Who’s the Boss? : In the Age of the Control Freak, the Iron Hand Rules

IS IT MY imagination, or is this the Age of the Control Freak? I’m standing in front of the triceps machine at my gym. I’ve just set the weights, and I’m about to begin my exercise when a lightly muscled bully in turquoise spandex interrupts her chest presses to bark at me. “I’m using that,” she growls as she leaps up from her slant board, darts over to the triceps machine and resets the weights.

I’m tempted to point out that, while she may have been planning to use the machine, she was, in fact, on the opposite side of the room. And that her muscles won’t atrophy if she waits for me to finish. Instead, I go work on my biceps. Life’s too short to fight over a Nautilus machine. Of course, I’m not a control freak.

Control freaks will fight over anything: a parking space, the room temperature, the last pair of marked-down Maude Frizon pumps, even whether you should barbecue with the top on or off the Weber kettle. Nothing is too insignificant. Everything has to be just so.

Just so they like it. “These people compulsively have to have their own way,” says Los Angeles psychologist Gary Emery. (And it isn’t enough for the control freak to win. You have to lose.) “Their egos are based on being right,” Emery says, “on proving they’re the boss.”

But how many bosses can one world take? It’s gotten to the point where you can’t make a simple telephone call without winding up in a heated game of one-upmanship.

“What gets me is when some person with absolutely no power has his secretary call and say, ‘Please hold for Mr. Drek,’ ” my sister complains. But Laurie, a publicist who is on the phone all day, knows how to put spin on the ball, too. “I hang up,” she says smugly. “And when the secretary calls and says, ‘We seem to have gotten disconnected,’ I tell her that I hung up. And then I say, ‘Have Mr. Drek call me himself. I don’t have time to hold.’ Then he sends me a fax message because he’s too scared to talk to me, and I know I’ve scored a victory.”

Perhaps a Pyrrhic victory. “Control freaks are overconcerned with the means, rather than the end,” Emery says. “So it’s more important that the string beans are the right kind than it is to just enjoy the meal.”

“What do you mean just enjoy the meal?” scoffs my friend Marc. “There’s a right way to do things and then there’s everything else.” It goes without saying that he, and only he, has access to that Big Right Way in the Sky. And that Marc lives alone.

“I really hate to be in any situation where my control over what I’m doing is compromised,” he admits. “Like if somebody says, ‘I’ll handle the cooking and you can shuck the corn or slice the zucchini,’ I tell them to do it without me.”

A control freak’s kitchen can be his or her castle. “Let me show you the right way to make rice,” said my husband the first time I made the mistake of fixing dinner. By the time Duke had sharpened the knives, rechopped the vegetables into 2-inch squares and chided me for using the wrong size pan, I had decided to surrender all control of the stove. (For the record, this wasn’t a big sacrifice. I don’t like to cook.)

“It’s easier in a marriage when you both don’t care about the same things,” says Milton Wolpin, a psychology professor at USC. “Otherwise, everything would be a battle.”

And every automobile would be a battleground. There’s nothing worse than having two control freaks in the same car. “I prefer to drive,” my friend Claire says. “But no sooner do I pull out of the driveway than Fred starts telling me what to do. He thinks that I’m an idiot behind the wheel and that I make a lot of stupid mistakes.”

She doesn’t think he drives any better. “I think he goes really, really fast, and I’m sure that someday he’s going to kill us both,” she says. “And I complain about it constantly. But it’s still a little easier for me to take a back seat. I’d rather get to pick him apart than get picked on.”

My friend Katie would withstand the abuse. “I like to control everything,” she says. “From where we’re going to eat to what we’re going to eat, to what movie we’re going to see, what time we’re going to see it, where we’re going to see it, where we’re going to park. Everything!”

But you can’t control everything. So much of life is beyond our control. And to me, that’s what makes it interesting. But not to Katie. “I don’t like having my fate in someone else’s hands,” she says firmly. “If I take charge, I know that whatever it is will get done and it will get done well.”

I shuffle my feet guiltily. Not too long ago I invited Katie and a bunch of friends out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. It was a control freak’s nightmare. Not only did I pick the restaurant and arrange to pick up the check, but Duke also called in advance and ordered an elaborate Chinese banquet. I thought Katie was going to lose her mind.

“What did you order? I have to know,” she cried, seizing a menu. “I’m a vegetarian. There are things I won’t eat.” Duke assured her that he had accounted for everybody’s taste. Still, Katie didn’t stop hyperventilating until the food arrived. “I was very pleasantly surprised,” she confesses. “And I would trust Duke again.”

So would I. Because I’d never take control of a party menu.

“I’m sure there are areas where you’re the control freak,” says professor Wolpin, “areas where you’re more concerned about things than your husband.” Me ? The champion of laissez-faire ? “You get very upset if you find something visible to the naked eye on the kitchen counter,” Duke reminds me. “And you think you know much better than me what the right shirt for me to wear is.”

But I’m just particular. I’m not a control freak.

“A control freak is just someone who cares about something more than you do,” Wolpin says.

So what’s wrong with being a control freak?