The Dutch movie De Beentjes van Sint-Hildegard—translated as The Marriage Escape—is about control. It is about a middle-aged couple where the wife is extremely controlling. This runs in the family. There is a scene early in the movie where the wife and her mother—a controlling character as well—are boiling eggs. They silently switch a pan back and forth from a large burner to a small burner because they have different ideas on what size burner is to be used for boiling eggs. The trailer of the movie shows hilarious examples of the way the wife controls the life of her husband. At one point the husband can’t stand the stifling control of his wife anymore and seeks a creative way to escape.
Control may be driven in different ways. We may lack trust in others, we feel things need to be done our way because otherwise they go wrong. As a result, we control, and when others don’t follow our suggestions or directions, our trust erodes further. A lack of trust and a drive to control can feed off each other. Releasing control and empowering others to do things their way can be most difficult for perfectionists, because for perfectionists the quality of the outcome is so important. We may harbor a mindset of fear because of past experiences, and as a result seek to control life. Our wish to control may be fueled by a feeling of living in a complicated bewildering world. This may happen for those having ADHD who feel a need for control to compensate for their chaotic mindset.
A drive to control may be driven by compulsive behavior that we impose on others. I must confess I am a case in point: I am a bit neurotic about being on time and sometimes impose my urge to be on time on others, which they don’t always appreciate. Control can be an expression of passive aggression; we may carry a grudge or resentment that we cannot resolve, hence we week control. But control may also be driven by genuine concern. The subtitle of the movie The Marriage Escape is “when there is too much love.” Control may be an expression of love. The distinction between making constructive suggestions and exercising excessive control is diffuse, which makes control a difficult issue to navigate. Hello parents of teenagers!
It helps to be aware of what the consequences might be of being overly controlling. One side-effect of control is that it takes away the agency of others. They may resent the loss of being able to make their own choices, and this may sour personal or professional relations. Control may also limit the initiative and creativity of others, which may be a lost opportunity. In organizations, control can come in the way of effective delegation because control communicates that the person to which a task is delegated cannot be trusted to carry out that task; control disempowers.
Our drive to control may be driven by a genuine desire to help others avoid mistakes. But mistakes are important for learning because they force us to internalize the lessons learned. In his book The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt makes the point that nowadays we give our children too much freedom in the virtual world and too little freedom in the outside world, with the result that children don’t get the chance to go outside and make mistakes that they learn from. (Haidt puts this into perspective by adding that we want our children to get bruises, not cuts.) His book has led to the Anxious Generation Movement.
Do you feel a tendency to control? Do you express it, or do you hold back? Does it affect your relations? Do those around you need your guidance or correction? (Some of us need correction at times, for example, after a broken hand and getting stiches for the 3rd time in 2 years my oldest son told me that we need to sit down for a conversation.) What do those around you think of the degree to which you exercise control? What if you asked them? If you tend to be controlling, do you understand what drives this? Knowing what lies behind a drive for control may help making sound decisions when to direct and when to let go. Sometimes we need to control our urge to control!