Welcome to another insightful episode of Finding the Guardian of Your Soul, a podcast where we delve deep into the intricacies of dating and relationships to help you understand the dynamics that enhance and sabotage romantic connections. In today's episode, Lisa and Benjamin look at control and how it can push a man away. We discuss the signs that a woman may exert too much influence in a relationship, from micromanaging what a man wears to undermining his independence. We'll discuss why men search for a partner who makes their lives bigger, how your past traumas can turn into a desire to control men, and why it is so important to understand how controlling behaviors push good men away. The conversation doesn't end there. Lisa sheds light on the damaging impact these dynamics have on the emotional well-being of men and how women can recognize the fine line between care and control. This is one episode you won't want to miss. Continue On Your Journey: Lisa Shield | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Book a Call With Lisa Email the podcast at: podcast@lisashield.com
What You'll Hear In This Episode:
- How control can affect a man’s sense of personal freedom and push him away
- The dynamic where women try to control the narrative
- The devastating effects of holding mistakes over a man
- Emphasizing the value of space and growth in partnerships
- Benjamin’s account of a past relationship and the importance of aligning on key life choices
- Lisa’s insights on honesty, awareness, and the toxicity of control
- The significance of forgiveness and overcoming control to avoid resentment
- How facing challenges, including affairs, can enhance emotional intimacy
- Exploring the idea of moving past a binary view of right and wrong in relationships
- Rumi's philosophy on transcending conflict for relationship enhancement
- Explaining the concept of baiting and switching in relationships
- Avoiding the urge to pressure partners into life-changing decisions
- The effect of dominance on the respect and balance in a relationship
- Considerations of how past experiences inform current relationship behavior
- Strategies for fostering communication and support to combat controlling dynamics
- Identifying harmful behaviors, such as nagging and passive-aggressiveness
- Understanding the outcomes of disrespecting a partner’s capabilities or desires
Key quotes:
“We all carry these behaviors into relationships because we have a history of being wounded, damaged, hurt, manipulated, lied to." — Lisa Shield
"And I would just see some men get smaller and smaller and smaller, they become children again, and the wife becomes the mother." — Benjamin Shield
“Growing up as a child, it was humiliating for me to see my father belittled." — Benjamin Shield
"I think it's because we love each other so much and we're able to have fun and play and trust each other and have a lot of space." — Lisa Shield
"Let's say that a man makes a mistake. Let's say that he gets drunk one night, he's on a business trip, he sleeps with a woman one time, and he goes and tells his wife because he wants to be clear. She could hold that over him for decades. Decades. And so there's this hierarchy where he's feeling controlled by his mistake." — Benjamin Shield
"One of the most controlling behaviors is when anyone makes a mistake in a relationship, and his partner cannot move into a place of forgiveness...holding it over your partner is one of the worst forms of control." — Lisa Shield
“[The silent treatment] is so controlling because you can't talk about it. And so you just sit, and you don't even know sometimes what it's about…And it's just like suddenly someone just is silent and turns away, and horrible – horrible! There's no resolving it, and the person is in complete control when the relationship starts going out." — Benjamin Shield
"If you're a woman, you may be in a relationship with a man who's controlling, who's doing some of the same things. control in relationships doesn't work. There is a better way." — Lisa Shield
Continue On Your Journey:
Lisa Shield | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Book a Call With Lisa
Email the podcast at: podcast@lisashield.com
Lisa Shield [00:00:00]:
Mild hello, everybody. I'm Lisa Shield.
Benjamin Shield [00:00:06]:
And I'm Benjamin Shield.
Lisa Shield [00:00:07]:
And welcome to getting inside the right male mind, where we have Benjamin, who is a wonderful guardian of your soul kind of guy, we have him talk about some things that happen in the dating world and in romance and relationships that, well, he speaks from his own personal perspective. And of course, we speak from a more traditional heterosexual view. But many women say that they're very inspired by hearing Benjamin talk from his angle about the things that a more traditional man would notice about a woman. And if that's the kind of dynamic, and I'm not talking about our mothers and grandmothers relationships, I'm talking about a modern day traditional romance. And so if that's what you're seeking, if you're a successful woman and you're strong and you are independent and you really want to have a great relationship with a real man who is masculine and all, but not overwhelm him, learn how to make room for his masculinity to come forward and for your femininity to come forward, then you want to keep listening. And one of the things we were talking about, babe, before we started, is that women have all of these requisites, this laundry list of things that they're looking for in a partner. And we really have our antennas up when we go on dates. I think men can feel it.
Lisa Shield [00:02:12]:
They know they're being scrutinized.
Benjamin Shield [00:02:14]:
Always.
Lisa Shield [00:02:16]:
And so the thing I think that was a huge aha. Moment for me was when I realized, wait a minute, I'm looking for things, but so is he. And it's equally as important that I understand what a great man is looking for. And I don't go into dates blindly, but I start becoming aware of some of the things that I'm saying and doing that might be turning a man off. And so I started going on dates and really thinking about that theory that I had. And I think it was really unbelievably helpful because I know it's true, right. That men have all kinds. They have their own criteria and their own antenna.
