Love Is Not Control: How to Respond to People’s Bad Choices
When the people we love make bad choices, it’s easy for us to try to control them and force them to do what we think is best. But love is not control.
Let’s be honest, the people we care about most can drive us crazy the most. Am I right? They can hurt us. They can frustrate us. They can make bad choices. And all of that can make us want to do whatever it takes to protect them, to change them, to control them . . . for very good reasons. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.
And control is okay if we’re talking about a child. But what if we’re talking about a teenager becoming a man or a woman? Or what if we’re talking about children who are grown? Or what if we’re talking about adult siblings or close adult friends? Or what if we’re talking about our spouses?
In these latter cases, control isn’t okay. Not only is it not effective, but it also hurts the very people we say we care about and love. It pushes them further away and further from the original goals behind our attempts at control. And it reveals our pride too. It reveals how much we think of ourselves—that we should be the bosses of their lives; that we can be “gods,” actually, in their worlds.