Five Signs Your Partner Is Controlling

Love is not the passionate, obsessive and all-consuming romantic stories that are spun into films or written in a romantic novel. In real life, love requires trust, space and respect and not obsession and manipulation.

Many people are stuck in a relationship with a manipulative and controlling person and they feel his/her behaviour is a sign of love and devotion. Here are signs that your partner is controlling.

Isolating you from friends and family

They do it subtly. They do not come on strong. This is a sign of a controlling person. They start commenting on how often you call your family or close friends and gradually it turns into complaints.
They find reasons you shouldn’t spend time with your close friends and slowly strip you of support system that way there is no one to lean on.

Chronic criticism

In this case, everything done is criticised. They begin to feel they need validation for everything. The controlled person feel they’re ‘not good enough’, so every criticism is deserved. It’s true that we are all work in progress, but having someone always criticise your clothes, hair, how you walk, should make you question what he/she saw in you in the first place.

Veiled or overt threats

Physical threats are not the only threat there is. But some partners are manipulative emotionally. They make their partner emotionally exhausted with the threat of killing themselves which makes their partner feel obliged to stay in the relationship.

Other threats could be to stop giving financial support or threatening to take the children away.

Making love conditional

In this case, every expression of love has a conditional phrase. Phrases like “I love you so much more when you lose weight. “If you can’t help me out with finances then why are we in this relationship”. “You’d be beautiful if only you made more effort”.

This clearly shows that he/she does not think that you are good enough. This is one indication of a manipulative and controlling person.

Requiring constant disclosure

When a partner monitors every step taken and demands to know everything and constantly snoops around, that partner is controlling.

Checking call logs, e-mails and demanding explanation for everything is a sign that he has no interest in trusting you.