Benjamin Shield [00:03:06]:
Yeah. And I think what a man comes into a date looking for is how is my life going to be bigger with this person? As opposed to if this person is controlling, overly controlling, then my world is going to be smaller. And so that, I think, is the biggest wish and the biggest fear that a man walks into a date with.
Lisa Shield [00:03:34]:
And would you agree that some of the foundation, the beginning of all of that is your relationship with your mother?
Benjamin Shield [00:03:45]:
Well, I think no man needs another mother. He's looking for a playmate, he's looking for a lover, he's looking for a best friend, but not someone who's controlling him and who had controlled him. The first part of his life is his mother. And so that he could become allergic to anything that even resembles over controlling.
Lisa Shield [00:04:13]:
Well, and then when a woman is controlling without knowing it, especially a man may be initially attracted to her physically, but then the minute he starts interacting with her and starts to feel those controlling behaviors, he starts to see her as a mother and he stops being romantically attracted to that woman.
Benjamin Shield [00:04:40]:
Oh, yeah. The physical attraction only goes so far, no matter how beautiful a woman is, but it's really how a man feels with that woman.
Lisa Shield [00:04:51]:
And more naive, when we're younger and more naive, we'll put up with certain behaviors from each other.
Benjamin Shield [00:04:58]:
And those are the relationships that later in life, when they give examples of really bad relationships.
Lisa Shield [00:05:06]:
Those are the ones. Yeah. No, we've all been there and we've all overrode our better instincts and stayed in relationships with people who we knew were exhibiting behaviors that didn't work, but we stayed and we tried to make it work.
Benjamin Shield [00:05:27]:
Yeah. And I've realized why some women may have over controlling behavior. There may have been a history of past abuse or trauma that they're trying to control. There may be a fear of abandonment. There may be a power imbalance that they're worried about, and it could be from early childhood or previous relationships that they feel they need to assert control and even micromanagement in the relationship.
Lisa Shield [00:06:02]:
Well, I think so many of us go into, we go into our first relationship may be a little innocent, and then subsequent relationships, we get hurt. We give it our best effort. And so many women resort to trying to control things so that they don't get cheated on or they don't get hurt. Men do the same things, by the way, if a woman cheated or they felt controlled by a mother, who knows? But we all carry these behaviors into relationships because we have a history of being wounded and damaged and hurt and manipulated and lied to. And so trying to control a situation, what often happens is we start trying to control the situation and we say to ourselves, okay, I'm not going to let this happen to me again. And then that turns into trying to prevent it from happening again. And probably it happens again because you're creating that, but by doing certain things and not, it's almost like you're not dealing with the real root cause of those issues or those poor choices in men, and you're still choosing the wrong men. But then you're trying to control them, and the same thing happens.
Lisa Shield [00:07:41]:
They go out and cheat again. They lie, whatever. And you can't prevent it.
Benjamin Shield [00:07:46]:
Yeah. And two things happen when a woman is over controlling. One is the man feels emasculated. And when a man feels emasculated, the woman begins to lose respect for the man. And respect is the most important thing that a man can feel even more. Even more than feeling love. So it's a recipe for failure.
Lisa Shield [00:08:13]:
Right. And you just touched on. Oh, my goodness, I never thought about this. You just touched on something. This is an aha moment for me because women want these strong, capable, independent, masculine men. But then if they're afraid and they go into a relationship and they start pushing an agenda and controlling and whatever, and they emasculate the man, then they lose respect for him, and they may be contributing. They are contributing in many cases to that dynamic. And then the man can't show up masculine in her eyes, because any good man is going to be trying to please her.
Benjamin Shield [00:09:07]:
And not only will he feel smaller, but he'll feel resentment, because, again, the name of the game is how we could make each other, this world bigger by having each other in it. And if a man feels like, oh, when I was single, my world was so much bigger than it is now, there would be resentment. So it's a terrible recipe for disaster. For disaster?
Lisa Shield [00:09:34]:
Like, on both sides?
Benjamin Shield [00:09:35]:
Yeah.
Lisa Shield [00:09:36]:
I mean, I'll lose respect for any man I feel I can control. I remember once I went to see a therapist, and I had a girlfriend who was very flirtatious and playful. And we would go out and I said to this therapist, my friend can just wrap a man around her finger. And she looked at me and she said, lisa, is that really what you want to do, wrap a man around your finger? She said, I don't think you'd respect any man you could wrap around your finger. And that's what a lot of women do, but then they lose respect for any man they can do that to. Very interesting. So, honey, I want to know. Let's talk a little bit about why it's hard for you as a man to be with a controlling woman.
