The Desire to Control

There is a line between helping one another in marriage and micromanaging your spouse. Shannon Popkin says she eventually came to a point in her marriage where she realized she had crossed that line. I didn't know that when I was constantly, you know, picking at him about the way he would leave his whiskers in the sink in the bathroom or, you know, not clean up the protein powder on the counter in the kitchen. Constantly, all these nitpicky little things or he wasn't doing it right and, you know, I just, I didn't trust him.

I was over and over and over communicating a measure of disrespect to my husband and I didn't even, I was just trying to make it turn out right. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine.

You'll find us online at FamilyLifeToday.com. Have your attempts to help your spouse cross the line? Have you become a controlling person? We'll explore that subject with Shannon Popkin today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I think, Dave, you and I should probably just say nothing for the rest of the time, don't you think? I don't know what you're thinking, Bob. I want to control this interview. Do you want me to be quiet? I can be quiet if you want me to.

I think there may be other people here who would prefer to control what's going on here. Are you talking to me? Well, are you talking to me?

That's what that sounds like, right? I know. So we're going to be talking about the issue of control, and it's not that guys can't be control freaks, but... Bob, I think you better stop right there.

You're going to go in some deep waters. Do you guys not struggle with wanting to control situations? Well, maybe it's because, by default, guys often do. Maybe we just look at it and we're just living in a culture where it's just assumed guys will take control or they're supposed to or something. I have just observed that this idea of wanting to be in control of your environment, wanting to be in control of your safety and everything, this seems to be an issue that women I have known in my life have, and I'm not thinking of... You're trying hard, Bob, to say this in a very... Can we just stop this conversation?

Maybe. And I think I'm really good at taking control of things. Honey, you really are. I've never met a better woman in control of things than right now. Oh, it's so sad, because this really is a struggle of mine, and I think it is to a lot of women.

And it's going to be great, because it has been, we've said it here on air many times, a struggle in our marriage. So to talk about this, I think a lot of people... Well, not just my wife's the most controlling woman I know. It isn't that.

No, it isn't that at all. We both struggle with it. I think a lot of people do, and that is a tension in probably all marriages, so let's go. Well, Shannon Popkin is joining us to help us have this conversation. Shannon, welcome to Family Life Today.

Thank you so much. Shannon is a wife and a mom from Western Michigan, the other side of the state from where you guys live. She is an author and a speaker and has written a book on this subject, I presume because you recognized at some point this was an issue for you. Yeah, not immediately, though. I didn't realize that I had any control issues. Which I think that's interesting, because I would have said the same thing. If Dave said, you're trying to take control, I was thinking, no, I'm just a leader. I'm good at this. Right. I'm just invested.

I'm just trying to make it turn out right. That's, I think, in general what women feel about taking control. And, you know, a lot of people who have read this book have said, I picked this up kind of for somebody else, so I could give advice or kind of vet it for somebody else and recognize, like, oh, maybe this is something that I struggle with more than I realize. The book we're talking about is a book called Control Girl, and you say in the book that you thought your issues were more anger-related than control-related, and then you got a wake-up call about that. Yeah, yeah, no, anger I definitely recognized. I was reading books about anger and asking friends to hold me accountable, and anger was something I didn't like.

I saw it in myself, and I didn't like it. But one day I was driving in the car and listening to Dee Breston on the radio, on a program kind of like this, and she was talking about how we have these surface-level sins that kind of bubble to the surface, and we see these sins and we recognize them. But sometimes they're tied to this core underlying sin, and she mentioned the sin of control. I think she also mentioned in there anger, and it was the first time that I had ever considered, like, I think maybe my anger is a result of this underlying desire that I have to take control.

So I'm getting mad. I'm losing my temper because of something that I want control of, and I can't get it. And so it was the first time I ever tied those together, and from that point on, I started asking myself, like, okay, when I would feel the anger rising, okay, is there something I'm trying to control here? Or is there something I feel that I'm losing control of?

And more often than not, the answer was yes. I was trying to control something. How would you say, or how did Dee say, control is a sin? Because part of me thinks control is good. You know, I'm leading, I'm taking charge of my life, and yet you're saying that's almost underneath this anger thing. It's a sin.

Explain that. Yeah, so, well, control is wrong when we're taking control of something that is not ours to control. And I think ultimately, if we're trying to take God's place, you know, if we're trying to play God, if we're trying to insert ourselves as God, God's the one who's ultimately in control.

