How to Stop being Controlling & Possessive
Are you jealous, possessive or controlling of your partner? if you are, it could be damaging your current and future relationships.
Being controlling doesn’t just negatively affect your partner, you are also sabotaging your own success and happiness. If you want to improve on your overly possessive tendencies, then you need to understand why you feel the need to be possessive.
Why is somebody controlling or possessive?
Being possessive is often a mask for having low self esteem. It can also indicate issues with controlling emotions, jealously being an obvious one, also generally having issues with trust. Wanting to know where your partner is and what they are doing 24 7 is subtly or not so subtly saying many things.
Looking into the why in more detail
Jealousy
Jealousy is an absolutely normal and healthy emotion to feel. It can actually do your relationship good from showing it from time to time, it shows your partner that you care, which is complimentary. Like anything it only becomes an issue when the jealousy becomes excessive and starts to become life restricting for the both of you.
Why is jealousy a problem for some more than others?
Lower emotional control
We are all different and some of us have a greater control of our emotions than others. This is more of a problem when we are young because we simply have less experience dealing with strong emotions. With time and experience our emotional control naturally improves, however it still depends on a person’s genetics, personality traits and life experiences.
Men are usually not as in touch with their emotions, due to differences in personality traits between the genders. For this reason men are usually worse at dealing with strong emotions when they arise, such as jealousy. This is why it’s usually the man that has issues with controlling their partner. Studies suggest that emotions are more likely to be an inferior function in men than women.
Low self image
Having a low self image leads to feeling insecure, and insecurities often trigger and increase jealousy. People who do suffer with jealousy due to self image issues are not aware that their excessive jealousy stems from their insecurities. This lack of self awareness often leads to a person blaming their partner, for example accusing them of being too flirty or even unfaithful because it’s the only way that they can understand their feelings of jealousy.
Blaming other people can also be attributed to pride or stubbornness. If you want to make progress with this issue you will have to put aside your pride and accept that you might be at fault before you can move forward.
If you suspect that your self image or self esteem maybe a route cause of your jealousy, then you will need to work on improving your self esteem.
Other psychological issues
Often people project their own thoughts and feelings onto others. In this case, being possessive caused by jealousy is often the result of one partner actually projecting their own negative side and feelings onto their partner. If you feel that you’re never at fault, perhaps you’re projecting your shadow onto others.
Self awareness and self analysis is such an import part of someone overcoming these types of issues. You need to take a good look at your self honestly and be ready to accept responsibility for any fault that may lie with you.
Be honest and communicate with your partner and fully understand that being controlling or possessive will not just harm your partner, but also yourself.
More ways to stop being controlling
- Make sure you have your own things going on, your own alone time, hobbies and friends outside of your relationship.
- Never try and force anybody to change, if you think someone is too social or flirty then accept that is who they are. If they do change it will be on their own terms, so either accept it or move on.
- Don’t let a past bad experience ruin your current one. Maybe you were cheated on in the past but that doesn’t mean it will happen this time. If you are carrying over distrust, resentment or any other form of baggage it will only hurt your current relationship. Let it go!