Benjamin Shield [00:10:29]:
Well, often, along with controlling, there could be criticizing and undermining where a man not only feels like he's lost respect, but he can feel shame. Right? And my parents relationship and the relationship of parents, in that generation of our socioeconomic strata, the woman was almost always the dominant member, and the man was belittled. And I would just see these men get smaller and smaller and smaller, and they become children again, and the wife becomes the mother again.
Lisa Shield [00:11:12]:
And can you describe that socioeconomic strata? Because my parenting and my situation was completely different.
Benjamin Shield [00:11:20]:
Well, this was in the San Fernando Valley, and I was born in 1952. So there was these blocks of houses that were built when the San Fernando Valley started opening up around 1950 or so, and people didn't move. So you really knew families well, and you could just see. And everyone had the same age kids, two kids, and you could see the mother dominating. And it was the jewish family. And I don't know what it is now, but growing up as a child, it was humiliating for me as a child to see my father belittled.
Lisa Shield [00:12:08]:
Yeah, I think it was different. I was born in 1961, so I grew up in a family where my mother stayed at home with the kids, and my dad went to work, and he lived his own life in a way. He could do whatever he wanted to do, including cheating on my mother. And it was different. I think my mother felt more oppressed, even though she was very angry.
Benjamin Shield [00:12:38]:
And that anger turned into belittlement and name calling.
Lisa Shield [00:12:43]:
Right. And trying to control. Yeah, she really did. She tried to manipulate and control him.
Benjamin Shield [00:12:49]:
Same difference.
Lisa Shield [00:12:51]:
And it can turn out, no matter what, it can go both ways. So controlling behavior. And I am going to say this several times throughout this conversation, men do the same things. There are unbelievably highly controlling men.
Benjamin Shield [00:13:10]:
Oh, sure.
Lisa Shield [00:13:11]:
There are men who manipulate women, who control them, who take advantage of women. So we are not speaking to that. We are speaking to high powered, successful women. And women who even are not so independent and all but are seething with where there's an underlying anger or disappointment or fear, ultimately, that manifests as trying to control a man in a relationship.
Benjamin Shield [00:13:44]:
And we've been talking about belittlement and undermining and criticizing. But I think one of the most powerful ways that a man or woman can control the other person is by withdrawing their love, by being passive aggressive and making a man guess why she's angry or using sex.
Lisa Shield [00:14:12]:
Many women will withhold sex from men as a way of controlling them.
Benjamin Shield [00:14:17]:
And he may not even know why. She may be expecting him to be a mind reader.
Lisa Shield [00:14:23]:
Right.
Benjamin Shield [00:14:24]:
But the withdrawal of affection is devastating.
Lisa Shield [00:14:29]:
Well, I talk to so many of my clients who are now with men who were in marriages, long, good men, and I'm talking about long marriages, 30 years, where a woman wasn't intimate with that man, and he stayed because he had made a promise. He had said till death do us part. And the woman, in some cases, it wasn't until death that they parted, because many of our clients, some of our clients are in their.
Benjamin Shield [00:15:08]:
But it was death of the relationship.
Lisa Shield [00:15:10]:
Which happened much earlier. Yeah, but they stayed. I know men. We have. One woman pops into my mind, and her partner is going through a renaissance. And I think, I know they're both in their 70s, but he was in a marriage that was very long. And now I think from what she describes, and I know her and I've heard a lot about the relationship between them. He is just like a kid in a candy store because she's adorable and she knows, because she did our program, she knows how to make a man feel like a man or mirror his masculinity back to him, as you say.
Lisa Shield [00:15:56]:
And, yeah, it's magical. So, yeah, being passive aggressive, withholding sex, not letting a man know, not speaking. And a man has to figure out what's going on.
Benjamin Shield [00:16:12]:
Horrible. Horrible. Because it's hard to have resolution. And sometimes one person can't verbalize why they're angry, why they're resentful, why they're disgusted. So they just act out. And the other person just can't connect directly to find out why.
Lisa Shield [00:16:37]:
Well, and it's hard on both sides. When you're in an intimate relationship and you are supposed to be each other's support system and someone literally ices you out, it's devastating. And I want to speak on the part of women. It's hard for us sometimes to navigate all those emotions and feelings and be able to say, in a way, what also happens, or may have happened historically for a lot of women, is that when they did try to express their feelings, they didn't feel heard. And so they feel alone and isolated in that pain and disappointment, and they're afraid of saying it the wrong way and then it escalating and becoming more of a fight, and then you feel more hurt. So it's a double bind. But I think that's where great coaching and coaching programs like ours come into play. We teach our women, we show them how to have loving conversations that are non shaming.
Benjamin Shield [00:17:50]:
Absolutely.
Lisa Shield [00:17:51]:
And heart opening.
