I sometimes wonder whether we have become better at recognising coercive control legally than we have psychologically.
Over the last decade, we have made important progress. Coercive control is now recognised in law, awareness has grown and conversations about emotional and psychological abuse have rightly become more visible. Yet I often find myself asking a slightly different question:
Have our beliefs about relationships evolved at the same pace as the legislation designed to protect us?
I am not convinced they have. Throughout my career, working with both survivors and perpetrators of domestic abuse, I have learnt that coercive control rarely enters a relationship in a way that is immediately recognisable. It does not usually begin with obvious threats or violence. More often, it develops slowly and can initially appear to be care, concern, protection or love.
Someone may want to know where their partner is because they “worry.” They may question who they are speaking to because they “care.” They may discourage certain friendships because they believe those people are a “bad influence.” Individually, these behaviours can be easy to dismiss or explain away. Over time, however, the boundaries of what feels normal can begin to shift.
By the time someone realises they are living in a controlling relationship, their confidence, independence and sense of self may already have been gradually worn down. The change can happen so slowly that it becomes difficult to identify when concern became control, or when love began to feel like something that had to be managed carefully.
What concerns me is that many behaviours sitting on the same spectrum as coercive control are becoming increasingly normalised within modern relationships.
We now live in a culture of almost constant access. We can see when someone was last online, whether they have read our message and, in many relationships, exactly where they are. Location sharing has become routine. Immediate replies are often expected. Privacy can be treated with suspicion rather than understood as a healthy and necessary part of being an individual.
None of these behaviours are abusive in themselves. Context always matters. Two people may happily choose to share their locations or stay in regular contact without either person feeling pressured, monitored or restricted. The concern begins when choice disappears, when one person feels they must comply to prevent anger, accusations, punishment or conflict.
What interests me is the way culture can subtly shape our understanding of what love is supposed to look like.
When does checking in become checking up?
When does reassurance become surveillance?
When does closeness become control?
These questions matter because coercive control is rarely about one isolated behaviour. It is about patterns, power and the gradual erosion of another person’s autonomy. It is about someone slowly losing the freedom to make choices, express opinions, maintain relationships or live without constantly considering how their partner may react.
I also believe we need to widen this conversation beyond individual relationships.
Young people are growing up in a world where social media, pornography, influencers and online communities can shape their understanding of intimacy before they have experienced healthy relationships for themselves. They are being shown countless versions of what relationships supposedly look like, yet they may receive very little guidance about what emotional safety, mutual respect and healthy boundaries actually feel like.
At the same time, emotional literacy remains largely absent from our education system. We spend years teaching children how to pass exams, yet far less time helping them understand how to cope with rejection, regulate difficult emotions, repair conflict, respect boundaries or recognise manipulation.
Many young people enter relationships without ever having been taught the difference between jealousy and care, intensity and intimacy, possession and love. The culture surrounding relationships has changed dramatically over the last twenty years. Our conversations about prevention have not always kept pace.
As a psychotherapist, I have become increasingly interested in the conditions that allow coercive control to develop, rather than only focusing on the point at which it becomes visible. Responding to abuse is essential, although prevention requires us to ask different questions.
It asks us to consider how our beliefs about love, power, masculinity, femininity and relationships are formed long before anyone enters an abusive relationship. It asks where those beliefs come from, who is shaping them and what messages we continue to accept without question.
Domestic abuse will always require legal protection, specialist intervention, education and public awareness. Those conversations remain vital. I also wonder whether the next stage of the conversation needs to be cultural.
We need to talk more openly about the behaviours we romanticise, the warning signs we minimise and the unhealthy dynamics we sometimes describe as passion, loyalty or love. Preventing coercive control cannot only begin once someone is frightened, isolated or trying to leave. It must begin much earlier, with how we teach people to understand respect, trust, boundaries, emotional responsibility and autonomy.
Perhaps we need to spend less time asking how abuse begins and more time asking what kind of relationships our society is quietly teaching people to build.
The question I keep coming back to is this:
Are we paying enough attention to the culture surrounding coercive control, or are we waiting until control has already become abuse before we begin to take it seriously?
With clarity and heart,
Paula | Your Heart Therapist
