This week a woman contacted me in great distress about her relationship with her second husband. When I told her to give me a sentence that fully explains her husband, she chose: "He is controlling". She had all kinds of data to confirm in her mind that this statement was absolutely true.

What I think about when a girl says that her spouse is "controlling" is that she believes she is controllable. This fascinates me. Anytime a person believes that someone is doing something to them, they are leaving their power in the hands of that person. When our heads think that way about somebody else, we have to be the victim of their behaviors, and we do not need to be responsible for ours.

In this case, she was blaming him for why she no longer sings. He thought that it would be good if she stopped singing in bars, which was her passion before they got married. She did what he wanted, but then she stopped singing altogether. She then started being resentful that she no longer lived her hobby. She decided to end her singing because he did not like it, and yet she noticed that he would not stop doing what he liked no matter how upset she became.

Why is this problem the case for so many women? It is this way because women hold beliefs around what they need to do in order to keep their men happy and keep them around. Women act on those beliefs and then make themselves unhappy in the process. Resentment and anger set in and women then turn around and BLAME the men, like they contributed to it! (Gentlemen, you must substitute yourselves accordingly and see that this holds just as true in how you think about women!).

To reveal her thoughts and free her from their bad outcomes, we worked together on a number of levels: To start, we explored her relationships with gentlemen in general and some thoughts she had towards men that would make her think they are controlling. Next, we discovered the way she sees herself as a victim and the way she used it in the past and how it hampered her relationship now. Then, we looked at what life would be like if she did not perceive men as controlling. Fourth, we looked at how she showed up in the exact ways she complained about her spouse and gentlemen in general. As she saw how controlling she was in the way she thought about how she thought he should do things to please her, the laughing started. When we get how we are actually acting, it is difficult not to giggle!

Her willingness to take responsibility for how she shows up in relationship to men is the key to her ultimate success. When she put all her focus into what her husband was doing wrong, the situation was without hope and she was ready to get out of the relationship while she could and move on. When she focused instead on how she was driving him away with her resentment and anger, she got to look at a variety of options that she could choose to make her different. She changed from without hope and power, to hopeful and empowered.

What a thrill to be invited by someone to dig deeply, get to the heart of the matter, and come up with all kinds of empowering possibilities!