Benjamin Shield [00:17:52]:
Yeah. And I think if a man even fears that there may be controlling and over controlling, he may act out by testing, by saying, I'm going to have dinner with my ex, and he may not even want to, but he wants to see how inclusive she is, his partner is, if she's going to say, well, that's interesting, why would you want that? And I support it if it's something you want or over my dead body, you are not going to ever see that woman or have anything to do with her. Not even a text. So he will test.
Lisa Shield [00:18:37]:
Wow, he will.
Benjamin Shield [00:18:39]:
And so he'll act out, even in ways that and for things that he doesn't want. But he wants to know that he could have that freedom if he needed it.
Lisa Shield [00:18:50]:
Well, I know men will often do that, too. If a woman is nagging, like, let's say just a simple thing like taking out the trash or fixing a broken window latch or something, if he has it in his mind that I am going to do this, I'll find the time and whatever. But his partner, his wife, is nagging. Nagging. When are you going to fix it? When are you going to fix it? A lot of times a man will pull back and not fix it just because he feels disrespected. And it's the same like with driving directions. You're not like that because neither one of us have a sense of direction. But there are men who really want to be entrusted with.
Lisa Shield [00:19:39]:
For them, it's kind of like tracking and being a hunter and finding the destination. And even if they get lost and even if they get frustrated, in a man's mind, it's almost like hunting prey. They're tracking and they want to be trusted. And when a woman is nagging and whatever, it really makes him feel controlled and shamed. And shamed.
Benjamin Shield [00:20:04]:
It's like, be sure to turn off the next exit. I know. And what he feels like is that she doesn't respect him to know, and he feels shamed. And that shame becomes resentment, and then it could become bickering, right?
Lisa Shield [00:20:29]:
Yeah. Wow. Okay, so you mentioned that one of the things that's really off putting for a man is when a woman is controlling, he feels like his world will become smaller.
Benjamin Shield [00:20:52]:
Yes. And that's a big fear that he'll have to limit or give up his hobbies. Some things that he was passionate about being a single man, even things he has keeps in the refrigerator, that if it's controlling, he just feels, wow, things were so much better when I was single because his world keeps getting smaller. You can't see these people or we need to do time to go to my family or see my nephews, or it's my cousin's birthday or something like that. And instead of having his weekly ritual of sitting on the couch, having a beer and watching a football game or a replay of a yugoslavian tennis match from the early 80s, but it's something that he needs to unwind or to go unconscious or catch up with the world or let the world catch up with him. So I think one way to control a man in a relationship is to try to force him into your world. And it goes both ways, forcing a woman into a man's world. But as I tell many of my male friends, you never want to live someone else's dream.
Benjamin Shield [00:22:26]:
And so if someone else has a dream and they're pulling you into it, like, we need to move into a bigger house, or we need to do this, or, I've always wanted to do this, so we need to do. It's very controlling. And sometimes men capitulate because they don't want acrimony or they don't want the woman to be continually unhappy, so he will capitulate. And, of course, this goes both ways. So I'm just talking as a man, but a woman could be saying the.
Lisa Shield [00:23:06]:
Same words as you were talking, and this is a completely different kind of example. But women will often like, there's something that they don't like a shirt that a man has a piece of clothing or whatever, and they'll do a cleaning, and then take this guy's favorite jersey that she hates and throw it in the goodwill pile and give it away. And the guy's like, where's my jersey? I can't find it. Oh, I gave it to goodwill.
Benjamin Shield [00:23:39]:
Almost every Monday night, my dad would fish through the trash and find his slippers. They're falling apart. I think they just embarrassed my mother. But my dad loved them, and he was also a very frugal man and didn't want to throw anything like that away that was still usable, but he liked them, and there really was no reason that he couldn't wear them, no matter how they looked. Company wasn't coming over, and he was comfortable in them. And I think that sometimes we identify with certain pieces of clothing.
Lisa Shield [00:24:16]:
Yeah.
Benjamin Shield [00:24:17]:
So it's the micromanaging. You should wear this shirt. You can't wear those slippers or things like that. Where a man not only feels micromanaged, but feels like a child.
Lisa Shield [00:24:33]:
Yeah.
Benjamin Shield [00:24:34]:
And has less control. And when a man feels less control, he may do stupid things to have more control, like having an affair. Like, I'll show her.
Lisa Shield [00:24:51]:
My God. So many couples and so many relationships are popping into my mind right now. So many scenarios. And especially you can see it with certain couples where I'm thinking of a particular couple, where a man has been so dominated and controlled by the woman. And a little bit, this particular couple reminded me of your parents, where they've been together for many years, and you can see where the man is so subdued and what a lot of times what the women do is they create the narrative of the man. They actually create the narrative of who he is and whatever. And the man just is there, in a way.
Benjamin Shield [00:25:47]:
Yeah. And it's what you said earlier, that what a woman most often needs is a man who she feels is strong and is a leader. And we could be saying the same thing, but he's cut off at the knees. And so she no longer has that strong man who's a leader, and he no longer has the feeling of being a man. A leader, respected.
