How do You Know if Your Partner is a Control Freak?
Do you feel that your partner is controlling every aspect of your life, including whom you should meet or not meet, where you should go, and how you should do things? If yes, your partner is a control freak. According to psychologists, the clinical term for this condition is Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD). People with this kind of a disorder always think that they know better than the other person. Therefore, even when they are doing something wrong, they feel they are right because it is very hard for a control freak to accept that he or she can also be wrong.
Therefore, if your partner is constantly finding faults with your friends and family and telling you whom you should meet and when it is ok for you to meet them, your partner is trying to control you and your behaviour. It is also very likely for a control freak to constantly criticise you. Control freaks are also very insecure and, therefore, are very likely to feel that their partners are cheating on them. Consequently, they keep falsely blaming their partners for having an affair. In marriages wherein one of the persons is a control freak, the other person cannot even voice out his or her opinion because the control freak in the marriage is likely to lose his or her temper or get very upset.
Are You Sacrificing Your Personal Freedom?
If your partner is a control freak, you are likely to feel tormented in your marriage. The sad part is that your control freak husband or wife will hardly ever suffer because of his or her own behaviour. This happens because a control freak never thinks that there is anything wrong with his or her behaviour. However, living with a control freak can be very difficult.
There are times when control freaks are so excessively critical of their partners that the partner may start experiencing self-esteem issues. In addition, since a control freak always finds faults with his or her partner, the partner is likely to lose self-confidence as well.
Are you making all the sacrifices in your marriage because of your control freak partner? You may think that you are making all the sacrifices but your control freak partner may not even realise it, leave alone appreciate your sacrifices. Therefore, your efforts to please your control freak partner are likely to go down the drain.
In fact, your control freak partner may think that he or she is actually doing you some sort of a favour by trying to rectify your inadequate behaviour. You cannot continue to sacrifice your freedom and happiness for such kind of a person. It is imperative that you take steps to get your freedom back, even if it means divorcing your partner.
Is Divorce the Solution?
Many people, after living for years together with a control freak, think that they cannot tolerate the controlling behaviour anymore. Since they reach a peak of their frustration levels, divorce seems like the only option. In such cases, people are not willing to reconcile with their partners because the relationship seems to have reached a dead end.
After years of tolerating condescending and controlling behaviour, victims of a controlling marriage feel no love or affection towards their controlling partner. Therefore, the very essence of marriage seems so diluted that divorce seems inevitable. However, some experts say that if the person displaying controlling behavioural patterns seeks professional help in a timely manner, marriage can be salvaged.
For the marriage to work, the controlling partner needs to acknowledge that there is a problem with his or her behaviour in order to make the professional therapy work. This is probably one of the most challenging parts because it is very hard for a control freak to actually acknowledge any erroneous behaviour from their end.
The controlling partner really should want the marriage to work in order to take the therapy seriously. Therefore, the control freak has to be patient, cooperative and collaborative during the therapy sessions. If your partner shows signs of improvement and willingness to work on his or her behavioural patterns, it would be worth to give your marriage another chance. However, if that is not the case, you should definitely opt out of a marriage wherein your partner does not respect your feelings, thoughts, or actions.
Most entrepreneurs are control freaks. And that holds for small business leaders and managers inside businesses alike. You've spent a lifetime, since your school days in fact, being rewarded for taking personal responsibility for getting your assignments done. On your own. No one ever said, "Great job handing that assignment off!" when you were in school. And you spent 12 or more years being rewarded for doing it all yourself.
Let me ask you this: Would you do just about anything to keep your hand 'in' your business, rather than hand the work off to others? Just like my client, Susan, you may be sabotaging your own success.
One of the reasons businesses languish, and even fail, is that the business owner or leader is doing everything themselves. Whether we stepped up in responsibility over time spent in our profession or started our own business as an entrepreneur, we often think the business success requires keeping our own personal grip on the reins of all the activity. I say "we" because I know it myself - I've struggled to decide what I was willing to hand over to others. And Susan is facing that challenge right now.
The thing is, as any business grows, the sheer volume and variety of things to be done outpaces what you (or I) can actually accomplish on our own. If you try to run it all, you'll likely run the business itself into the ground. Why? Because, you'll take your eyes and mind off of the High Payoff activities that should have your time and attention.
If you want to make more money, have more fun and have time off too, you must get things off of YOUR to do list and get your attention where it belongs.
Here's what I mean. My client, Susan, is growing her marketing business. She has to hire junior level folks and train them in the services her firm provides. That takes time. And it may take weeks or months for each new hire to demonstrate they can handle all the types of work that needs to be delivered to their particular clients.
Along the way Susan runs into the same challenge over and over - to incrementally hand over the client relationship and all the work to the more 'junior' person who is becoming experienced in handling the client. Susan's bump in the road is that she forgets to step back to a leader's role of empowering her staff. So Susan's company is even more dependent upon her for all new work. Not only is she diverted from going after new clients, she's standing in the way of her staff emerging as business developers. They aren't having a chance to build the client relationships that will let them look for and propose additional work with their existing clients.
Her higher value to her business, and her clients, is in being available to solve complex and strategic issues they run into. When she makes that shift, she'll be able to keep her own attention on marketing and bringing in more business.
You have choices for how to handle it in your role as a business leader. You can hire people and train them and hand work over to them. Or you can outsource it to specialists with proven track records at handling the very stuff you're ready to delegate. Different decisions, useful at different points in a business's growth. But each option poses the exact same challenge:
What, exactly, is the stuff that you should hand off? The first way to identify it is that it's: Stuff you're not an expert in Stuff you've never done before Stuff that will fill your calendar and not move your business forward
When you get those items off your to do list, you recover your attention and you can refocus it on the critical items that demand your involvement.
In my own world, I'm outsourcing parts of my own business activity. I'm gradually handing things off to my fabulous assistant. And in time, as the business grows, I'll be handing off more.
In my work with Susan and her team this week, one of her staff commented that he found himself wondering what he could do with his time for the last hour every day. He wanted more work. I had everyone, including Susan, identify 5 hours of specific work they would take off their To Do list and hand off to a more junior person. In this way each person will take on new responsibilities and each will also step up into more High Payoff action!
Both James Walsh & Linda Feinholz are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
James Walsh has sinced written about articles on various topics from Small Business, Binding Machines and Divorce and Infidelity. James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. If you want to find out more about a solicitor managed divorce see. James Walsh's top article generates over 368000 views. Bookmark James Walsh to your Favourites.
Linda Feinholz has sinced written about articles on various topics from Education Toys, Small Business and Your Online Business. Management expert, consultant, and coach Linda Feinholz is "Your High payoff Catalyst." Linda publishes the free weekly newsletter The Spark! to subscribers w. Linda Feinholz's top article generates over 14800 views. Bookmark Linda Feinholz to your Favourites.