The most important thing to know about relationships and life

It’s crazy how simple this is; relating with people and life that is.  I was astonished when I first stumbled across this one simple rule and guide for all of life.  This one thing will keep us balanced; when it is front of mind, when we remember it always, and strive to use it as our overall gauge of how we are to interact with everything in life.  It will keep us true to the ideals that are true for all people.  It will help us to be humbly honest as we assess our performance in terms of our relationships.  It will give us the capacity to serve others and God well.  It will also ensure that we don’t infract people; so they hopefully don’t feel coerced, manipulated or controlled by us.

The most important thing to know about relationships and life is we can’t control people.  We can’t force anyone to do anything.  They must do what they do for themselves, because they want to do it.  Even when we are in a relationship where we are supervising or directing people, including parenting, we cannot lord it over anyone.  If ever we were to lord it over anyone, we would soon find out how perilous such a modus operandi is for both them and us.  The relationship isn’t just made in the present moment, but it becomes an historical blight on what could’ve been something beautiful, functional, transformational.

We can ask ourselves how we are able to assess whether we are controlling others or whether we are being controlled?  The opposite to love in relationships isn’t hate or fear, it is controlling others as if they are our pawns.  There is much more of a problem with people controlling people than there is with people overtly hating people.  Controlling people causes more betrayals of love and more harm than hating people does, because those who hate certain people tend to avoid them.  Yet when we feel controlled we may feel hated.

So how do we determine if we are being controlled?  Let’s see if this helps:

Þ           if we feel like we are constantly the focus of attention for someone, and usually this doesn’t feel good

Þ           demands are a sure sign of control.  It’s one thing to be required to do something to a certain standard by a certain time, it’s another thing all together to feel a person is making demands of us that are more a part of their ego than about getting the job done.  Sometimes demands are difficult if not impossible to achieve or they cost us, so it’s not just people that control us, but systems of work can be abusive too

Þ           if our mind is constantly preoccupied with a relationship, particularly if we take our work home with us, it could be we are feeling controlled

Þ           if we feel anxious or freaked out about the mere presence of someone, or we are super relieved when they aren’t there, this is often the body’s response to being controlled

Þ           if we are not allowed to have a view, or we are always wrong in the relationship, we are being controlled

What about if we are being controlling?  What sort of things should we be on the lookout for?

Þ           besides having a role where we are managing people including parenting minors, we can’t require anything of anyone.  There is a subtle distinction between managing people in the flow of work — managing being a necessary control function — and managing people for our own egos.  Managing people in the flow of work is simply about setting realistic parameters around the quality and quantity required for tasks, the resources available, and the time expected, and monitoring these.  Although managing is a function of control, good management never feels controlling.  It is incredibly important that managers have great relationships with their employees where their employees do not feel controlled

Þ           if we ever feel that people are avoiding us, rather than pointing the finger at them, we can first ask if there is something we’re doing to cause them to fear us

Þ           where we have a role as a parent or employer, and we feel fixated on a particular person.  That fixation can often be related to the lack of performance, and we can get into patterns of communication that neither serve them or us.  We should never be constantly berating someone, and indeed if we ever berate anyone we could quickly look within and ask why, because it is always inappropriate

Þ           if someone gives us direct feedback that they don’t appreciate how we make them feel, we ought to listen and take serious heed of what is being said.  Better than that, we can go one step further if we are able to imagine how others might feel if they were controlled by us.  It isn’t a bad thing to imagine that people may not actually appreciate how we treat them.  This ensures we are on guard to always treat people with respect and dignity

In more and more of a relational world that we live in now, there are far superior ways of relating with people than controlling them.  We will find we will go further, much farther, with people when we give them options, let them be their own people, dignify them as equals, and respect them as fellow bearers of God’s image.

Photo by Matthias Mullie on Unsplash