Lisa Shield [00:26:24]:
Yeah. Oh, my gosh. And then they co create each other that way. The interplay, after many years with some couples, you can see it. The man is docile and almost like your dad loses his voice. He just loses his voice.
Benjamin Shield [00:26:46]:
He lost his hearing.
Lisa Shield [00:26:49]:
We've talked about that many times. Yes, I know somebody who was a womanizer, a man who was a real womanizer, who lost the use of his sex organ, who couldn't have sex because he had. I won't go into the details, but he had a certain medical condition where he couldn't get an erection, so somebody else took that away from him. If there's a will, there's a way. But your dad really literally tuned your mother out.
Benjamin Shield [00:27:28]:
I think, another way that a relationship can be controlling, whether it's male, female, female, male. But let's say that a man makes a mistake. Let's say that he gets drunk one night, he's on a business trip, he sleeps with a woman one time, and he goes and he tells his wife, because he wants to be clear, she could hold that over him for decades. Decades. And so there's this hierarchy where he's feeling controlled by his mistake. Like, oh, and then she feels that he has a right because he really ruptured the relationship in her eyes.
Lisa Shield [00:28:17]:
Yeah. And she never lets it go. And everything comes in the end. It's just like that's underneath everything. Everything. Yeah. Horrible. Horrible.
Lisa Shield [00:28:31]:
I knew when we came into this relationship, I really was mature enough and old enough to understand that people make mistakes. And I just wanted to be human. And I actually made a choice inside myself to make room for that, that I needed that. And I knew you did. And that there had to be space for us to be human.
Benjamin Shield [00:29:01]:
Yeah. And the fact that you give that space to me makes it easy for me to give that to you. Consequently, I don't think either one of us could ever remember an argument that we've had or ever trying to make each other's lives smaller? It's always been about how can we make each other's lives bigger?
Lisa Shield [00:29:24]:
And we haven't betrayed each other in any way, or at least we haven't felt betrayed. And I don't know if that's just because we love each other. I think it's because we love each other so much and we're able to have fun and play and trust each other and have a lot of space. And so when you have such a small world and it's being controlled by fear, anything that might threaten it, because you're always on guard, and anything that might seem like a threat. Think about a woman who may have been cheated on in a past relationship. Maybe a man had an affair, left her for another woman, and she could have even had kids, let's say. So it was a devastation. Like in my mother's case.
Lisa Shield [00:30:21]:
Let's say my mother went into another relationship, being at a dinner with a man and him, a woman even walking by and his attention being pulled because that relationship, because it's being driven by fear, and it's so small. The woman's world is small. Any little transgression would be awful. But for us, it's like, look around, babe. I do. I love beautiful people. You're the handsomest man in the world to me. I feel like I hit the look.
Lisa Shield [00:31:15]:
I could watch and rewatch and Jack Ryan over and over again, and we are. But you know what? I'm thinking about this right now. He has a very similar shaped face to yours. Isn't that funny? He's got the ears and the kind know cheeks and the strong jaw. That's very funny. No wonder I think he's so handsome. So this is what I started off with in the beginning, is that when a man is on a date with a woman, his antenna are up. And one of the key things, I believe from my own experience, and I would imagine a man is really looking out for are signs of controlling behavior in that woman sitting across from him.
Lisa Shield [00:32:06]:
Let's talk about what some of those things are. Like mind reading.
Benjamin Shield [00:32:13]:
Like mind reading. Like, wow, he should have pulled the chair for me.
Lisa Shield [00:32:19]:
Like, if he were a real gentleman.
Benjamin Shield [00:32:22]:
Yeah. He should suggest a wine. He should ask for the wine list and first ask me what I want, which isn't mind reading, but it's mind reading to expect that. And it's interesting. I just spoke with a client, and this is the opposite. The woman felt controlled, but she sat down at a chinese restaurant, and the guy's one of the guy's favorite restaurant. And she said, I'm going to have that. That looks really good.
Benjamin Shield [00:33:05]:
You don't want that. You want this. This is really good. And she was wondering, should she capitulate? Which she did, and I'm sure the dish was fine, but she felt controlled. So we could just picture that with a reverse scenario where a woman would do that. That would be controlling. Male, female, female, male.
Lisa Shield [00:33:31]:
Yeah. And if that happened, it would put send off alarm bells for you.
Benjamin Shield [00:33:35]:
I've had dinner with a guy that did that. This looks really good. No, I've had this before. We should get this. And we'll share that. And we'll share that. That was the last dinner we had.
Lisa Shield [00:33:49]:
Oh, really?
Benjamin Shield [00:33:51]:
Wow. Because it wasn't fun.
Lisa Shield [00:33:55]:
Yeah. So something like that happened on a date. Yeah. So another one is testing a man. Like, there are women who test men. Like, maybe saying, do you think my girlfriend's attractive?
Benjamin Shield [00:34:16]:
Right.
