No matter how intensely intertwined you find yourself with another person, your relationship is affected many times more by the thoughts that are moving around in your own mind than by the other person who is moving around in your house or in your life experience. That is why it is so interesting to us to see people working so hard at controlling one another while working very little on controlling their own thoughts and perceptions — especially since they have no real control over another and they do have complete control of their own thoughts and perceptions.
People often believe that they would feel so much better if their mate would just change in this way or that way, but that truly is a backward approach to things. When you say, “I’ll feel better if you will make this change in your behavior or personality”, what you are actually saying is, “My happiness is dependent upon your willingness and ability to modify your behavior; therefore I am powerless.” The reason why so many people are so hard on those they live or interact with is because everyone inherently wants to be happy, but they also believe that their happiness is dependent upon things over which they have no control.
In the beginning of most new relationships, things go along rather well, since both of you are predominantly looking for positive aspects of the other. And, in the beginning, both of you are unnaturally forcing yourself to work harder at pleasing the other. But when you behave from the vantage point of trying to please another rather than from the point of personal alignment, you set yourself up for a great moment of trouble, for it is not possible to hold someone else’s desires as the center of your attention, because as a creator, you simply are not wired that way.
By trying to please others, you encourage the distorted idea that someone else is responsible for their happiness, which, in the long run, disempowers them and makes them unhappy. We could accurately say that the harder you try to make others happy, the more unhappy they become because they are dependent on behavior outside of themselves over which they have no control rather than being in alignment within themselves, over which they have complete control.
So, by holding your mate as your object of attention — telling yourself how much you love her and how important it is to you that she is happy — and then by trying to control her happiness through your actions, it is no wonder that you feel smothered, because this impossible task requires an enormous amount of your time and attention.
Also, in most cases, the more you try to control circumstances in order to enhance the experience of others, the more dependent they become on your behavior, and in time, the more demanding they become. You are innately such independent Beings that the more dependent you become, the unhappier you become. Interesting, is it not, that your intentions were to make another happy, but instead, you have encouraged less happiness?
Your only chance of influencing another to happiness is for you to truly be happy. And the only way for you to truly be happy is to achieve the state of vibrational alignment between you and You.