He manages the details, and he oversees the circumstances. And yes, when we're talking about our share, we should take control. We should take responsibility. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control. Self-control, that's right. So, self-control is a healthy thing. It's when we're trying to control other people, trying to control circumstances that are beyond our control, trying to control our environment when that's not our job to do. That's when all of a sudden it starts to get ugly, and we're really rebelling against God's providence when we're trying to take control in those situations, right?

Yeah, and there's kind of an irony with this. We tend to want to control the things that are not ours to control, and then we tend to lose control of ourselves in the same process. So, like, anger for me, you know, I was constantly losing my temper in anger, but it was because I was trying to control the things that were not mine to control. What did that look like in your life when you were trying to get control and you started kind of analyzing this and listening to yourself, watching yourself?

Where did this play out? Yeah, so like I'd be driving in the car and my kids are arguing in the back seats, and I would be like, be quiet, I'm trying to drive here, or I'm on the phone and I don't want the person on the phone to hear my kids yelling in the back, and I'd be getting, like, be quiet, you know? And I'm getting angry, and instead of maybe stopping, pulling the car over or asking the person if I can call them back and taking responsibility as a mom, like, let's train my kids here, you know?

I was losing control. Now, that's an example of something that is mine to control. You know, as a mom, I should manage my children and I should train them to not be screaming at each other and cause me to have an accident in the front seat, right? So that's part of my job, but ultimately I can't control all of the contingencies, all of the details. What is it about driving a car that deals with control, because you don't have control of other people? I'm not sure women deal with the car as much as our spouse. Exactly.

Do you think that's true? Yeah. Like, he's got the control, and I'm trying to control him as he controls the vehicle, right? And so, yeah, I remember reading Four Women Only by Shanti Feldhan and going out for a date with my husband afterward, and I had just read the chapter on, you know, not disrespecting my husband, and there was an illustration about driving and instructions, and I decided to put that into practice. I decided to, on the way to the mall, not give him any instructions, and then when we got there— Did you make it there?

It was, like, novel for me. We did. We made it there, and he did not choose the route or the parking spot that I would have chosen, but he did it without me. And then when we got inside and we sat down at our booth, I decided, you know, to not correct his menu choices or not to sit where he wanted to sit. I just decided, I'm just going to, you know, kind of ride shotgun here on this date. And he looked into my eyes and said, this has been the best date. It was, like, this novel, amazing thing. You know, I think as women, when we take control, especially in our marriages, we don't realize that we're communicating a level of disrespect toward our husbands.

I didn't realize that. I didn't know that when I was constantly picking at him about the way he would leave his whiskers in the sink in the bathroom or, you know, not clean up the protein powder on the counter in the kitchen, and constantly all these nitpicky little things are in parenting, like he wasn't doing it right. You know, I just, I didn't trust him. I was over and over and over communicating a measure of disrespect to my husband. And I didn't even, I didn't, I was just trying to make it turn out right.

I can so relate to your situation because I was doing the same thing. Interestingly enough, I read Shanti's book as well for women only. I actually read it first.

I did. A friend of Ann gave it to her and said, you know, and it was sitting on our kitchen hutch and I saw the subtitle, Understanding the Inner Lives of Your Men. And I'm like, what does this woman know about men? And she started reading, I'm like, read this and read it now. But it was so convicting.

But what it does, it takes you on a journey of helping you to see what you're doing that you've been doing a long time that you didn't notice is very controlling and disrespectful. And so I started gauging my words of, yeah, I was always nitpicking, I was always fixing Dave of what he didn't do or did do. And so I was teaching in a Bible study and said, hey, for five days, let's not criticize or try to control our husbands.

We came back and this one woman said, this was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. She said, my husband is loading the dishwasher. And he always loads it wrong. Like, I know how to load it. I said, so do you, are you the expert? She goes, yes, I am the expert of loading the dishwasher. And I said, did you just let it go? And she said, I did. It was killing me not to say something. I went upstairs, I went to bed and I said, God, this is really hard.

I was victorious in that I didn't say anything. And then she said, but a half hour later I went down and I changed everything and I put it where it should be and then I started the dishwasher, which is, isn't that interesting? Where does that control for us as women? Where does that come from? I think it starts in the Garden of Eden when there was that tree in the middle of the garden. I think it's really interesting God put that tree in the middle, right? Because when I don't want my kids to have something, I don't put it in the middle of the counter or the middle of the room. I tuck it away where they can't see it.