Lisa Shield [00:34:17]:
Or do you think I look fat?
Benjamin Shield [00:34:21]:
As we joke, does this Bernie's mountain dog make me look fat?
Lisa Shield [00:34:27]:
But women test men. Have you felt that from, like you were being tested?
Benjamin Shield [00:34:35]:
I'd have to think of an example, but absolutely. And little things. And I think that there may have even been underlying resentment on the woman's part, where she was just waiting for something to lash out. And there may have been much more than just that moment that was tested, but that may have been the tip of the iceberg.
Lisa Shield [00:35:01]:
Well, and women will often say little things that they're testing you to see how your answer will be. And they also make men jump through a lot of hoops, and we don't tell you what the hoops are. Now, for example, a woman, like, a great example of a test would be that a woman loves to get good morning and good night text.
Benjamin Shield [00:35:30]:
Right.
Lisa Shield [00:35:30]:
But she doesn't tell the guy. And then when he doesn't do it, she's angry.
Benjamin Shield [00:35:37]:
Or when he does do it, he says, well, finally, I've been waiting for it. And morning after morning. And instead of saying, it was so nice to get your text, it makes my day. When you text me in the morning. I just love it. Whenever you can do it, it would make me feel like such a woman. Yeah.
Lisa Shield [00:36:02]:
No. And they wait, and then they get angry and they decide it's not going to work. We have a great scenario with one of our clients who was a feel the deal kind of gal. She would go on dates and just try to. Is this my husband? Is this my husband? And she had these very specific things that she thought she needed in a relationship. And she's now six months into a relationship with the guardian of her soul. And one of the big things was that she had to wait for. She was waiting this whole time for him to say, I love you.
Lisa Shield [00:36:43]:
And it took a lot of patience on her part and a lot of love and a willingness to notice all of the loving things he was doing for her and appreciate those things and not push him.
Benjamin Shield [00:37:01]:
Yeah. Because she'd be pushing him away.
Lisa Shield [00:37:04]:
Well, and she would have in the past, she would have walked away from the best guy she's ever been with and blown a relationship that is magical. And finally they worked it out. And she said, now they say it so often, it's stupid. I love you. I love you, I love you. So another thing that women do, and we mentioned this a little bit earlier, is we give you the silent treatment. We ice you out.
Benjamin Shield [00:37:40]:
That is horrible. And we talked about it a little bit before where we talked about the withdrawal of love, and that's what the silent treatment feels like. But it's so awful because it's so controlling because you can't talk about it. And so you just sit and you don't even know sometimes what it's about, which I've experienced in other relationships or how to solve it. And it's just like suddenly someone just is silent and turns away and horrible. Horrible. Because there's no resolving it and the person is in complete control when the relationship starts going out.
Lisa Shield [00:38:29]:
Yeah. And I don't think many women understand how quickly men can pick up on these behaviors. Even in the very early stages of dating. If a woman is upset about something and we don't even realize there's a tone in our voice, there is a lack of responsiveness, and a man can feel that. He can feel those nuances just like we can. It's not just women who have those. Women love to talk about how sensitive they are, and highly or anxious women are very sensitive to those nuances, but men are, too. And they can tell if you're in a conversation and they say something and your voice starts to go down, there's big pauses.
Lisa Shield [00:39:24]:
You're not as responsive as you were. And they start to feel like, oh, no, I did something wrong. What did I do? And can I make this woman happy?
Benjamin Shield [00:39:37]:
And sometimes, just in my own experience, it's nothing that the man did wrong, but it may be a moment where the woman feels like she needs to gain control. She may have felt vulnerable. She may have felt past fears, past traumas, and it may just be a reaction to get some control in the relationship.
Lisa Shield [00:40:03]:
Yeah. And one of the worst things is, one of the most controlling behaviors is when anyone makes a mistake in a relationship and the partner cannot move into a place of forgiveness, you may never totally let something go, but if you're punishing somebody and feeling like you have to control the other person because they did something wrong, they may have cheated or done something in the relationship that broke your trust. Not letting this go and holding it over your partner is one of the worst forms of control. And it's easy to understand why people do it. But we had an instance, remember there was somebody who was sharing about, in the mastermind group about a man who cheated on his wife and they had kids. Do you remember this? And she was telling the story. She was there, and at a business dinner or a couple of other guys were there, and this man was heartbroken because he had cheated on his wife, and he told her, and she kicked him out. It broke up the relationship.
Benjamin Shield [00:41:25]:
That's right.
Lisa Shield [00:41:26]:
And he didn't want someone else. He wanted his wife. He wanted his family.
Benjamin Shield [00:41:33]:
Yeah. But now that relationship, unless she begins to let forgiveness into her heart, there'll always be a hierarchy. He will always be hunched over psychologically and apologetic. And that's not a relationship. That's not a relationship that anyone. She doesn't want to have that relationship. He doesn't want to have that relationship. Yet it persists.
