Is your partner a CCTV camera looming over your head?

You were watering the plants outside the house, and a stranger came up asking the directions for a house in your lane. You both struck up a conversation, and suddenly, you hear your husband asking who is there at the door?

You were cooking a new dish in the kitchen with all the love in your heart for your friends who are going to come home for dinner. Your boyfriend shows up, tries to help you, but ends up instructing you to put only 1 teaspoon salt in the curry. He also instructs you to pour the salad in the bowl that he had taken out from the cabinet.

You were trying to find out your favoarite white shirt from your cupboard while enjoying a great flick on TV. Your wife comes up, starts talking about the things that you were doing during the day time, mandates you to rearrange your cupboard. She says as you never find anything that you need because of your improper ways of setting up your clothes.

All this while, you were enjoying your own company and thought that your partner is busy doing something else in the house. You were enjoying watering the plants, cooking the new cuisine, and sorting out your cabinet. You did not want the company of your husband, boyfriend, or wife, but boom! They turn up every single time you don’t want them to.

Doesn’t it feel like a CCTV camera is looming over your head all the time?

Isn’t it suffocating to have your partner keep a tab on everything you do?

Had I been in such a relationship, I would run, run, run!

miles away…

where the CCTV would not follow me and tell me to come out of the bathroom because it’s been 3 minutes, 43 seconds!

Or at least I would define boundaries.

I don’t want to be in a suffocating relationship ever! I would rather live alone than living with a partner who wants to know the amount of oxygen I inhaled during the day.

I had been in a toxic relationship, and I thankfully quit it in time, because he was the kind of person I am talking about here. He would want to know my whereabouts, would indulge in whataboutry, gaslighting was his forte, and he literally suffocated me in the relationship.

I tried to set boundaries with him, but he was a miserable, workless person. His only job was to hold his power on me because he was a man who was supposed to rule, and I, the mere helpless woman was supposed to be ruled by him. I had never been, and am not the person who allows anyone to control me.

I hate being controlled!

And when I took control from him, he fluttered like a headless chicken.

After a year of misery, when I said, ‘I AM DONE’, I was done forever with him.

I took hold of my life again, regained my confidence that he had demolished, and earned back my existence.

No more CCTV humans in life!

And now I can feel the fresh air!