Some women describe a marriage in which almost nothing dramatic has ever happened, and in which they nonetheless cannot make an ordinary decision without first calculating the consequences. There is a name for that. It is called coercive control, and it is the part of abuse that outsiders find hardest to see and women find hardest to prove.
What it actually is
Coercive control is a set of rules you did not agree to, enforced by consequences you cannot predict. The rules are rarely announced. You learn them by breaking them.
Over time a woman living inside it stops testing the boundary. She keeps the receipt without being asked. She answers the phone on the first ring. She sends a photograph of where she is standing before he asks for one. She has an explanation ready before anyone requires one.
To somebody watching from outside she looks like a careful, organised person. From the inside it is closer to living in a country whose laws are not published and whose police are unpredictable. You are not being punished constantly. You are managing the risk of punishment constantly, which takes more out of a person than the punishment itself.
That distinction is why this is so often missed. If you ask what he did, the honest answer may be nothing much this month. If you ask what she is not allowed to do, the list runs to a page.
What it commonly includes
Money
One account, in his name. An allowance rather than an income. Being asked to account for small sums while large ones are never discussed. Being given money in front of other people, so that generosity is witnessed and dependence is not. Financial abuse is treated in full separately, because for most women it is the single practical reason they cannot act on a decision they have already made.
Movement
Needing permission to visit your own mother. Being collected rather than travelling alone. Questions about a journey that took twenty minutes longer than it should have. A phone call at a fixed time each day that must be answered.
People
Friends who slowly fall away, each for a separate and plausible reason. Your family described as troublemakers, or as people who never accepted him. Being told that he is the only one who really understands you, which is framed as devotion and functions as isolation.
Information
Your phone checked. Your messages read. Your location shared with him and not the other way round. Passwords known to him and not to you. See When the abuse follows you onto your phone and Keeping your phone and your messages private for what to do about the device without making the change obvious.
Reputation
Being told nobody would believe you, and then being shown that he is charming in front of exactly the people you might tell. This is why so many women say the hardest part was not the marriage but the moment they tried to describe it.
The rules about the rules
The most exhausting feature is that the rules move. What was acceptable last month is now a provocation. Women describe this as walking on eggshells, and what makes it wearing is not the eggshells but the fact that nobody will tell you where they are.
Why it is dangerous rather than merely unpleasant
Control is not a milder form of abuse that sometimes escalates into a real one. Research across several countries has repeatedly found that a pattern of control is one of the clearest warnings that violence may become severe, and that the point of greatest danger is when a woman tries to leave.
The reason is not complicated. A man whose sense of himself depends on your compliance experiences your independence as an emergency. Everything he has built is the arrangement, and the arrangement is you doing what he expects.
That is not an argument for staying. It is an argument for planning properly rather than leaving in a hurry, and it is exactly why we ask women who are thinking about leaving to speak to somebody before the day rather than on it. A woman who arrives somewhere with a plan gets help faster than a woman who arrives at midnight with nothing, and the difference is often several days of stability for her children.
If you are already separated and the contact has not stopped, When he will not leave you alone after you have left deals with what that looks like and what to record.
What it does to you
Women describe losing the ability to make small decisions, because for years every decision carried a risk assessment. They describe standing in a shop unable to choose between two brands of rice. They describe not knowing what they like, having spent a decade organising their preferences around somebody else’s mood.
They describe being unable to explain their own situation to a doctor or a police officer in a way that sounds serious, because each individual incident sounds small and it is the pattern doing the harm.
Some describe a flat numbness that other people read as coping. What happens to your body and your mind under sustained threat, and what tends to happen afterwards, is worth reading even if you are still in it, because knowing the pattern makes it less frightening when it arrives.
Making it visible
Because there is no single incident, the ordinary way of describing abuse fails here. What works is describing the system.
Write the rules, not the arguments
A list that reads I must send a photograph when I arrive anywhere, I cannot visit my mother without him, I hand over my salary on the day I am paid, I do not answer my phone in front of him, is far more persuasive than a list of rows. It is also more useful to a lawyer, because it describes a course of conduct rather than a series of disputes.
Keep it where he cannot reach it
An email account he has never heard of, opened on a device he does not control. Not a notebook in the house.
Note who saw what
Names and dates. A colleague who saw him arrive at your workplace. A neighbour who heard. A relative who was told not to visit. Witnesses to the system are more useful than witnesses to a single evening.
Where the law stands
The Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act names psychological, emotional and economic abuse as well as physical violence, and our plain language guide to it explains where it applies and what it offers.
How a particular court treats a pattern of control rather than a single assault varies, which is exactly why evidence of the pattern matters so much. A woman who arrives with a dated record of rules and consequences is in a materially different position from one who arrives with a description of a bad marriage. Applying for a protection order sets out what a court will want.
Questions people ask
Is coercive control against the law in Nigeria?
The Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act covers psychological, emotional and economic abuse as well as physical violence, and states that have adopted it can act on that basis. How a particular court treats a pattern rather than an incident varies, which is why evidence of the pattern matters. Take advice on your own state.
He says he is just protecting me. Is that possible?
Protection is something you can decline. If saying no to it carries a punishment, it is not protection.
There has never been any violence. Am I overreacting?
No. A pattern of control is harmful in itself and is also one of the clearest predictors that violence may follow, particularly around separation.
How do I explain it to someone if there is no single incident?
Describe the rules rather than the arguments. A list of what you are not allowed to do communicates the situation far better than an account of the last row.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
Also worth reading:
