Interesting question. People do say things like that, but I think they are using "controlling" as an adjective rather than as a verb In those cases. That is, they wouldn't use "controls" or "controlled" as a finite intransitive verb with the preposition "of". In your example, however, you would use a preposition, although I might go for "with" rather than "of". You could also say "he was controlling his girlfriend" without the preposition, but that has a rather different meaning, suggesting everything she did was at his direction, like you control a machine, rather than what I think you are trying to say, which is that he dominated her.