Is your partner too controlling?

If any of this sounds like you...
• Recognize your addiction, talk to a healthy friend or adviser and begin today to take back the control of your life and your well-being.
• Realize that you are powerless over what the other person feels, thinks or does. You didn't cause it and you can't fix it. It is none of your business. You only have the right and the responsibility to take good care of you.
• Soothe the self-doubting parts of you that are fuelling your chasing of dreams in such a self-defeating, nightmare way.
• Replace that hunger for someone else to complete you with maturity, self-respect and a self-awakening that comes through time spent with safe people.
• Hang out with a new crowd. Safe people make wise choices to ensure their well-being and expect you to do the same.
• Fill your agenda with self-affirming and community-serving activities that are all about knowing yourself better through responsible social action.

• Stay away from people who want to control you or need you to control them. That's just creepy, unless they're under five and you're their legal guardian.
• Learn to recognize earlier the signs that you are giving up your power and aren't making choices that are best for you. You are saying yes when you should be saying no.
• Clarify your perceptions when you begin to feel anxious or think the roller coaster of emotions has begun in a new relationship. Challenge the other person in a curious -- not critical -- manner, and move on if the answers aren't ones that respect your right to have a different opinion.

Begin with your safest relationships to practice your blossoming autonomy. If you have become too dependent on needing the positive regard of others or seldom get what you want for fear of disappointing them, then you may need to renegotiate your position. As an adult, where there is no risk of abuse, a stance of mutuality is the goal to seek. You owe it to yourself to have healthy, egalitarian relationships. When the choice is yours -- and it usually is -- settle for nothing less.

Visit our forums to chat about relationships with other Canadian Living readers!

Page 2 of 2