Relationships are full of issues and road bumps. Some are silly and messy and part of being young and figuring out how to get it right. Some have the potential to be more dangerous and harmful. Coercive control falls into the second category. 

This article is part of our new series on healthy relationships, sponsored by Love Better. 

Coercive control is a pretty serious-sounding term, and you might know it better as “controlling behaviour”.  

It’s things like being told who you can hang out with, how late you can be out and what you should be eating or wearing.  

It’s repeated behaviours that make you feel shit. Like you might be going nuts. Like you've lost yourself. It can happen slowly, and you might not know where it begins.  

Sexual harm prevention organisation RespectEd defines coercive control as “a pattern of actions and attitudes that consistently harm, undermine, or manipulate others. It’s not just a bad day or a momentary lapse in judgment”.  

The Love Better team says a key thing about controlling behaviour is that it’s “ongoing, repetitive, cumulative”. 

Of course, not all behaviour that you don’t like in a relationship is controlling behaviour.  

Sometimes a partner simply isn’t right for you, and you have a clash of needs or boundaries.  

People can have preferences that are extremely different and incompatible, and relationships can be unintentionally harmful and leave us devastated.   

But coercive control is designed to isolate, dominate, and wear down someone’s sense of self. 

There may be many reasons for controlling behaviour, whether it’s learned behaviour, driven by a sense of entitlement to power, or the result of insecurity, but it is never the victim's fault.  

So, what does coercive control look like?  

According to the Love Better team, “coercive control is super personal or specific to the person experiencing it. Their vulnerabilities are picked out and focused on”.  

This makes it difficult to define outright, but RespectEd explains that you may experience some of these behaviours: 

• Moving very fast in the relationship and receiving an intense amount of affection or attention early on (which is often called “love bombing”) from someone you don’t know well.  

• One-sided emotional labour. You often find yourself supporting them and exerting yourself to manage their trauma and emotions without much support in return.  

• Your partner uses your vulnerabilities or things you’ve shared privately to make you feel bad about yourself.  

• They isolate you from friends, family and people who love you – this can look like shit-talking or criticising them to you, making you believe they’re bad for you or making it awkward to see them.  

• They push the idea that no one else understands you or will love you like they do.  

• They behave in ways that you wouldn’t expect or accept from your close friends, like shouting at you or calling you cruel names.  

• They tell you you’re unattractive.  

• They denigrate or undermine you for something that’s part of your identity and you can’t change, like your culture, gender, race or sexuality. 

• They criticise something about you that they originally framed as a positive, like your confidence or sense of humour.  

• They excessively monitor your location or the messages on your phone. They will often push the idea that it’s about loyalty and respect.  

While there may be signs that seem obvious from the outside or in retrospect, often controlling behaviours sneak up on us.  

It’s not always going to look like someone slamming a door or shouting in your face – at least at first.  

Sometimes, controlling behaviours can even look like love 

For instance, according to relationship expert Eleanor Butterworth, it can be a negative sign if someone is “wanting to spend all their time with you, either physically or over the phone and messages”. 

Eleanor specialises in the prevention of family and sexual violence and has worked in these areas across government, sports and frontline family and sexual violence services. 

She says excessive concern about your life, like constant advice, telling you how to improve, or judging people you love and value as not good enough for you, may be a sign of control.  

“From a distance, this might look like your partner wanting you to do well, stay safe, achieve your goals. However if the way they express concern is to tell you what you should and shouldn’t be doing, even ‘for your own good’, it is about control and a belief they can do a better job of living your life than you can.”  

The way your partner treats you can look like love, and sound like love, but only you can determine if it feels like love.  

Check-in with yourself: 

• Who makes the rules in your relationship and do they apply to everyone in it? 

• Do you feel frightened about the consequences of not following the rules? 

• Does your relationship make you feel good?  

• Does your partner make you feel confident?  

• Do you feel safe in your partner's company?  

• Does your partner make it tense, or awkward, or scary to bring up things that are making you uneasy? 

• Do you ever feel like you are walking on eggshells around them, or unsure of how they will react to something? 

It’s crucial to trust your gut feelings if your relationship doesn’t make you feel good.  

Doubt, self-hatred and distress are important to take note of.  

The Love Better team says “it’s important to understand that it’s rarely about one single behaviour or one fight, but about patterns of behaviour and consistency in who is making the rules of the relationship”.   

In a safe relationship, you’ll feel supported by your partner, be able to make your own decisions (and be comfortable with your partner making their own choices), and have conversations with your partner when there are problems.  

Whether unsafe or simply unhealthy and unhappy, if those things are missing, you’re not living as you could be.  

If any of this resonates with you, check out more on lovecreep.nz 

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