Hide it. And so why would God put that tree in the middle? Like maybe they were brushing past it on a daily basis. I think that tree posed a question as they brushed against it. God was asking, will you live in daily surrender to me?

He's God and we are not. And so when Eve took that fruit, she reached out, she took the fruit and so instead of living in surrender to God, she took control for herself. She bit into the fruit and she became what I call the first control girl. And then God spoke a curse over the whole planet. But there's a little phrase in the curse that is centered on Eve that says your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. And you know, I always thought that was a sexual desire.

It made no sense to me because I thought if women had more of that, their husbands would not consider that a curse. It didn't make any sense and I remember listening to a sermon once by John Piper and he was explaining that verse and explaining that this desire, it's a desire for control. It's a desire that there's parallel language in the next chapter in Genesis 4 where God's speaking to Cain and he's saying, you know, sin is crouching at the door. It's desire is for you.

You must rule over it. And so when you take that meaning back to Genesis 3, you just kind of picture the woman as like the crouching animal, desiring control, wanting to pounce on her husband but not just her husband. This curse that we live under, it affects our marriages, our parenting. It really has its fingers in all of our relationships.

I have a hypothesis that what's behind that, you know, we're talking about the sin behind the sin. I think a lot of women have this thought and men have it too. Again, we're not trying to be exclusive but we want to control because we have the illusion that if we're in control, then we're safe. That if we are in charge, then things won't go wrong because we'll be there to make the right decisions. And it's an illusion because life is not safe, right? Circumstances can come at you that you can't handle. Safety is found when you're surrendered to Christ. It's not when you're in control. And yet this is the idea that if I'm going to be secure, if I'm going to be safe, I have to be in charge. And so I think a lot of what motivates this behavior that you're talking about where it's turn here or do this or go this direction, Mary Ann and I, we will pull into a parking lot somewhere and I will pull into the space and she will just stop and she will go, we are just so different, aren't we?

And I said, what do you mean? And she said, I would have parked way over there, farthest away from the store so I could get my steps in going to the store. I could get more steps and I'm going, don't you want to be the closest to the door?

Isn't that everybody's objective, not Mary Ann? So she has learned over time that these are not things that we should die on and I've learned over time it's okay to park far away and walk a little bit, right? But I do think that there's something about I'm only really safe and secure if I'm in charge. And you just have to recognize, even if you think you're in charge or not, and even when you think you're in charge, that's still no guarantee of safety. Yeah, and Bob, I think this is really particularly an issue with American women because American women have rights and we have money and we have, you know, medical.

We have insurance and so I just think that the facade is thicker. And, you know, God gives us these opportunities where He kind of cuts in, leans in, and gives us these things that we cannot control. You know, He might give us a child that we can't control.

He might give us a difficulty in our marriage. He might, you know, it's the cancer diagnosis or the accident or there are these moments in life where it just becomes painfully obvious that we're not in control. And those are invitations, invitations to reorient ourselves and remind ourselves that He ultimately is in control and we are not, and that is a good thing. It does not bring deep security and peace and joy to think of myself as the one in control. I feel like I'm going to create this peace and security. That's why I reach out and I try to take control and I totally agree with what you're saying.

Like from the parking lot to the, you know, where the kids are going to go to school to all of these different contingencies. I'm trying to manage them because I have an idea in my mind of what the happy ending looks like. And I feel like it's all up to me to keep everything pointed in this direction.

But this facade is not leading me anywhere that I want to go because little by little by little I'm becoming a more controlling woman and it's not pretty. So talk about how this, you've already mentioned it, but I know in our marriage this almost did us in. The control thing that I felt as a husband, you talked about it a little bit, but it is a big deal in marriages. And men can do it as well, right?

It isn't just a woman thing. But, you know, when our book came out, Vertical Marriage, there's a chapter in there called All I Hear is Boo. And it was all about, and I'll cut to the chase because we told it so many times, but, you know, I felt that Anne just booed me when I walked in the house.

And I got applauded everywhere else. So guess what a man does? He doesn't want to come home.

