What is a Control Drama? A control drama is a way or technique that people use to try to get what they want which is often causes conflict and is usually learned or developed unconsciously. Although the ways that the people are using control dramas may appear to work for them in the moment, often it doesn’t achieve their goals and causes damage in the relationship. More details to come as we get in the article. First however, see if any of the following control dramas are ways or techniques that use you to get what you want in your relationship:

1. Criticism or guilt

2. Charm, gifts, doing stuff for another

3. Crying

4. Yelling or Screaming

5. Threats, verbal or physical

6. Pulling away, shutting down or not talking to your partner

7. Hurting yourself, breaking things (consciously or unconsciously) or throwing things

8. Being nice

9. Giving affection or sex

10. Using security, children, money, relatives, using social pressure, (i.e. what will our friends and family say or think if you don’t do…) or any combination of people, places and things to get what you want.

You may be thinking that some of the examples above are things that people naturally do if they are upset such as crying or yelling, however everything on the list can be forms of control dramas.

Most people who use control dramas do not know of or are not aware of any other ways to get their needs met. Often these techniques are ones people develop in order to get what they want that has been developed or has been passed on from people around them, usually family and relatives.

The majority of the time control dramas are ineffective because it is a form of indirect communication instead of direct communication. Indirect communication is where people don’t say clearly what they think, feel or want but give indirect clues or hints as to what they really feel, think or want where as Direct communication can be defined as people saying upfront and clearly what they think, feel and want.

Other times you may get what you want by using control dramas but at a cost such as upsetting, angering or oppressing your partner by forcing your partner in ways that are not comfortable to them. I.e. yelling, throwing things, crying. If this is the case, in the case of energetics, where ever there is oppression, they will always be resistance, so eventually your partner will start to resist your control dramas whether that is retaliating themselves, emotionally shutting down or leaving the relationship.

To hit these two points home, the following are the effects if you use control dramas in your relationship:

EFFECTS ON YOU IF YOU USE CONTROL DRAMAS:

· You will often not get what you want

· You will feel frustrated

· You will feel disappointed

· You will feel unsupported

· You will feel exhausted from the excursion of energy needed for the control dramas.

EFFECTS ON YOUR PARTNER IF YOU USE CONTROL DRAMAS:

· They will feel burnt out

· They will lose respect for you

· They will begin to think you are exaggerating so they won’t take you seriously like you are “crying wolf”

· They will begin to go on defense like not willing to understand you anymore they will start reacting with their own control dramas.

· They may think you are a “bitch” or a controlling a-hole

· They will regret getting involved with you, if it becomes constant.

EFFECTS ON BOTH OF YOU AS A COUPLE

Both of you will become susceptible to Barbara Deangelis’s 4 Rs known as Resistance, Resentment, Rejection and Repression and what we call in our Love By Design Book, the Great Dividers of Love such as Judgment, Disappointment, Unfulfilled Expectations and Loss of Respect

Both of these types of results can build up in a relationship, making it harder and harder to reconcile the relationship the longer and more often these emotions keep being created.

EFFECTS ON CHILDREN

Your children will learn these control dramas from you and continue using them themselves when they develop relationships, causing the control dramas to be passed down through generations.

So far we have discusses how direct communication highly increases your ability to get what you want and that control dramas can having lasting negative effects on the relationship, finding a more direct, non conflict causing form of communication also increases your ability to find out whether your partner:

1. Understands what your needs are

2. Is unable to meet your needs or

3. Is just not interested in meeting your needs

Therefore a better system than control dramas is needed.

You are reading the right article because the following are 3 ways to really get what you want:

1. Know what you want

2. Know how the communicate it

3. Do not be afraid to directly ask for what you want.