You feel that your relationship is so fragile that anything can end in a meaningless discussion and you think that you should measure each of your steps for fear that the smallest detail can upset your boyfriend. It is possible that you find yourself in a relationship with a controlling man and do not know how to identify him. To know if you are trapped in a relationship in which you cannot be yourself and you feel controlled, you first have to analyze the moments that make you feel that way. It can be difficult to understand why this is happening to you, since you consider yourself a woman capable of getting ahead on your own, so here are some signs so you can identify your relationship and get away from it if necessary.
- He always wants to know where you are. Controlling men can’t stand the thought of not knowing where you are or what you’re doing. This includes not letting you go out on the weekend with your friends and pressuring you to always stay with him.
- Â Is jealous. He gets angry when you are with your friends or when you mention a man other than him. You need to put an end to it, because these attitudes do not end. It requires you to see your cell phone to know who you write to and who you call.
- Â He has a strict routine. They are generally very rigid men with their routine, they do everything and they want you to do everything following specific schedules. You are not free to move and surprise him with an unplanned dinner and this makes the relationship monotonous. Everything has to be organized, from what they eat, where they go, what they buy. All plans have to go through their review and there comes a time when you are not able to decide for yourself what is best for you and makes you happy.
- He is the one who criticizes you the most and thinks he knows everything. Controlling men need to make others feel bad in order to feel good about themselves. They do not value your successes, they criticize all your decisions and even your way of speaking or dressing. They believe that their opinion is the only thing that counts and even if they do not know about the subject, they always have something to say and do not accept comments about it.
- He is too attentive. There is a fine line between wanting to be attentive and wanting to control each one of your steps without having the freedom to choose what to do and where to move. If he calls you constantly to ‘say hello’, maybe it’s time for you to think that it’s another strategy to hide his obsession with knowing where you are at all times.
- He is obsessive. He is a fan of order and control. This is exhausting, because everything you do becomes an offense to him and he is always on the defensive looking to fight for anything he considers to be wrong.
Sometimes it is incomprehensible to understand why some women stay in relationships with men who humiliate them, abuse them mentally or physically, or simply underestimate them; because a woman has to do two jobs to pay the rent, do the grocery shopping, support a family, while her husband stays at home watching television; or simply because they remain in a relationship that they well know is not going anywhere.
It is not easy to find an answer to these questions, there may be more than one reason and here we present a list of the possibilities for which a woman stays in a relationship with a controlling man:
It’s lovely. Controlling men are great manipulators. You did not fall in love with him without reason, because he is romantic and charming, he knows how to say what you want to hear. He lets you see his vulnerable side, he shows how bad he feels after a fight, he apologizes and sends you flowers, he promises you over and over again that he’s going to stop being jealous, and he says everything he can think of to make you love him. give another chance. But the reality is that nothing changes, on the contrary, he becomes more and more intense and rude in everything he does with you.
The woman thinks she doesn’t deserve better. Your childhood was difficult because you grew up in an environment where they made you feel incompetent, ugly and useless, even your mom told you that no one was going to fall in love with you. At school, your classmates made fun of you and, when they grew up, all your friends had boyfriends, except you. It is impossible for you to get rid of this relationship that you have today, because you do not know that you deserve better and that it is not your fault that others have treated you badly. The woman knows no better. All the women you know, including your mom and your closest friends, were in abusive relationships and this makes you believe that all men are the same and that happy relationships only exist in movies and you can never be in a relationship like that, because life has shown you so far, that men who respect and love women do not exist. He manipulates you and scares you. There are controlling men who are not subtle when it comes to showing it. If you try to end the relationship, he threatens to hurt you. It is likely that he has already hurt you, hit you, locked you in your room and emotionally assaulted you; therefore, you are afraid of it and you become paralyzed, so you do nothing. You really think it’s going to change. Since your relationship started out in a good way and because he’s always charming after a fight, you get used to the idea that you know how to get the best out of him and that the smooth running of the relationship depends on you. But that’s not how things work, people change when they are convinced to do it for themselves, not because someone else believes they are going to change. You are afraid of being alone. Although being accompanied is hell. You think that loneliness is difficult and what you really want is someone to spend time with, make plans with, go to the movies, eat together, walk. If you live with him, you think that you will not be able to run a house on your own, so you settle for what you have, even though you know that it is not the most convenient for you.
One of the most common responses of women who remain in this type of relationship is that they love that man, but true love does not control, true love understands that each person is independent and capable of living without the other. True love is completely free.
