Over the years I’ve gained an increasing awareness of the spectrum between supportive and controlling relationships. I have, for example, stopped referring to it as a dichotomy. No relationship is completely controlling or supportive nor do the two necessarily even represent two ends of a long spectrum of relationship flavors. They are more accurately aspects of relationships that define and color the perceptions of the people in the relationships and how those people come to relate with the outside world.
Not surprisingly, I think about these things the most when my mother is in town. I’ve tried to apply all sorts of thinking to understanding how that woman works–none of which have been entirely successful. Yet the more time I spend with her the more I see aspects of her played out in my own familial relationships, and that scares the crap out of me.
My mother is a control freak. She is a person who needs to be right all of the time, because she predicates her existence on her own personal importance and control of the situation. This is especially relevant in terms of her grandkids, who apparently I have no idea how to raise. Because she is controlling, anyone else in a position of power relative to her own needs to be undermined. As such, she seeks to undermine me and cut me down at every possible opportunity. This is what I call the controlling relationship. So, as my kids are roaming around the house in tears from being berated or repeating her undermining comments I find myself absolutely ready to snap.
Still, she’s mom so I don’t snap and I try very desperately to give her the respect of the position even if no respect is tossed back my way.
I know my control/leadership style is purposely divergent from hers. Every time I see a glimmer of her ‘way’ in myself I beat it out of me. This isn’t necessarily a great idea, but it feels like the psychological backlash of that parental relationship. At least the response is better than what I did as a kid. I was angry and dealt with her nonsense by being violent and harboring terribly dark thoughts. I’m over that. I am, as the say, “A grown ass man.”
Sooner or later my boys will be grown ass men, and I hope that in the intervening years I can talk to them about relationships and help them learn with me how to strike an effective balance that allows them to be good people to their lovers, kids, friends, and coworkers, without having to control those people in order to feel necessary and good about themselves.