Why do married people say that their spouse does not allow them to do something?
I’m still trying to figure out why a married person would say their spouse won’t let them do what they want to do. I don’t know why they admit to being so controlled and seem proud of it instead of ashamed.
When Carrie told me that Tom wouldn’t allow her to do this or that, it was always in a conversation between the two of us. She’s married, I’ve always been single. Did that have anything to do with it?
Tirachard Kumtanom / Pexels
In the VandeHei profile, however, Autumn explained her power over Jim’s life decisions in an interview that she knew would be in the WashingtonPostand probably read by tens of thousands of people regardless of marital or relationship status.
I don’t know why married people admit to being controlled in this way and seem proud of it instead of being ashamed of it.
Why don’t people like Carrie and Autumn instead boast about how equal they are in their marriage, how their spouses don’t control them in the slightest, and how they haven’t lost any of their freedom because of their marriage? I might expect that, even if it weren’t true.
In Single at heart: The power, freedom and heart-filling joy of single lifeI describe the freedom that the single person has in his heart and values. In response, some married readers claim that they also have freedom. I understand this reaction. I don’t understand why people brag about their lack of freedom.
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a long time, but I’ve never been able to find an answer to my question about why married people do this. I think they see it as a sign of marital status or something, but I really don’t know.
Bella DePaulo (PhD, Harvard) is the author of the award-winning Single at heart: The power, freedom and heart-filling joy of single life. She has been writing the blog “Living Single” for Psychology Today since 2008 and her TEDx talk “What nobody told you about singles,“ has been viewed over 1.7 million times.
