.00/hr and up here in Canada that is not even enough to pay for rent.

In the past when one of the houses we were in was under her name only, she threw me out onto the street 3 seperate times and I can only assume that she came and took me back when she was running out of money. She kept saying that my family never did anything for me and that she is the only one that saved me. (Although she did get me into the Post Office, I am very appreciative for that, but it is my constant hard work and doing Overtime that is bringing the money in).

We now have this house under both our names and just last week while she was visiting her mother, her son wanted to have some friends come over (1 male and 2 females and watch TV in the spare bedroom upstairs)…I told him, \”No\” especially after they were leaving her house (a block away) to come to my house. After she found out, she \”freaked\” and although she knows she can\’t kick me out of the house, she says I am not allowed to sleep in the same bed with her and I am currently sleeping on the Sofa downstairs (Which by the way is warmer and more comfortable). The house is now up for sale because we cannot simply afford to keep this house and she is now threatening to \”move\” on with her life because I ruined her life by \”forcing\” her to sell the previous house under her name only and I made her lose $75,000.00…where she came up with this number, I don\’t know. It was her older son that kept bugging her at that time he wanted to move to Woodbridge (Where he lives now with his father) and when she asked me at that time what to do, I told that it was her house and she should make up her own mind about it, but she still tells me it was my fault.

When she was a child, her father was a Schizophrenic and there is suspicion of molestation in the family. All the girls were running wild and there wasn\’t any discipline or boundaries for the girls as they were growing up. I have finally spoke with my mom today after 2 years and told my gf this and she asked if I am going to see her and I told her eventually and she got all riled up with her saying that I am just a manipulator and, \”If I was your mother, after not talking to me for 7 years (btw, it was 2) I would disown you\”. Remember from a couple of paragraphs up that she said my family never did anything for me.

This is a woman who use to constantly talk about smoking Marijuana in front of her children and use to go out all hours on weekends while I was home taking care of \”her\” children and she use to compliment her sister at all the money she was making as a Stripper.

I have given up on this relationship and there is no point in trying to speak with her because it would be easier to move a Wall than it is to move her. Any extra advise you can give me?