Understanding Coercive Control
When your life becomes organised around your partner's needs, demands and control
How inequality becomes normalised through everyday interactions
Recognising the difference between difficult relationships and coercive control
A Helpful Starting Point
Many people find it useful to begin with the Conversational Control page before exploring Coercive Control.
It introduces the foundational concepts, patterns and conversational dynamics that underpin Coercive Control and provides a clear framework for understanding the relationship as a whole.
Understanding Coercive Control
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Coercive Control is not simply about conflict, anger or isolated incidents.
It is a pattern of behaviour, a course of conduct, that gradually organises the relationship around one person’s needs, power, and control at the expense of the other person’s equality, autonomy, and well-being.
Often, it develops slowly and can be difficult to recognise from within the relationship itself. Coercive Control operates through everyday conversational dynamics in which one partner switches between Arcing Up and Arcing Down tactics to manage any conversation to their benefit.
Coercive Control begins within ordinary conversations and everyday interactions.
Over time, conversations stop being mutual and become increasingly controlling, adversarial or emotionally unsafe. Conversational Control becomes the norm.
One person gradually takes greater control over:
• what can be discussed
• how issues are handled
• whose needs matter
• and what emotional realities are allowed to exist within the relationship.
Where Coercive Control Begins
Coercive Control does not look identical in every relationship.
Some forms become highly degrading and overt.
Others are quieter, subtler and harder to explain.
Depending upon what they like to control, some will focus their control more heavily on certain areas of the relationship, such as:
• communication
• decision-making
• finances
• sexuality
• social independence
So, the experience of Coercive Control can vary considerably, but the underlying loss of authority over one's own life is the same.
This is what a healthy, equal relationship looks like across all areas of life:
Coercive control systematically removes these rights and freedoms
Healthy relationships rely upon equality: freedom of choice, movement, communication, participation and selfhood.
Coercive Control is a course of conduct in which a partner is targeted with a conversational and behavioural style designed to restrict and reduce their freedom and confidence.
The impact is rarely confined to one area of life.
Communication, social relationships, finances, sexuality, public image and emotional well-being often become interconnected parts of the same controlling dynamic.
Each individual behaviour may appear explainable, temporary or insignificant on its own.
However, over time, the pieces begin to connect.
Many people describe feeling:
• confused or emotionally off-balance
• increasingly responsible for the other person’s moods or reactions
• unable to resolve issues fairly
• isolated from their own confidence, clarity or support systems
Once you understand the attitudinal drivers of Coercive Control, it becomes easier to understand what might happen in each domain of the relationship.
The loss of equality
The Attitudinal Drivers
Understanding What You Are Experiencing
At higher levels, coercive control is driven by an underlying, rigid relational stance characterised by superiority, entitlement and adversarial thinking.
The issue is not simply poor communication skills or unresolved conflict.
The relationship itself gradually becomes organised around one person’s benefit, authority, or emotional position, while the other person adapts, accommodates, or loses ground.
This attitudinal style ensures a retaliatory and punitive response to a partner who stands up for themselves, questions, or 'disobeys' the rules.
Many people struggle to name what is happening to them.
Coercive Control can feel subtle, confusing and difficult to explain because it rarely depends upon one obvious behaviour.
It develops through patterns over time, especially through conversations, emotional positioning and relational dynamics.
Often, the pattern only becomes fully visible when the relationship is viewed as a whole. For example, if you consider the way you are treated in each area of the relationship, the pattern emerges:
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How Coercive Control spreads across the relationship.
What It Does to You
You are no longer living freely within the relationship. You are adapting to it.
You may find yourself:
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second-guessing yourself
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trying to avoid upsetting them
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focusing on getting things “right”
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losing confidence in your own judgement
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feeling emotionally off-balance or confused
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fearing retaliation for not complying
Over time, your attention shifts away from your own needs and onto managing the other person and staying safe.
You are no longer living freely within the relationship.
You are being trained to accommodate, adjust, and adapt to it.
High levels of Conversational Control and Coercive Control can have serious, sometimes dangerous, impacts on a person’s emotional, psychological, social, physical, and financial well-being. Over time, people may experience fear, confusion, anxiety, depression, isolation, loss of confidence, chronic stress, difficulty concentrating, or a growing sense that they are no longer free to fully be themselves.
Many people do not initially recognise the pattern because they are gradually adjusting to changing conditions within the relationship.
Support, Understanding and Next Steps
If you feel unsettled by what you have read, it may help to speak with someone you trust or access professional support.
In some relationships, coercive control can become deeply harmful and, at times, dangerous. It may involve intimidation, monitoring, threats, financial deprivation, stalking, sexual or physical violence, or retaliation if you attempt to resist, leave, or regain independence.
If you feel frightened, trapped, constantly monitored, or afraid of your partner’s reactions or behaviour, it is important to seek support.
If children are involved, seeking support early is especially important.
You do not have to work this out alone.
Please visit the Support Services section below if you need assistance.
Where to Begin
Understanding conversational and coercive control can take time. Some people prefer to begin with practical examples and conversational patterns, while others want a broader understanding of how these dynamics develop across the relationship as a whole.
Below are several ways to explore the ideas further that Dr Torna Pitman has created:
SUPPORT SERVICES
If you are reading this and feel concerned for yourself or someone else, it is important to reach out for support.
You do not have to be certain.
You do not have to have all the answers.
If something feels wrong or unsettling, it is worth taking seriously.
If you are in immediate danger, call your country’s emergency number.
You can also contact the services below for confidential support, information, and guidance.
You do not have to work this out on your own.
AUSTRALIA
Emergency: 000
1800RESPECT — 1800 737 732 (24-hour national sexual assault, family and domestic violence counselling line)
Text: 0458 737 732
Online chat and video call available via the 1800RESPECT website
13YARN — 13 92 76
A national crisis support line for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, offering confidential one-to-one support with trained Indigenous crisis supporters.
UNITED KINGDOM
Emergency: 999
National Domestic Abuse Helpline (Refuge): 0808 2000 247
UNITED STATES
Emergency: 911
National Domestic Violence Hotline:
24/7 phone, chat, and text support (free and confidential)
StrongHearts Native Helpline
For American Indian, Alaska Native, and Indigenous people
Call or text: 1-844-7NATIVE (1-844-762-8483)
Available 24/7, free and confidential
CANADA
Emergency: 911
211 — community services line connecting callers to local domestic violence supports and shelters
Hope for Wellness Helpline (Indigenous people)
Call: 1-855-242-3310 (24/7)
Online chat available
Support in English and French, and on request in Cree, Ojibway, and Inuktitut
NEW ZEALAND
Emergency: 111
Family Violence Information Line – Are You OK: 0800 456 450
(with access to Māori-competent support). A nationwide line that provides information, support and referral to local family violence services. It’s supported by government and NGO collaborations and available across Aotearoa NZ.
