For Your Own Good: How Care & Control Can Feel the Same in an Abusive Relationship
I was standing in the 99 Cents Only store holding a plastic mesh bag of ginger root when it hit me—a wave of nostalgia. I was back in the kitchen, watching a man use a small paring knife to cut and peel a piece of ginger for me, for my tea.
“Here, I’ll do it,” he said, “My hands are still clean.”
Such a small act—but it stayed with me for a long time. When things got bad, I would think back to this moment.
The hardest thing to heal from isn’t the cruelty, it’s the care.
I’ve often wondered if I’m unknowingly sending out a bat signal to controlling men. Why do I always seem to end up in this dynamic? Of course, this could just be me blaming myself — what’s wrong with me that’s causing this? But I do wonder if it’s because controlling behavior rarely feels controlling at the beginning.
In the beginning, control can feel a lot like care. They both involve an intense focus and a paying attention — to my actions, my moods, my facial expressions, my happiness or unhappiness.
And all that attention can feel intoxicating.
I recently listened to Carmen Maria Machado’s interview with NPR about her new memoir about an abusive relationship, “In the Dream House.” She talks about trying to reconcile how much society hates fat people, people like her, with how she views herself:
“It’s embarrassing to say I hated myself so much that I believed I didn’t deserve any tenderness or any affection.”
I don’t share Machado’s identity or experience in the world, but I do relate to that deep-rooted conviction.
Tenderness cuts like a knife, exposing me for what I am — a fraud—not this self-contained, independent person that I pretend to be, but the kind of person moved to tears by 99 cents worth of ginger.
It’s fucking embarrassing.
I feel susceptible to care. I know that care is supposed to feel warm and fuzzy, but sometimes it makes me feel like I want to throw up, run away, or both.
I want to name something that I saw at Writers Blok, my most recent experience with care and control: We know better than you do what you need. We know better than you do what’s good for you (closely associated with, “This is for your own good”).
It all starts innocuously enough: What you need are habits and a writing routine. What you need is a specific, tangible goal. I’m here to help you. This is what you are paying for: For me to guide you, teach you, gently push you in the right direction.
I keep thinking about the duality of my experience at Writers Blok. The last full week I was there was themed “Back to Skool.” I used to joke about how Writers Blok felt like kindergarten and then we had a whole week with fruit rollups (which I hoarded), scratch n’ sniff stickers, and even a pizza party.
How does bullying pair with fruit rollups? When you scratch this sticker, does it smell like shame?
And then I was kicked out of Writers Blok for my own good. The founder knew better than I did what was best for me. He even knew better than I did how I felt about Writers Blok. The only thing he admitted to doing wrong was not addressing my unhappiness back in March when he started his “Make Maylin Happy [Again]” campaign.
I’ve never been in any relationship or dynamic as an adult where “I know what’s best for you better than you do” didn’t turn out to be abusive. Usually, it’s used to justify controlling or coercive behavior. It’s often paired with some version of “I see so much potential in you. Just think of what you could be if you would just let me control you / help you / tell you what to do.”
My parents were controlling but rarely caring. They might focus intensely and critically on one aspect of my appearance or behavior, but fail to notice that I was withdrawn, isolated, depressed. My dad was emotionally distant as a rule, but seemed to gain energy and enthusiasm every time he criticized me—and criticism is also a form of control.
Sometimes the intensity of control can feel like a type of care, because at least this person cares about what I’m doing, notices if I’m doing it wrong.
If your parents ignored you or treated you like you didn’t exist, like perhaps you didn’t deserve to exist, it might make sense to see any form of attention as validation. This person sees me. They really, truly see me. And they care.
They care about how I load the dishwasher. They care about whether or not I wear my name tag. They care about how I feel and what I’m thinking, whether I’m happy or unhappy in any given moment. They are tuned in to how I am feeling. They almost care too much.
I wish that we didn’t see care and abuse as diametrically opposed. I wish we didn’t frame toxic masculinity as a lack of care or a lack of nurturing actions. In my experience, these things are not incompatible. They actually go together.
One of the things I’ve tried to parse as an adult is that care doesn’t always equal love, that sometimes care is actually control in disguise, that care and abuse can and do coexist.
If I’m honest about my own trauma, I don’t think I’ve healed from the experience of feeling genuinely cared for by another person. I haven’t recovered care from abuse, and I don’t even know where to start. Turns out that the hardest thing to heal from isn’t the cruelty, it’s the care.
