Lesson 3

In the last lesson, we established that a reflected sense of self—the absence of self-esteem—leads people to regulate the world around them because they cannot regulate themselves. This lesson takes that idea and follows it to its logical conclusion: if you cannot control yourself, you will control the people around you. This isn't a character flaw reserved for "bad" people. It is the default human condition. It is what emotional immaturity looks like in action, and it is operating constantly in nearly every relationship, family, workplace, and culture on the planet.

Using Others: The Default Human Condition

Most people don't think of themselves as "using" others. The word feels harsh, manipulative, deliberate. But using others doesn't require awareness or intent. It simply means that you need another person to do, feel, think, or be something so that you can feel okay. When your partner needs to be in a good mood so you can relax. When your child needs to succeed so you can feel like a good parent. When your friend needs to agree with you so you don't feel insecure. When your colleague needs to acknowledge your work so you can feel competent. These are all forms of using other people as emotional utilities—tools for regulating your internal state.

This is not an accusation—it's a description. It is the starting point for virtually every human being. We are born completely dependent on others for our survival and our sense of self, and most people never fully outgrow that dependence. The dependence simply shifts from physical (I need you to feed me) to emotional (I need you to validate me). The mechanism is the same: I cannot provide this for myself, so I need you to provide it.

Research on emotional regulation supports this. Gross and Thompson's (2007) process model of emotion regulation shows that when individuals lack internal regulatory capacity, they default to interpersonal regulation strategies—attempting to modify situations, other people's behaviors, or their own attention to avoid uncomfortable emotions. Studies by Zaki and Williams (2013) on interpersonal emotion regulation demonstrate that people routinely recruit others into their regulatory processes, often without awareness. The less capacity someone has for self-regulation, the more they depend on controlling their social environment to manage their internal experience.

The uncomfortable truth is that what most people call "love" is often a sophisticated form of using. "I love you" frequently translates to "I need you to keep doing the things that make me feel good about myself." This isn't cynicism—it's a developmental reality. Love that is dependent on the other person's behavior is borrowed functioning. It's a reflected sense of self wearing a romantic costume. Real love—love from a solid sense of self—doesn't need anything from the other person. It gives freely because giving is who you've decided to be, not because you're trying to extract something in return.

Why Trying to Change Others Doesn't Work

Here is the central irony of control: trying to change other people actually makes them less likely to change and more likely to resent you. This isn't speculation—it's one of the most well-documented findings in psychology. Reactance theory, first described by Jack Brehm (1966), demonstrates that when people perceive their freedom is being threatened, they experience psychological reactance—a motivational state that drives them to restore their autonomy, often by doing the exact opposite of what's being demanded.

Think about what happens when someone tells you what to do. Even if the suggestion is reasonable, something inside you resists. Not because the idea is bad, but because you didn't choose it. Your autonomy was threatened. Now multiply that by years of a partner nagging, criticizing, or pressuring you to change. Research by Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination Theory (2000) consistently shows that externally motivated change is shallow and temporary. People only sustain genuine change when the motivation is intrinsic—when they decide to change because it aligns with their own values, not because someone else is demanding it.

What makes this so insidious is that the person doing the pressuring genuinely believes they're helping. They think if they just explain it clearly enough, criticize enough, or express enough disappointment, the other person will finally "get it." But the other person doesn't experience this as help. They experience it as control. And their natural response is to resist—not because they're stubborn, but because their nervous system is designed to protect their autonomy. The result is an escalating cycle: the more you push, the more they resist, the more you push harder, the more they resent you, and eventually one of you gives up—not because the problem was solved, but because someone was exhausted.

Meanwhile, the person trying to control isn't really trying to help the other person grow. They're trying to change the other person so that they feel more comfortable. This is borrowed functioning with a moral veneer. "I just want what's best for you" usually means "I need you to be different so I can feel okay."

The Two Sides of Control

Control doesn't always look aggressive. It has two faces, and most people only recognize one of them. The overt controller is easy to spot: they demand, criticize, intimidate, and pressure. They regulate themselves by bending the world to their will. "Do what I say or I'll make you uncomfortable." But there is an equally powerful and far more common form of control: covert control—people-pleasing, over-accommodating, walking on eggshells, and suppressing your own needs to keep the peace.

