Coercive control: recognising it and getting free

1. Before you begin

At first it was intense and flattering. He wanted to know everything about you, to do everything together. Then came the remarks about your friends, your clothes, your family "who don't have your best interests at heart". The questions about your schedule. The anger when you came home late, and the apologies afterwards, with flowers. Today you check his mood before speaking, you hardly see anyone any more, you ask permission to spend a few pounds, and you wonder whether, in the end, it isn't you who is too sensitive.

Or you are the parent, the friend, the colleague of someone who has changed, who no longer answers, who seems frightened, and you don't know how to help.

Three things, straight away.

What you are experiencing has a name, and it is not your fault. Coercive control is a way of dominating a person by isolating them, monitoring them, putting them down, frightening them and controlling their daily life. It does not come from a weakness in the person subjected to it: it comes from the method of the person using it. Strong, intelligent, highly educated people find themselves caught in it.

There can be violence without hitting. Control, threats, repeated humiliation, surveillance and deprivation of money are forms of violence. In many countries psychological violence in relationships is recognised by law, and some have made coercive control an offence in its own right.

Leaving is a process, and it needs preparing. Many people make several attempts before leaving for good. That is not failure. And the time of separation can be a period of increased risk: it is prepared with help, not on impulse.

2. What coercive control is

A system, not an incident

An argument that gets out of hand, a hurtful word in anger, an evening of shouting do not make a controlling relationship. What defines coercive control is a set of repeated behaviours, which reinforce one another, and whose effect is to deprive a person of their freedom: to see whom they want, to use their own money, to dress, to work, to think for themselves, and often to feel safe in their own home.

The sociologist Evan Stark, who put forward the concept of coercive control, stresses that what does the most harm is not always physical violence, but the gradual loss of freedom. In France, the psychiatrist Marie-France Hirigoyen described emprise, a hold one person gains over another: a process by which one person takes power over another, until the latter loses confidence in their own judgement.

Conflict and control

The sociologist Michael Johnson showed that very different realities are grouped under the words "domestic violence":

• In some couples, arguments escalate sometimes into violent acts, often on both sides, without one partner dominating the other in general.
• In others, one partner exercises general control over the other, by a range of means, with or without physical violence. It is this form that is associated with the most serious violence, injuries and homicides.

These two situations have neither the same risks nor the same solutions. What distinguishes them is not whether there are arguments, but fear and loss of freedom.

What it is not

• Two partners who argue loudly but can each say no, see their friends and use their money without being afraid of the other. For these situations, our programme Arguing less, talking better can help.
• A jealous partner who suffers and asks too many questions, without forbidding, monitoring or threatening. Our programme When jealousy takes over the relationship discusses this, and explains when jealousy tips into control.

How many people are affected

According to World Health Organization estimates, about one in four women who have been in a relationship has experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner in her lifetime. Psychological violence and control are more common still, and harder to measure. Men are also victims, and often talk about it less.

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