He wants to go. And so some of that was control. The thing that buzzed around the internet when Anne wrote a blog about that was that topic. So many people are like, oh, that's my marriage. Oh, that's my marriage. So you knew this was resonating with especially husbands going, yeah, I've never connected boo or control to disrespect, but that's what it feels like.

And you both talked about it. So how does a woman, you know, we could talk to the men too, but how does a woman get to a place where she backs off like you did that one day in the restaurant that was, you know, an hour or two. How does a woman live that way to really trust her marriage and her man to God and let go of control? I realized early on that I had to back up to, you know, you talked about that moment that the husband comes through the door. And that wasn't the moment that I had to start with. I had to back up to the moments throughout the day when I was thinking about my husband and I was coming across the whiskers in the sink or the protein powder on the counter and I had all these little noises I would make like, and, you know, all these little frustration, you know, I can't believe he put the sheets on sideways, you know, all of these moments. And in those moments, those were the ones where I had to choose to respect my husband. That's our instructions in the Word. It's not a conditional commandment that wives respect their husbands.

We're asked to respect our husbands without contingencies. And so, in those moments that I would come across things that were frustrating to me, choosing in those moments, you know what, I can turn these sheets the opposite direction and rehearsing in my mind all of the ways that I love my husband and all of the wonderful things about him, my gratitude and recapturing those words, you know, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And so, doing the work in the heart and putting a filter on my heart over how I thought about my husband, that was really key. But then also in the way that I speak to him, especially when there's something that I disagree with.

I would totally concur and agree with you because that's where it started for me as well. And as I was trying to get a hold of this and a handle on talking to God about this, I'll never forget this day, I'm folding clothes. And I had just been in this pattern and habit of complaining about Dave in my head. And as I was folding the clothes, I felt this small voice of God whisper to me, what would happen if you would pray for him as much as you complained about him? And it was one of those moments that stopped me in my tracks. And I was kind of in an argument of, God, like, I don't complain.

And then I started thinking, I do complain about him. And so, I started to try to get in this habit. And now that they've done all this brain science, you can see I had created a pathway in my brain of a continual habit of complaining about Dave, of what he should do, of what he wasn't doing and what he could do, instead of going to God and saying, Lord, how do you want me to see him and how can I get control of my mind of taking every thought captive? And it took me a while. Did it take you a while, Shannon? Oh, yeah. I'm still working on it.

You know, we're only talking about this problem in the past as long as it's the past five minutes, right? It's something I'm still definitely working through. But also, when you get to the conflict moments, you know, when there is something that you really disagree about. And so, inviting my husband to lead in those moments when we disagree, that I feel like has really revolutionized our marriage.

What's that look like? Let me tell you an instance. We were driving in the car. See, there's the car again.

There you go. It was the car, I tell you. It's all about the car.

It's so true. We were headed to my daughter's swim meet and my son was in the back and he was really angry because he had not finished his chores and so he was not allowed to go to a friend's house and he had to come to the meet with us instead. And I just, you know, my control girl mama kicked in and I was like lecturing and I was telling him and my husband just leaned over and he said, Shannon, stop. And I said, what do you mean stop? He needs to hear this.

And this is my conundrum with control. I feel like it's the right thing to do. I feel like it's good that I am giving him this instruction. I am teaching him. Yes, he needs to hear this. Like, I'm not doing anything wrong here.

But my heart deceives me in those moments. And so, my husband just leaned over and he said, stop, you are not helping. He is getting more bitter and more angry. You're speaking to him disrespectfully and, you know, moms and their sons, there's a respect conflict there. And so, I was just, you know, he told me just be quiet and he would handle it. And so, I was just sitting in my seat and I was seething and I was angry and I was looking out the side, you know, the window. And I was just thinking of all of the things that I needed to teach my son and why was my husband like putting me on mute.

And then I remembered like, oh, yeah, submission is submission when we disagree on how to proceed. And so, when we got to the swim meet, I just stayed in the car for a little bit. And I let my husband go in with my son and I, you know, just prayed.

I got my heart in the right place. And when I went into the swim meet, my husband had spoken to my son about his, you know, his behavior in the car. And at that point, my son's heart was softened and he leaned over and gave me a little side hug and he said, sorry, mom, I love you. And that was the moment where I was like, you know what, God is so good to give me a partner in parenting, a husband, and someone who sees what I don't see in the moment. So, inviting him to lead looked like staying quiet and getting my heart right, you know, before I just continued to create tension with my son. There are so many moments like that where we as wives, you know, men tend toward passivity and women tend toward control.

