How to Let Go of Control in a Relationship

Sin (including addiction) is never the fault of anyone but the sinner. If someone we love is battling addiction (or any other willful sin), it absolutely is NOT our fault. Our control in a relationship does not include the ability to control another person’s choices. Which is exactly why we have to learn how to let go of control (or at least the illusion of control) in these relationships.

You see, while the sin is not our fault, there are things we can do to either hurt or help the chances of recovery. In the early months of our journey toward healing, I came face to face with one of those issues. I realized I had to learn how to let go of control, and stop trying to manage my husband’s addiction.

My control issues in marriage were genuinely motivated (at least in part) by my desire to “help” my husband succeed. I loved him so much (still do) and could very easily see the things standing in the way of his success, and what he needed to do to overcome them, or so I thought.

And so, of course, I tried my best to force him down the path I believed was best for him. But in reality, surrendering a relationship to God gives the addict a far better chance at success than trying to manage his recovery ourselves. When I finally realized this and gave up control to God things changed, and they changed fast!

Control Issues in Marriage

In the years since our story hit its breaking point God has given us the privilege to work alongside many couples facing off with the monster of sexual addiction. In the process we’ve learned that the compulsive need to micro-manage every step of his recovery seems to be a pretty universal battle for the betrayed wives of sex addicts. So much so that we began to wonder if there was more to it.

Turns out, it’s actually one of the symptoms of betrayal trauma, along with a state of hyper-vigilance which helps the betrayed wife feel as if she is creating safety for herself and a stable environment in which both she and her addicted husband can heal.

Unfortunately, it’s an illusion. In fact, these control issues are doing the exact opposite. Here is something I wrote while we were going through an intensive (a strenuous week of marriage counselling designed to expedite the healing process) as I was trying to process my own control issues in our marriage.

“For some reason it brings me some sort of comfort to believe that it’s my responsibility to “help” Steve figure out exactly what he should be doing in every moment of his recovery.  As if I am his Holy Spirit.  But that is straight up sin! I most certainly am NOT his Holy Spirit! He has the actual Holy Spirit of God living in him, and I’m not it!”

How to Let Go of Control in a Relationship

You see, I think I realized something really important in that moment. It’s something we all need to process and understand if we’re going to have any hope of surviving this life with peace and joy.

There is only one Holy Spirit of the living God, and we are not Him!!!!

Unfortunately, too many of us spend our lives living as if this is not the case. There are two major problems that result:

1. It hurts our relationship with God when we’re too focused on someone else’s heart to hear what He’s saying to our own!
   
   In my own life I have far too often found myself reading the Bible “for” someone else rather than coming before my Lord in humility ready to hear what He wants to tell me. It’s pathetic!
   
   God’s Word is a living, active, and sharp tool in the hands of God’s own Spirit. I need to be divided by it!  I need to allow Him to use it to separate out my own sinful nature and destroy it by the power of the Holy Spirit living in me!
   
   May we all commit today to repent where we’ve gotten this wrong and move forward in humility!
2. It hurts the people we love by getting between them and God. We have the potential to actually silence the voice of the Holy Spirit in their hearts by replacing it with our own.
   
   In my own life, Steve would often look to me for answers about what we “should” do in a given situation when he should have been seeking God for those answers. He looked to me as the “spiritual one” in the relationship and by accepting that role I allowed myself to become an idol to him. YIKES!
   
   I don’t want to be anyone’s idol, and I’m sure you don’t either. We have to repent, friends, and encourage the people we love to listen to the voice of God. It is CRUCIAL to their recovery that they do!

So how do we let go of control? Well basically, by somehow figuring out how to surrender the relationship to God! It all comes down to the same thing we talk about around here all the time. We HAVE to figure out how to really, truly, wholly TRUST Him.

Surrendering a Relationship to God

If we’re going to trust God with the people we love most, we’re going to have to accept a few truths:

1. We don’t actually have the power to make the people we love do what we want anyhow. If we did, we would never have been betrayed to begin with! We can’t control them friends, so we have to stop trying!
2. They never belonged to us to begin with. We are all held securely in the hands of our Heavenly Father, and He is far more capable of taking care of the people we love than we ever were.
3. As much as we love them, God loves our husbands far more than we do. FAR MORE! We can trust that wherever He leads them, it will be for their good and ours! We’re all far better off when He’s the one in the driver’s seat, because He’s the only one who belongs there!

If we can allow those truths to sink down into our hearts, then all that’s left to do is open up those clenched fists and release the ones we love to God.  This doesn’t mean we don’t make boundaries. We still need to do that, but our boundaries will be purely to protect, not to control. There is a HUGE difference!

I hope this prayer of release and surrender will help all of us as we learn how to let go of control!

Prayer of Release and Surrender

“Dear Lord, as I open my hands in surrender, please take this man that I love so much!  Help me. Teach me how to let go of control in a relationship. Show me what that looks like. I admit that I have control issues, and that it scares the life out of me to think about letting go and surrendering this relationship to You. I hate that. I don’t want it to be true, but it still is, and I am so sorry. I need Your help.

The truth is, he is so much safer in Your hands than in mine!  Help me to acknowledge and believe that!  Help me to remember that no matter how much I think I love him, Your love for him is greater.  The love that comes from me is flawed and selfish and tainted by sin!  Your love is perfect.  You want what is good for him even more than I do! 

Even when I think I’m helping him, he is ultimately still in Your sovereign control.  You are good and righteous and faithful!  You created him and you are working and molding him into what You want him to be.  Help me to keep my hands off ! 

Help me learn how I can truly help rather than control.  Give me wisdom as I figure out how to set boundaries that honor You and Your place in our relationship. Help me to be the wife You want me to be. 

Forgive me for trying to take Your place in his life! It was so wrong, and I am so sorry!  Please redeem any damage I may have done in his heart. I renounce any lasting damage that has been done in my heart because of this sin and ask that You cleanse me.  Calm the fears that arise in my heart as I recognize the great pain that could still result from our situation. Help me to trust You! 

Dear God, please, PLEASE, give him victory over the terrible sin that has caused so much pain in our life together!  Make us new and beautiful and use us to bring glory to YOU! 

I love you Lord!

Amen.”