We’re driving in the car and I’m trying to help Kurt navigate to our destination. He looks at me with a pointed gaze and says “Can you… Just… Sit there? Just be with me?” My chest feels like a hand is on it, pressing me firmly back into my seat.
I WAS overdoing it, I realize.
We’ve argued over it many times: me micromanaging him, saying too much.
Somehow, on this day, I hear him differently. I hear him saying that I can just be here. That I’m more enjoyable company if I just “go along for the ride.”
I had said to him before “you treat me like I’m an allergen!” He had often reacted to me with so much resistance, and it felt unfair, given my good intentions and loving heart.
But this time, I see it all at once: “Oh my gosh! I AM like an allergen!” They’re shaped like pinecones, with spiky little scales coming off their edges. I AM pokey, even when I don’t intend to be, in all my eagerness to be helpful, to add value.
My female leader clients often share this trait. We’re all used to being “on”, to thinking everything through, to being in charge and handling things and staying three steps ahead of the action so we prevent future problems. The challenge in relationships is this: that kind of large’n’in-charge vibe is not what calls forth someone else’s penetrative energy.
So if you want your partner to be submissive and to just follow your lead, you can show up directive and penetrative in relationship and it’ll go well. But if you want to let down, to open up, to feel safe to drop your guard, you’ll need your partner to step into a driving, more yang-style role, at least some of the time. And at those times, you’ll need to be able to just sit back and let them lead.
That pivotal ride in the car happened in the early 2000s. For me, learning to shift gears from directive to receptive was a long, challenging process. At first I said “I’m just naturally more directive and focused.” But what I came to see was that I was COMPULSIVELY directive and focused.
We have to learn to release control if we really want to get good at receiving, at loving, at feeling pleasure. And while we're on the topic of control: is it letting go of HAVING control? Or is it letting go of TRYING TO control, PRETENDING we're in control, maintaining the ILLUSION of control?
You tell me: In your life, how airtight are your control methods? Do they actually stop the things you fear from happening? Do they actually make everything stay on-time, on-schedule, free from strawberry smears and dirty knees? If so, I want to buy your book about Maintaining Control.
In my experience and from my clients' experience, I've learned that control is more about an experience of a clenched gut, a tight throat, a pulled-up-and-in pelvic floor... and less about actually "having a handle on everything."
We've thought that maintaining control protected us. That hyper-vigilance would make things all right. We thought is we didn’t handle things ourselves, they wouldn’t get handled. That if we could just keep the whole list and keep checking things off it, we could finally get to a resting place out there at the end of the list.
But in fact, there is no end of the list.
Care and prudence do reduce problems, but micromanaging causes new ones.
From the standpoint of receiving, this is the most important part - there's nowhere for others to go if you've got it all under control.
Micromanaging was a way that I tried to prove my worth, to earn my keep, to try to be excellent, to live my best life… All to stave off deep insecurity that I wasn’t enough already, that I didn’t really have a right to life and love and goodness just because I AM, but that I had to strive constantly to get it, like a shark swimming ceaselessly just to stay alive.
I’ve learned to entertain the notion that Kurt loves me just for me, not for what I provide (he swears up and down it’s true!). I’ve learned to see how much easier it is to be around me when I’m just contentedly present. And I’ve learned to let go of the hard work of trying to find what should be done next, how things could be better, what else is possible, and just enjoy what is.
He says “I just like being with you.”
I’ve learned to just watch him do things, not “helping” at all. I thought I was so helpful, but he found it intrusive and sometimes insulting. I had to get over thinking that just being a decorative, passive presence diminished my value. Like so many things, it’s simple, but not easy. What it’s taught me is that I’m all the more valuable when I’m absolutely not trying to be.
Where does control rob you of your pleasure? Of your peace?
Where does it become an obstacle between you and your partner?
Where does it paint your partner as a child and cast you as the mother?
Where does trying to manage how you look to your partner, worrying about staying composed or not letting your belly fall, stop you from being present, being pleased, being ravished?
Let me know how this lands for you. How can you experiment with releasing control?