The need for control.

There are people who try to gain control of their environment (and other people) just to gain a sense of power, and then there are people who try to control everything because they feel powerless.

I woke up this morning feeling the need to control my relationship, so I decided to make today’s post about it in hopes of dissecting this destructive urge. This is not an uncommon worry to wake up to on a daily basis. I constantly go over the facts and details in my head to make sure everything is “on track”. This is the reality. I treat relationships like a road trip. I constantly feel the need to have a mental road map and alternate routes in case something goes wrong. I have to have a strategic plan otherwise failure is guaranteed. After every failed relationship I’ve accumulated a list of “supplies” (things that would have made the relationship work out or run more smoothly). This list is the equivalent to learning what to do/not to do in future relationships that everyone mentally prepares, but for someone like me, if I don’t follow it exactly then there’s no point in continuing the relationship because it will fail. This is the extent of my relationship anxiety; this is a learned behavior I picked up in my childhood to fulfill my need to control the situation and its outcome.

I won’t go into detail about my childhood or relationship with my parents but I will touch base on is the fact that my dad and I used to argue constantly. If I spend the time reminiscing into my past, a lot of my memories include being yelled at and consequently being told not to fight or argue back. For years I dealt with being told to just agree with him so the argument would end faster. I was forcefully taught to give up my power of opinion in order to “keep the peace”.  Only now in my twenties I’m able to see how badly this has affected me and my stance in relationships. When I was “stuck” in an unhealthy relationship my sophomore year of high school I had no impulse to leave because the one thought that constantly repeated was, “it’s supposed to be like this. Love is like this.” I saw nothing wrong with the situation I was in until it started approaching its final days, but even then I didn’t feel like I had the power to leave so I had to wait until he hit his breaking point. To this day I still feel like I am a powerless human being when it comes to being in an intimate relationship. I constantly wake up going through an imaginary checklist and convincing myself that things aren’t going to work out because we haven’t gone through protocol. I constantly tell myself that this isn’t going to work out because we weren’t friends for long enough before we kissed. I constantly tell myself that I should stop seeing him for days in order to restrict communication to texting only. These impulses are not something I can just shake off; they are an ingrained part of me because past experiences have made them feel like a permanent piece of who I am.

In an online article titled Anxiety and The Need To Be In Control by Jodi Lobozzo Aman, she writes that not being in control is an illusion since we are never truly in control of our environment. That feeling of hopelessness is just a nasty lie that the anxiety is trying to convince you of so it can be in control. She made a great (and eye opening) point in her article about how we may not be able to control the situation, but we CAN control our response. Aman writes, “Your response creates your identity, your feelings, your mood. It influences how you see yourself and how you experience the world." Aman concludes her article with the advice that it will take a while to learn this new behavior but it will be rewarding because you will learn to trust yourself and that will be a giant step towards eliminating your anxiety.

This is only the beginning, but it will pay off in the end. 

The daily routine.

**What I really want to do is discuss (or list) the thoughts that go through my head on a daily basis. I want to make one important point before I carry onto the main subject matter, and that is about the phrases “just let go”, “just don’t think about it”, “don’t concentrate on it”, “relax”, etc. Let me be clear when I say that if we could do all of these things, we would. Being stuck on one thought is hard enough but when it feels like there are multiple voices saying varying negative comments there is no room to ‘just relax’. These voices can range anywhere from an annoying whisper to being virtually cornered with a hoard of people screaming at you. This is the reality of the situation.**

