It's more about her

Hard-core proper-bad controlling is a thing, I don’t mean to minimize that here. I am speaking from my personal experiences only. I often think that Susan controls her own environment and that people in her environment are collateral damage.

Mopping the floor

If she mops the floor, she’s important. She has a sense of purpose and it is something she can be admired for.

If I mop the floor I take that away from her. Because I can do it too, she’s no longer special and won’t get the resulting praise and thanks associated with the heroic feat.

The result

She prevents me from mopping the floor. Control.
But if you think about it, that was more about her than me. She’s controlling her own environment. She’s securing her territory just like cats do. Controlling me is a bi-product of that.

”Prevents me”…

When I say she “prevents me”, what I of course mean is that she has a full-blown temper tantrum about it. She’ll enforce a lifetime ban on me using the mop. She’ll claim I made a useless job of it. Then she’ll get all martyr-complex on it and mop it “properly” herself just to prove that I made a bad job of it.

Sigh!