Love or control

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

We live far from town. It’s 30 minutes to the nearest Walmart, but it’s in a small town and it’s one of the tiniest Walmarts I’ve ever seen. If you want a decent grocery store, it’s almost an hour’s drive. This doesn’t really bother me since I mostly enjoy driving.

One of my favorite things to do in the car is listen to podcasts, and I’m always looking for new ones (please share if you have suggestions). I loved The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill and a few seasons of Serial (until they made it subscription only). I also enjoy Ally Fallon’s Write Your Story.

A few months ago I found one called The Virtual Couch with Tony Overbay, LMFT (licensed marriage and family therapist). I don’t listen to every episode of this, but now and then I find one I think will be interesting.

A while back I listened to an episode where Tony was talking about relationships, and he said something I have not been able to stop thinking about. It was this:

In an adult relationship, you can have love or you can have control, but you can’t have both.

I’ve thought about this statement in so many different ways, and I can’t find a single one where it is not accurate. Mostly it has had me looking at myself and how I show up in relationships.

Control is such a touchy subject. No one wants to be accused of being controlling, but the truth is that all of us want a measure of control, some more than others, and we want it for different reasons. Control is a coping mechanism we learn from childhood on in response to situations that cause us angst (or worse). We believe that if we could control things, we could make them turn out the way we want them to, and therefore our life would be perfect and we would never be hurt. Tell me I’m not the only one who does this.

In most cases the desire for control is an unconscious response to emotional discomfort. If, in my childhood, a parent was angry a lot, I might grow up trying to control the environment for everyone around me so that everything would be perfect and no one would ever get mad. Do you see how I learn to try to control my situation for my own benefit? Or maybe my parents divorced and I felt abandoned, so in my adult relationships I try to control the other person to keep them from leaving.

There are a million reasons we learn to want control. But here’s the thing: control does not get you love. You may be able to exert control over someone, but that does not produce love in them. It doesn’t make them love you. You don’t get to have control and get love in return for it.

Just today I had the idea to see if God had anything to say about this, so I looked up the word control in the Bible and guess what . . . it’s not in there. God never tells anyone to control another person. What does he say about relationships?

Husbands, love your wives . . . (Ephesians 5:25)

That they [aged women] may teach the young women . . . to love their husbands . . . (Titus 2:4)

No control in there, only love. And in case you hadn’t considered this before, love can only be given. It can’t ever be taken or bartered for or demanded or manipulated—or controlled. It can only be given by the one doing the giving.

You can have love or you can have control, but you can’t have both.

I’ve said before that God told husbands to love their wives because that’s the very basic thing that women want—to be loved.

I’ve heard it said that women want love and men want respect. But God tells the aged women to teach the younger women not to respect their husbands, but to love them. Love.

I think deep down, that’s what men want too. God created us with a desire to be loved. We are, after all, made in his image, and God has the desire to be loved. He seeks our fellowship. He could, in his almightiness, demand love from us. He could control every minute detail of life so that we are forced to love him, but that’s not what he does.

He loves us.

We love him, because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)

We don’t love him because he is in control, although we acknowledge that he can control whatever he wants. We don’t love him because he pushes or forces or Bible-shames us into it.

We love him, because he first loved us.

So how do you get love in a healthy adult relationship? You love. In healthy adult relationships, there is no place for control. Only love.

That may be a hard pill to swallow, and it’s a harder habit to break. Ask me how I know.

Control begets bitterness. Love begets love.