Benjamin Shield [00:42:02]:
Yeah.
Lisa Shield [00:42:03]:
And they may need therapy or coaching to get past something like that and rebuild the trust. But a relationship. And there are relationships that are actually stronger as a result of that. I coached a woman whose husband had an affair, and it brought up a lot of things in their marriage that had not been looked at, and it opened up a level of emotional intimacy and honesty that they had never had. And when we spoke, she said, lisa, this was one of the hardest things that's ever happened to me, but it's also been one of the best things we would have never gotten here if this hadn't happened.
Benjamin Shield [00:42:48]:
Yeah. And I've had friends that were on the verge of an affair, and they both had good marriages, but things happen. And they were highly attracted. A woman was highly attracted to them, and the affair never happened. They went to their individual wives and said, look, this is what's happening. And it again opened up their marriage, and it created an even more beautiful scenario.
Lisa Shield [00:43:21]:
Yeah. We think about right and wrong, and that often gives us that feeling of control. This is right, this is wrong. But when you think about Rumi's field, out beyond right doing and wrongdoing is a field. I'll meet you there. When you can live in Rumi's field and where there's room to be human and grow together and navigate the unexpected as a couple side by side instead of as adversaries and opponents, it makes it so much more beautiful. So letting go is an important thing. If somebody makes a mistake, and it may be you.
Lisa Shield [00:44:09]:
By the know the funniest thing. I mean, just on that subject, I've been watching this documentary on HBO about Diana and Prince Charles, and I didn't realize that she was the one who actually cheated first. I mean, there was no forgiveness. Maybe not until the end. I don't know. The crown seems to have made it look like they had gotten to a good place. But she was the one who cheated and she was angry at Charles. He really did have, at least at that moment, an emotional affair with Camilla, and she was the one who cheated.
Lisa Shield [00:44:58]:
So you never know how you're going to feel in a relationship. The statistics used to be that men were the ones who cheated most of the time, and now it's 50 50. So anyone can go down that road. Yeah. And another one is baiting and switching, which I think is hideous.
Benjamin Shield [00:45:24]:
Could you describe that?
Lisa Shield [00:45:26]:
Well, baiting and switching would be a great example from our own. I didn't bait and switch you. A great example in our relationship was we had already said we loved each other, we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. And we were driving in the car one day and you had not proposed to me by any stretch of the imagination, only said you wanted to spend your life with me. And I just assumed that meant that we were going to get married. So I was chatting away and I said, and when we're married.
Benjamin Shield [00:46:02]:
And you said, well, I wasn't planning on getting married. Did you read my dating profile?
Lisa Shield [00:46:09]:
Exactly. Remarried. I wasn't planning on getting remarried. Right. And I stopped because I do listen to you, or I try very hard to listen. One of the things I know about you is that you don't say anything you don't mean. And I said, oh, wow. Well, I did read your profile, but I thought if you met the love of your life and the person you were going to spend the rest of your life with, why wouldn't you get married? And your answer was?
Benjamin Shield [00:46:47]:
What was my answer?
Lisa Shield [00:46:48]:
Well, I just didn't want to get remarried.
Benjamin Shield [00:46:52]:
That's what I thought it was. Yeah. I just want to make sure yeah.
Lisa Shield [00:46:55]:
And I thought, oh. And then I had this feeling, literally, that I was in Vegas and there was a card dealer, and you know how quickly they fan out the cards. And I was like, okay, all of my options were fanned out in front of me. And if I said this, I was going to get this response. If I said this, I would get this response. If I did this, I would get that response. And so I realized that if I tried to convince you, I would be showing you that I was really out for myself and that I was like any other woman you had ever been with, and that was not going to work. And I wanted to be with you.
Lisa Shield [00:47:46]:
I had been married before, and as much as I didn't want to call you my partner forever, my significant other, my boyfriend, I also never wanted to push an agenda with you. And so I just said I would never ask you to go against yourself and do something that wasn't aligned, just to make me happy, and that would make me unhappy. And so if you don't want to get remarried, then we won't get married. And this was the thing. Many women say that as a bait and switch, and then down the line they will try to manipulate or renegotiate, and they say what you want to hear in the moment, but then they don't follow through. And I knew that I would have to. I felt, because I knew your heart, I knew your soul, I knew how much integrity you had and coming out.
Benjamin Shield [00:48:57]:
Of a very difficult marriage.
Lisa Shield [00:48:59]:
Yeah, I knew why you didn't want to want to get remarried. I knew that. And I actually respected you for that. I thought it would be silly to rush into just to blindly say, oh, I want to get remarried again. So I understood. But I also knew you, and I knew that if I genuinely surrendered and just put this in your hands, I felt that eventually you would want to marry me. Why wouldn't you? Because I love you so much.
Benjamin Shield [00:49:35]:
But you never put any pressure on me.
Lisa Shield [00:49:37]:
No.
