Understanding the difference between caring for someone and controlling them – one asks, the other assumes.
Care vs control: most of us don’t realize we’re doing one while we think we’re doing the other. Hello, my fellow readers! I’m back again with a story about something worth realizing and remembering for the rest of your life.
Don’t worry, this isn’t rocket science. There’s no scientific formula, no complicated theory. It’s simply about the way we treat the people and things we claim to love.
Before you read any further, I want you to answer two questions. Actually, write them down in the comments. I mean it, don’t just skim past them like you skim past terms and conditions.
- What’s your way of treating someone you love, or something you like?
- What emotions do you feel toward that person, place, animal, or thing?
I know, I know. These questions look painfully basic. The kind that makes you groan, “Ugh, do I really have to switch my brain on for this?” But trust me, they’re not as silly as they sound. They’re actually a sneaky little doorway into the truth of your own feelings and, more importantly, into how the other side experiences your version of love.
Because here’s the twist nobody tells you: the way you love someone and the way they experience being loved by you are not always the same thing.
Confusing? Let me uncomplicate it with a story.
The Walk Home
This happened recently, while I was walking back home from the shopping centre with my friend Nico. Now, I like animals genuinely, I do but I like them from a respectful, socially-distanced sort of arrangement. A wag of the tail from across the street? Adorable. A slobbery greeting on my lap? Let’s not.
As we walked, we passed dog owner after dog owner, leashes in hand, poop bags swinging like tiny trophies. Naturally, the conversation drifted from “why do people even want pets” to “how on earth do they take care of them.”
I turned to Nico and said, “Doesn’t it gross you out? These dogs walk around all day on streets full of… let’s just say questionable puddles and mystery stains. And then they trot right back home with those same paws onto the sofa, into the kitchen, sometimes straight onto the bed! How does nobody feel a little yuck about that?”
Nico laughed and admitted he felt exactly the same. Then, with the smug grin of someone about to drop a plot twist, he said, “You think that’s something? I’ve seen people keep pets you wouldn’t even imagine. Go on, guess.”
I thought hard. I really committed to this guess. “…A crocodile?”
Nico stared at me like I’d just proposed marriage to a toaster. “A crocodile? No. It’s a snake.”
“Ohh,” I said, suddenly remembering. “Actually, one of my old school friend had a pet snake too. In a glass cage, in his room. I forgot people actually did that. That’s… kind of shocking, now that I think about it.”
The Moment It Got Real
Up until this point, it was just light, silly banter the kind you have to fill the walk home. But right after that sentence left my mouth, something shifted. I pictured that snake. Not as a “cool pet,” but as a living creature spending its entire life inside a glass box, watching the world happen on the other side of the glass, forever.
I turned to Nico, suddenly a lot more serious than either of us expected. “Nico, imagine the pain of that. An animal that can’t speak, can’t protest, can’t even ask to be let out and we just… decide its whole existence for it. And we call that love.”
I kept going, because once you start pulling that thread, it’s hard to stop.
“Now imagine a human going through that. Trauma. No freedom. No one to talk to. No way to explain what they’re feeling. It sounds extreme, but honestly, don’t we all feel a flicker of that at some point in life? That trapped, voiceless feeling?”
Nico went quiet for a second, the way people do when a joke accidentally turns into a philosophy lecture.
“But here’s the cruelty,” I said. “We do this to animals and sometimes to people in the name of love. We decide our version of love, our version of care, and we hand it to them whether they want it that way or not. A dog kept in a cage because ‘it’s safer.’ A partner kept from their friends because ‘it’s out of love.’ A child never allowed to make a mistake because ‘it’s for their own good.'”
Nico finally said, “So basically… love without asking is just control wearing a nicer outfit?”
“Exactly,” I said. “And that’s the scariest part. It doesn’t even feel like control from the inside. It feels like love. To the person doing it, at least.”
We didn’t have a neat answer by the time we reached my street. Nico just shrugged and said, “Well, now I’m going to feel weird about my cousin’s iguana.”
I laughed, because that’s Nico for you capable of turning a mini existential crisis back into something light within one sentence. But the thought stayed with me long after we said our goodbyes.
Care vs Control: Why ‘Good Intentions’ Aren’t Enough
Here’s the part I didn’t fully understand until I sat with it for a while: intention and impact are two completely different things.
You can love someone with your whole chest and still make them feel small, boxed in, or unheard simply because you never stopped to check whether your version of love actually fits them. Real care isn’t measured by how much you feel. It’s measured by how the other person experiences what you do.
A few quiet signs that “love” might actually be control in disguise:
- You make decisions for someone instead of with them and call it protection.
- You restrict their freedom, friendships, or choices and call it care.
- You expect gratitude for rules they never asked for and call it love.
- You measure their happiness by your comfort level, not theirs.
None of this makes someone a bad person. Most of the time, it comes from fear – fear of losing someone, fear of them getting hurt, fear of change. But fear-based love still cages the person on the receiving end, even when it’s wrapped in good intentions.
Care vs Control: How to Show Up Without Building a Cage
If there’s one takeaway from that walk home, it’s this: love that doesn’t ask first is just a well-meaning kind of control. So how do we actually do better?
- Ask before you assume. Before deciding what’s “best” for someone, ask them what they actually want.
- Check in on impact, not just intention. “I meant well” doesn’t undo how someone feels.
- Let go of the need to control the outcome. Loving someone means accepting their choices, even the ones you wouldn’t make.
- Give freedom the same weight you give affection. A relationship without room to breathe isn’t safe, it’s a smaller cage.
- Watch for the pattern, not just the moment. One overprotective decision isn’t control. A lifetime of them is.
So, Back to Those Two Questions
What’s your way of loving someone or something? And more importantly does it match how they’d want to be loved, or is it just the version that’s convenient, comfortable, or familiar to you?
Because real love is the kind that doesn’t leave anyone pacing behind glass, literal or metaphorical asks first. It listens. It doesn’t just assume.
So go on, drop your answers in the comments. Let’s see how many of us have been living on autopilot without even realizing it.
Until next time, Keep loving – but ask first. 🐍🐾
