Control Is Not Love

But It Took Me a Long Time to Know the Difference)

I had a blue folder.

A literal blue folder. Passports, documents, itineraries, booking confirmations, all sorted into plastic sleeves in chronological order. Every minute of every trip planned before we left the house.

I thought that was love. I genuinely thought being needed was the same as being loved.

(I wrote a whole email about this one — you can read the full blue folder story here. Come back though, because this gets worse before it gets better.)

The concerts he didn't want to go to

Here is the part I am less proud of.

I used to force my ex to come to things with him. Gigs, concerts, dinners, nights out with people he barely knew. Not because he wanted to be there. Because I was terrified of what people would think if he wasn't.

If I showed up alone, something must be wrong. If he wasn't beside me, people would talk. If we were not visibly a unit, it meant the relationship was failing and everyone could see it.

So I made him come.

Not with a knife to his throat. With guilt. With the silent treatment that made saying no feel like too much effort. With the version of asking that isn't really asking. I was masterful at it.

And when he made plans with his own friends without me? I convinced myself they were talking about me. That they hated me. That he was over there telling them things and they were all deciding something. I would somehow find a way to show up anyway. Or make the atmosphere afterwards so uncomfortable that eventually it stopped being worth it for him to go.

I called it insecurity at the time. It wasn't just insecurity.

It was control wearing the face of anxiety.

What a man who knows himself actually looks like

I then met and married Liam…..

When Liam says no, he means no. Not because he is cold, not because he doesn't care, but because he knows exactly who he is and he is completely uninterested in performing a relationship for other people's comfort.

He will not be guilted. He will not be bullied. He will not be quietly worn down until going along is easier than holding his ground.

And the first time I really felt that? I was dripping.

Genuinely. There is something so deeply attractive about a person who cannot be manipulated. It doesn't make me feel rejected. It makes me feel safe. Because if he can't be moved by guilt, I know that when he chooses to be with me, he actually wants to be.

If I want to do something, I go. I do not need permission. But I am also not allowed to guilt or bully him into joining me. And that boundary has taught me more about myself than years of journalling ever did.

Because here is the uncomfortable truth.

The version of me that forced my ex to concerts was not a woman in love. She was a woman in terror. Terrified that if she stopped controlling the narrative, people would see something she wasn't ready to admit herself.

Women control because they learned it kept them safe

We do not talk about this enough.

Women manipulate. Not because they are evil. Not because they are calculating. Because manipulation is one of the earliest tools available to someone who doesn't feel safe asking directly for what they need.

When you grow up in an environment where your feelings were dismissed, where you had to manage the emotions of adults around you, where love was conditional or unpredictable, your nervous system learns something very specific.

You cannot be direct. Direct gets you nowhere. Direct gets you told you're too much, or too needy, or you're overreacting.

So you get creative.

You make yourself indispensable. You become the person who holds everything together so that your place in the room is never in question. You make sure people need you because being needed feels safer than being wanted, and being wanted always felt like it could be taken away.

You force the concert so you don't have to feel the fear of being left behind. You make sure you are included so you never have to feel excluded. You fill every space with your presence so there's no room for the thing you're most afraid of.

The control was never about the concert. The control was about the terror underneath it.

The thing Emma Grede said that stopped me cold

I was reading recently and Emma Grede said something that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

To receive support, you have to accept the help in the shape it actually comes. Not the shape you would have done it. Not the shape you would have chosen. The shape it arrives in.

That is the hardest thing for a woman who has been running everything on her own.

Because it is not really about the help. It is about the trauma that makes receiving feel dangerous. The fear of being trapped if you depend on someone. The fear of losing yourself if you let someone else lead. The fear that the moment you loosen your grip, everything falls apart.

It will not fall apart.

The blue folder was never what was holding things together. You were. And you don't have to hold everything alone anymore.

What actually changes things

Here is what I know after years of this work, both my own and with the women I work with.

Understanding why you control does not stop you from controlling. You can have the most beautiful insight, see it clearly, name it perfectly, and still find yourself three days later making a plan designed to get the outcome you wanted while making someone else think it was their idea.

Insight lives in the head. The pattern lives in the body.

The nervous system that learned control was the only way to stay safe doesn't respond to logic. It responds to felt experience. To slowly, repeatedly learning that it is safe to let go. That softening doesn't mean disappearing. That being direct doesn't end relationships. That you can be chosen without earning it every single day.

That is the work. Not the mindset. Not the journalling. The actual in-the-body, change-how-you-feel-on-the-inside work.

That is exactly what we do inside Reclaim.

14 days. A private podcast. Practical tools that actually land in your nervous system and stay there.