Benjamin Shield [00:49:38]:
And as our relationship grew even deeper, there's no way that I wanted to call you my girlfriend or my life.
Lisa Shield [00:49:45]:
Partner for the rest of your life.
Benjamin Shield [00:49:48]:
And I'm so proud to call you my wife. But it's also because I had that space, not the pressure. Like, if we're not going to get married, I'm out of here. As so many relationships end.
Lisa Shield [00:50:03]:
Yeah. So what I said in that moment was, I said, if you don't want to get married, then we will not get married. And I said, I will never bring it up to you again because I wanted you to know that I meant that. And I said, if I ever have second thoughts, I will go see a therapist, but I will not bring it up to you. And I knew that if that was your truth, I loved you, and I wanted to be with you, and I would be with you in whatever way it looked like, in whatever way was comfortable for you. But many women will renegotiate. They'll just give it some time, and they'll tell you what you want to hear in the moment, and then they will keep bringing it up, or they'll hint. They'll bring up hints, oh, my girlfriend just got engaged over the holidays, and they'll keep mentioning things like that.
Lisa Shield [00:51:09]:
And that's a form of control and manipulation.
Benjamin Shield [00:51:12]:
And so we spoke about that. There are reasons why people feel they may need control. And we've talked about how the different ways that a woman can be overly controlling, and with the caveat that we could be talking about men in this conversation.
Lisa Shield [00:51:35]:
Can I say one thing? With the manipulation, a lot of times with the bait and switch, men will do something else. They will hold on to that. Like, if I hadn't let go and I had tried to come back and manipulate you, you wouldn't have married. I bet you wouldn't have married me. Men will hold on knowing that a woman wants children or she wants to move in together, and they'll keep giving them enough. They'll stick in the relationship knowing.
Benjamin Shield [00:52:08]:
Right, but knowing that the woman is inflexible and that she's just putting up with him until he comes around.
Lisa Shield [00:52:16]:
Yeah, but some men will stay in relationships with women knowing they want to have kids, and then that will be a constant fight and argument. But they'll hold that when they really should leave.
Benjamin Shield [00:52:29]:
Well, that was my relationship just before I met you. It was a two year relationship. First year was beautiful. And I knew that you wanted kids. And I think every single day of my adult life, I was weighing whether I wanted kids. And sometimes I wanted kids and I was with the wrong person or I was with the right person and didn't want kids. And I just was still figuring it out, and she really wanted kids. So on the anniversary of our first year together, we laid down on the bed and we were talking, and I told her that was the end, but we stayed in it another maybe nine months, which was absolute hell, but I stayed in it, and I knew that she was inflexible, that she was hurt.
Benjamin Shield [00:53:27]:
If we were talking about, I like the color green. You like the color blue? You son of a bitch you don't want to hit.
Lisa Shield [00:53:38]:
But you were absolutely 100% honest that you didn't want kids. We know people who will say, well, I might, I'm not quite ready for them, but I could want them. And so I'm not ready for that yet. And then they come later and say, I don't want this. All right, baby. Thank you so much for joining us today. This was a fascinating conversation about control. I know I learned some things, so I'm sure you did, too.
Lisa Shield [00:54:17]:
These are behaviors that men can pick up on very early on. And believe me, if they've been with a woman who was manipulative or controlling, men are really listening intently and looking for these kinds of behaviors. And the moment they spot them, guys will often move on. And we are so blind sometimes to what we're doing. It's so driven by fear and we don't even realize we're doing some of these things. So hopefully you may have even identified some behaviors you do today by listening to this conversation. If you're a woman and you may be in a relationship with a man who's controlling, who's doing some of the same things, control in relationships doesn't work. There is a better way.
Lisa Shield [00:55:12]:
And if you'd like to learn more, if you are a single woman looking for love, then please go to Lisashield comreserve. You can pop up my calendar and book an appointment to speak to a member of my team about how we can show you how to date better and find the guardian of your soul. So if you want a relationship like this or some version thereof, then please check us out and jump on a call. We would love to help you. Also, you can learn more. You can get on our mailing list by going to lisashield.com. You can get on our mailing list. And also next week, I want to announce if you get on our mailing list, you will get all the announcements.
Lisa Shield [00:56:09]:
I will be doing a live webinar and we will have, after the webinar, it's 45 minutes or it's a master class. Excuse me. I will be there with one of my clients and we will answer questions. So then after the webinar or the master class, we will then spend about 30 minutes answering all of your questions. So if you have questions, that's a great place and time to connect more with me and learn more about my theories and my approach to finding the guardian of your soul. So please get on my mailing list, look out for that live webinar, and finally send your ideas for future podcasts. To podcast@lisashield.com I'm Lisa Shield.
Benjamin Shield [00:57:02]:
And I'm Benjamin Shield.
Lisa Shield [00:57:03]:
And thank you so much for joining us. Bye.