Abandon Control

by Mark Rogers, Ph.D. - Relationship Rich Facilitator

Do you use "Big Words" on your mate?

"Big Words" doesn’t refer to fancy vocabulary. It refers to describing feelings using labels that cover too much territory.

When you communicate with "Big Words" to your mate, you may think it sounds like you are talking about emotions, but you’re really trying to coerce your mate into changing.

For example, the following messages attempt to communicate a message using "Big Words":

“I just wish you would show me some AFFECTION.”

“You don’t ever act like you LOVE me, when we are in public.”

“You are always trying to CONTROL me.”

“I don’t think you TRUST me.”

“I’m so tired of you being so DISTANT with me.”

“Why can’t you just let me BE MYSELF?

“Back off and let me have some SPACE.”


All of these messages are more about control than about communicating.
When you use "Big Words" like these, you are not just saying something about the feelings in your relationship. You are wanting your mate to do something, or to quit doing something, or to do something differently.

"Big Words" are packed with so much emotional weight that they might as well be clubs. (Or hammers. Or hand grenades.)

We use them when we are wanting our mates to Change, Now! We use them when we want to get our mate’s attention and get some rapid action. They are intense and important, and we mean for our mate to recognize that we are using a "Big Word" and meaning "Big Things" by it.

In other words, we want control.

Using a "Big Words" message is much like saying, “If you loved me, you would behave as I want you to.” Of course, you can’t just say it out loud, that clearly, that boldly, that… callously. It sounds too domineering. And we would naturally expect our mates to resist being dominated.

No one wants to be controlled.

We never want to admit that we desire control. Instead we say we want love, or affection, or trust, or space. But what we mean is, we want our mates to behave in certain specified (by us) ways, in certain (or most) situations. And we want them to do it because they want to, not
because we are asking them to.

And if they don’t want to, we want them to change so that they will.

“If you loved me, you’d do what I want” is obviously a control message. At the very least, you are asking your mate to accept without any qualification that your definition of love is the only valid one. The truth is, if you are insisting that your definition is the only one of value, then you
are asking for control. Period.

It would be more fair to say, “Here’s how I am defining love now – I am asking you to (do some specific behavior that I can describe in terms of action).”

Most fair would be to say, “It makes me feel loved when you (do some specific behavior that I can describe in terms of action), so I am asking you to do exactly that.”

Asking for specific behaviors and actions, and asking your partner to find a way to be enthusiastic about them, is far more fair than demanding compliance or requiring obedience to obscure or vague demands. It’s also likely to work better. Far more likely.

Hints:
Define your "Big Words" in terms of actions that can be observed by a reality TV crew following you around. If it can be seen through the camera and captioned correctly, your description is adequately behavioral.

If you can’t describe your "Big Words" in terms of actions, you may be asking to feel some result, but you don’t know what actions will bring about that result. If you can’t tell your partner what might work as an action to get you that feeling, see #3.

You might be wanting a feeling that comes from the accumulation of many different actions that all contribute to that feeling. Fair enough, but you still have to eventually come up with a list of actions for your partner to start with. It’s a lot of small stones that build up to a cathedral, so it’s appropriate to expect only slow progress.

If you still can’t come up with specific behaviors, then your "Big Words" have more to do with your insides than your mate’s actions. You may have tapes, history, baggage, heritage, conditioning or psychological scripting that is getting in the way. These are your issues to work on, not your mate’s.