That's both of us living out the curse. And so, as women, if we can take the step back with control, we're actually inviting our man to step forward and to not live in that passivity, but to take the leadership in the family. So, I have to presume, and I'll ask both of you ladies this, I have to presume that the impulse to control is still there.

Oh, yes. In our manual for the weekend to remember, part of it says that God will take away the desire to control. And I've told the ladies, God hasn't taken away that desire because that's still there. But the question is, will I act on it?

And it has less of an impact on you today than it had 10 years ago. You've learned how to respond to the desire. So, what do you do when the impulse hits today that helps you? I mean, I'm just imagining your tongue is just completely chewed up because you're biting your tongue over and over again, because the impulse is there and you just have to go, nope, not going to do it.

Is that it? You know, over and over we have the option of caving into ourselves or caving into the Holy Spirit, choosing control for ourselves or choosing to let God be in control. And that has to do with the big situations in life that cause great anxiety and pain and struggle, or that has to do with the little choices in life, like what am I going to say, what am I going to eat, what am I going to watch. I'm either caving in to my desire for control or my desire that God be in control. And little by little by little, as I make those choices, I'm choosing a trajectory for my life. I'm either headed towards the path of becoming an older, controlling woman, or I'm headed towards becoming a beautifully surrendered woman of God. I think, too, it's been amazing to see the fruit of holding my tongue, because I have done damage to Dave and our three sons years ago of just letting my words have their full go and full fury or full fixing mode.

And it made everyone kind of pull away from me. And I've realized, as God has helped me to stop my words that come out, that I've seen this awakening almost of, wow, Mom, we like being around you. And trying to speak words of life instead of words of critique, I think that's made a big difference in my life.

And I would just add 40 years of being married to this amazing woman, she's doing that, she's living that, and it's the most beautiful thing as a man, as a husband watching our sons, life came to our soul. And I have to do, we all have to do the same thing, but when it came back to her being able to step back and say, I'm going to trust God with my men, I'm going to trust God with this situation, we all have to do that. We all have a tendency to take control, and sometimes we need to, but most of the time we need to go, God is bigger, and I can keep quiet, or I can let my man lead, or I can let my, and I'm going to trust Him.

And there's life that comes to the home. Shannon, one of the things you do in the book Control Girl is you identify women in Scripture and the control issues that they had, and I just want to encourage listeners, get a copy of this book, go through it with other women. It'd be a great women's Bible study book to go through together, or maybe you just need to read it with your own highlighter and just say, every time God speaks to you, just underline right there. Go to familylifetoday.com to order a copy of Shannon Popkin's book Control Girl, or you can call us to order. Our number is 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the website is familylifetoday.com if you'd like to order a copy of the book Control Girl by Shannon Popkin, or you can order by calling 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. Now, don't forget tonight at 8 o'clock, there's a small group meeting that's happening. It's 8 o'clock Central Time. It's happening online. Dave and Ann Wilson are going to be hosting a three-week-long small group on their video series Vertical Marriage. You can go to familylifetoday.com for information on how you can join the small group, watch the first session of the video, then join in with people from all across the country. Dave and Ann are going to be leading the group and have a conversation. If you've been looking for something to do tonight, looking for something that will help strengthen your marriage, this is a great opportunity.

Again, 8 o'clock Central Time. The information is available online at familylifetoday.com. This is just one of the ways we are trying here at Family Life to stay connected with you and help you connect with one another during a challenging era, a challenging season in our history. And we want to say thank you to those of you who help make the Ministry of Family Life possible, help make all that we're doing here at Family Life happen. That's those of you who are our monthly legacy partners and those of you who will, from time to time, donate to support the ongoing work of Family Life today. We could not do all that we're doing if it weren't for you, and we are so grateful. Not only are we grateful, but I wish you could hear from the people who are getting in touch with us, thanking us for all that is available through this ministry.

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Go online at familylifetoday.com to donate, or call 1-800-FL-TODAY. And again, thank you for partnering with us in the work of this ministry. We appreciate you.

Now, tomorrow we want to talk about some of the control tactics that are used occasionally, including how we speak to one another, how do we tame our tongue and back off on trying to control the people around us. Shannon Popkin is going to be with us again tomorrow. Hope you can be here as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas. A crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.