The people-pleaser isn't passive—they're controlling. They are carefully curating their behavior to produce a specific response from the other person: approval, calm, closeness. "I'll be what you need so that you give me what I need." This is manipulation through self-sacrifice. The other person doesn't experience genuine connection because they're not getting a real person—they're getting a performance designed to extract a specific emotional outcome. Both the overt controller and the covert controller share the same fundamental problem: they cannot regulate their own internal state, so they manage other people's behavior to do it for them.

Need vs Want: The Heart of the Issue

To understand why immaturity leads to control, you need to understand the difference between an emotional need and a want. This is not about biological needs—you obviously need air, water, food, and shelter. This lesson is about emotional need: the internal experience of requiring something from someone else in order to feel okay. And this distinction changes everything about how you relate to other people.

An emotional need is a demand disguised as a feeling. It says: "I cannot be okay unless you do this." It carries urgency, desperation, and an implicit threat—if you don't meet my need, something bad will happen (I'll withdraw, I'll rage, I'll fall apart, I'll leave). A want says: "I would prefer this, and I'm okay either way." It carries openness, honesty, and respect for the other person's autonomy. The same desire can be expressed as either a need or a want—what determines which one it is isn't the content, it's the energy behind it. It's whether you can tolerate the other person saying no.

When you need something from someone, you become reactive. Your nervous system treats their refusal as a threat. You escalate, manipulate, guilt-trip, or shut down—not because you're a bad person, but because your system is in survival mode. You literally cannot tolerate the gap between what you want and what you're getting. This is reactivity, not grounded responding. It's the reflected sense of self in real time: I need you to do something so I can feel okay, and when you don't, I cannot regulate myself.

When you want something from someone, you can ask for it clearly, hear "no" without collapsing, and continue to function as a whole person. You still have preferences. You still have desires. You still have standards. The difference is that your internal stability doesn't depend on whether those preferences are met. You respond from your values, not from your wounds.

Need vs Want in Relationships

The need-vs-want distinction isn't academic—it plays out in every relationship you have, every day. The difference between a need-based reaction and a want-based response determines whether a conversation becomes a connection or a conflict. Here are concrete examples:

Where Boundaries Come In

An important clarification: operating from want rather than need does not mean you tolerate everything. It does not mean you have no standards, no deal-breakers, and no limits. In fact, boundaries are easier to set and maintain from a want-based position than a need-based one—because when you're operating from want, you're not terrified of losing the person.

Consider: your partner repeatedly dismisses your feelings when you try to have a serious conversation. A need-based reaction might be to explode in frustration, issue an ultimatum you don't mean, or quietly abandon the topic to avoid conflict (covert control). These reactions come from the fear that if you push too hard, you'll lose them—and you need them. A want-based response is: "When I bring up something important and it gets dismissed, I feel unseen. I want a relationship where both of us can be heard. If that's not something you're willing to work on, I need to think about whether this is the right relationship for me." That last sentence is a boundary, not a threat. The difference is that you mean it—not as leverage to force change, but as a genuine statement of your values. You want this relationship, but you don't need it so badly that you'll abandon yourself to keep it.

Here's another example: a family member consistently makes disrespectful comments. The need-based reaction is to either blow up (overt control) or swallow it and seethe (covert control). The want-based response is: "I love you and I'm not willing to be spoken to that way. If it continues, I'm going to leave the conversation." And then you follow through—calmly, without drama, without guilt. The boundary isn't about controlling the other person's behavior. It's about honoring your own values. You can't make them stop. But you can decide what you're willing to participate in.

This is the mature position: I will be who I want to be. I will treat you the way I believe people should be treated. And I will not participate in dynamics that require me to abandon myself. That's not controlling the other person. That's controlling yourself—which is the only person you were ever supposed to control.

What You Lose When You Try to Control Others

The cost of trying to control other people is staggering, and most people never count it. You lose authenticity—because you're performing rather than being. You lose intimacy—because real closeness requires two autonomous people, not a controller and a controlled. You lose respect—both from the other person (who resents being managed) and from yourself (because on some level, you know you're operating from weakness, not strength). And you lose the very thing you were trying to get: a genuine connection with someone who freely chooses to be with you. Nobody freely chooses someone who's holding the relationship hostage.

Research by Gottman (1999) found that the single greatest predictor of relationship failure isn't conflict itself—it's the presence of contempt, which arises directly from the pattern of unmet needs and escalating control. Couples who can tolerate differences, self-soothe during conflict, and accept influence from each other without losing themselves are the ones who last. In Schnarch's terms, these are people with a higher level of differentiation—people who have moved from need to want, from reactivity to grounded responding, from controlling others to managing themselves.