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Dealing with a micromanaging partner
What you need to know:
- In business management, micromanagement is a management style whereby a manager closely observes or controls the work of subordinates or employees.
- But sometimes in relationships some people seek to control their partners most often showing them they can never do anything better.
I am a time management freak. With me, if we agreed about 8pm, I will be there, no minute later, none earlier. It is this particular trait that saw me arrive at my friend’s house earlier than everyone else last Saturday.
The occasion? A surprise farewell dinner for a mutual friend who was heading abroad for further studies.
Now, the thing about arriving earlier for events is that you get to see what went into the preparations, which is normally fun.
However, at this particular dinner, I sensed all was not well. My friend Ritah, the host, looked stressed and irritated. Perched on a stool on her kitchen table, I inquired what the long face was all about. That is when she looked at me and gestured towards the living room where her husband was making a phone call.
“He will drive me nuts one of these days!” she whispered. I giggled as I poured myself a glass of wine. Just as I made to lift the glass to my lips, her husband entered the kitchen and did something I found rather weird. He walked over to the cooker and opened the pans, peering into each and leaning in to smell the contents.
“But do you think this rice is really ready? You know how I hate eating rice that is not well cooked. The heat is a bit much, rice needs minimal heat to cook well without burning at the same time,” he said to her, and then turned down the burner lightly!
If I thought my friend was overreacting before, I knew then that she was a strong woman I am, for putting up with such a husband.
Frustrated partners
Ritah is not the only person dealing with such a micromanaging partner. Edward Lumu, a 29-year-old software engineer says he had to put up with such in his girlfriend albeit painfully for three years before giving up last year. “You see, such people don’t feel good about themselves until they find fault with whatever one is doing, which is frustrating for the partner,” he says.
According to Lumu, this made him second guess almost everything he did for fear of his girlfriend finding fault with how he did it because he never seemed to do even the most mundane things right in her eyes.
“This one time, I woke up early and decided to wash both our cars. But when she woke up, her first complaint was about the hose. She said I was winding up the hose wrongly! I couldn’t believe it, she noticed the hose but the clean car went unnoticed?” Lumu said. He says she even had issues with the way he folded his clothes, the amount of alcohol he drunk and many other things.
That is when Lumu says he decided he had had enough and called off the relationship. “I could not continue with a relationship where my partner always felt she knew better and hence disapproved of everything I did,” he concludes.
According to Grace Amuge, a counselling psychologist at Family 101 Uganda, Ntinda, Kampala, coercive control in a partner is not just about one partner being bossy. No, it is often about domination. “Controlling people often assert their power by micromanaging their partner’s everyday life. One may want to control the food their partner eats, the TV programmes they watch, or how they do their laundry!” Grace explains.
Often, Amuge says, the controlling partner says they are doing it because they care about their partner which is far from the truth. Instead, micromanaging is a form of abuse and will make the victim feel isolated and smothered.
When Tracy started dating Fred, she thought he was the perfect man for her. He was ever so caring. For a girl who had long given up on relationships, Tracy was excited to have a new man that cared that much about her.
However, six months into the relationship, Tracy noticed Fred had a bit of a split character. His care bordered on the extreme. In a sense, it was more about control for him than care.
“When we went to dinner, he would often order my meals, disagreeing with my choices on grounds of them being unhealthy,” she narrates. Furthermore, he picked fights with her over how she dressed, which he found rather improper for a woman he dated.
“I was at university and loved to dress casually, but Fred would insist that I needed a wardrobe change even when the choice of clothes he liked were those I was uncomfortable with,” she recalls.
When she could not bring him to respect that she had her own preferences outside his, she called it quits and moved on.
Amuge, advises couples to seek professional counselling when faced with this particular challenge because often, the root cause is hard to determine without the help of therapy.
Micromanging is different from rigidity
Grace Amuge, a counselling psychologist, says micromanaging is different from a situation where the partner is simply rigid or too particular. In this case, the abuser’s demands become demands that the partner must fulfill with little regard to their own preferences.
“In most cases there are consequences should one fail to yield to those demands. Maybe, if they do not come home at the curfew their partner set for them, they may withdraw intimacy.” Although there is light at the end of the tunnel for such an abused spouse or partner, Grace says there are instances when it is extreme and one has to call the relationship off or risk facing such abuse longer.
But what would turn someone into such a spouse? “It is hard to point to a particular cause because all cases are unique. But I have noted people who have dealt with betrayal before in their former relationships tend to fail to trust their new partner and feel that micromanaging them will enable them stay in the loop and enable them avoid more betrayal,” Amuge notes.