I wish I could pinpoint a certain plot twist in my life when these thoughts began accumulating. For years I blamed them on the unhealthy relationship I was in when I was younger. Other times I blamed it on the way I was brought up and on the influence of my parents and their anxieties/issues. It’s hard to determine a direct cause and effect with this sort of thing, but what I do know is that I became aware of everything after the break-up of my unhealthy relationship. What I can say in full confidence is that I am now currently acutely aware of the thought process that I endure every day. I gave up for a while on relationships for the life of solitude and to keep things simple. I wanted to remain alone because it was a lot easier brushing through life with my guard up rather than trying to break and rebuild everything in order to bring another person in. Why waste time and effort only to be disappointed and heartbroken again? And this is where the story begins, the point in which I ended up developing feelings for a person who I barely knew. I promised myself that if I were to ever get involved with another person that I would limit it to just being friends and/or at least prolong the ‘dating phase’ until I was a hundred percent sure about this person. And much like every other plan in my life, that one did not hold out for very long. We casually dated for less than a month until making it official. Labels are a tough thing to deal with in general, but to me it felt like I was taking a giant leap into the dark unknown of my mental health (or lack thereof).

So this is my daily routine of thoughts from the second I get up until the second I fall asleep at night. It’s a pretty lengthy list so bear with me (I even shortened it):

-I create scenarios in my head to see if anything feels right, and if they don’t feel right then it must mean that we’re not meant to be together.
-I scroll through old text messages and I see that he hasn't responded to certain things in the way I expected him to; this must mean that we’re not meant to be together.
-I think about my comfort level in regards to him vs. friends that I've known for years and I realize that I don’t have that same level of comfort with him; this must mean that we’re not meant to be together.
-When I vent to him about my anxieties/concerns he doesn't seem to be bothered by them and just says supportive things, but I need a dramatic reaction (or his reactions aren't up to par with what I had imagined).
-He doesn't care about any of the stories I have to tell, don’t even bother.
-You’re supposed to be feeling a lot more excited about this, why don’t you feel more excited and comfortable? It’s been over a month, you’re supposed to be a lot farther than this. Get out now.
-Keep comparing him to your last relationships. Go over every detail of what happened in them and compare them to now, you’ll find the answers in there.
-Stop comparing him to your past relationships, he’s a completely different person than anyone you've ever dated. Stop.
-This is bad because he isn't like anyone else so you don’t have a category in the back of your mind you can file him into. This is uncomfortable, please make it stop. I don’t want to have to deal with this.
-Wouldn't all of this be better if you were supposed to be with him? Obviously you’re not supposed to since you have all of these doubts and concerns.
-You should be thinking about him all of the time. What are you doing being content on your own? Stop it. You’re in a relationship so that means you should be with each other ALL of the time otherwise it’s not even a relationship.
-He’s going to get sick of all your anxieties and negative thoughts, so don’t even bother opening up to him about anything.
-He should be meaner to you. Not mean…that’s not the right word. He should be more sarcastic and not take care of you that well. YOU NEED DRAMA AND CHAOS. DON’T GET USED TO BEING TREATED RIGHT, THIS ISN'T NORMAL, IT ISN'T REALISTIC. THERE ALWAYS HAS TO BE A PROBLEM!-Why are you trying to trust him? It’s not going to lead you anywhere safe.
-Why don’t you trust him already? You should feel comfortable by now. Just leave.
-You should always want to be with him, stop being content on your own.
-You should do a bunch of unnecessary things to regain control, like threaten to break up, or look for reasons to fight with him. REGAIN CONTROL DAMMIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! 
-You don't like him, you only like the attention he gives you. Just break up with him.
-Obviously something is wrong since you aren't comfortable with the labels. Just GIVE UP.
-Run. Run. Run. LEAVE. LEAVE. LEAVE
-You'll be a lot better with a new person, there just isn't something right about him. Don't trust him.


This is the point where it becomes almost infuriating when someone mentions any of those phrases above such as, “just learn to let go”. In reality you should be able to trust your own thoughts and let them guide you to the right decisions. But if your head is a constant cyclone of misinformation mixed in with silenced truths, then there is no option to “let it go” because there are no clear signs of right and wrong. My boyfriend and I refer to this swirling vortex as “the rabbit hole” because of its gravitational pull and feeling of endlessness. And I’d love to be able to feel lucky enough that he’s always there offering to lift me out of it, but there’s always that small voice that creeps in telling me “there’s no point in trying to be happy, you’ll end up breaking up eventually”.