Most women who contact us begin with a version of the same sentence. I am not sure this counts. Other people have it worse. He has never put me in hospital. Sometimes he is the man I married and I do not know which one is real.
That uncertainty is normal and it is not evidence that nothing is wrong. It is usually a sign of three things at once. The thing happening to you came on slowly. It does not look like the dramatic scenes people picture when they hear the word abuse. And you have been told, more than once and by someone you love, that you are imagining it.
This article is the starting point for everything else on this site. It is longer than it needs to be for a simple answer, because a simple answer is what you have already been given by people who did not have time to listen.
Accountability is not the same as control
In a Nigerian marriage, husband and wife are accountable to each other. He asks where you have been. You ask what he spent. You agree how money is used, who handles what, which family obligations are met this month. That is ordinary married life and nobody outside your home has any business calling it abuse.
We are saying this first and plainly because a great deal of advice written elsewhere gets it wrong. Lists that treat any question about money or any question about your movements as a warning sign describe an ordinary marriage and read as interference in it. Women recognise that immediately, dismiss the whole list, and stop reading. Then, months later, they cannot describe what is happening to them because the only language they were offered did not fit.
Three things separate accountability from abuse.
Force
Does it happen because you agreed, or because of what happens if you do not? A couple who decided together that one salary pays school fees have an arrangement. A woman who hands over her salary because the alternative is a week of silence, or a raised hand, or a threat to send her back to her father, does not have an arrangement. She has a rule with a penalty attached.
One sidedness
Does it run both ways? Can you ask him the same questions he asks you, and get an answer rather than an argument about your tone? In an accountable marriage both people explain themselves. In a controlling one, only one person answers and the other one asks.
Fear
Do you change what you say, wear, spend or do because of what the reaction will be? Not because you are being considerate, which is normal, but because you are calculating a risk. Women describe rehearsing a sentence before saying it. They describe choosing the moment to mention that their mother is unwell. That is not consideration. That is a risk assessment, and healthy marriages do not require one.
If force, one sidedness and fear are present, the behaviour almost does not matter. If they are absent, you may be describing a marriage with real problems, which is a different thing and may need different help. Both are worth talking about. Only one of them is what this site is for.
What it looks like in practice
Abuse is usually described as if it were only bruises. Physical violence is the part that is easiest to name and the part everyone takes most seriously. For a great many women it is not where it starts and it is not what wears them down.
These are patterns women describe to us, in roughly the order they tend to appear.
- Money. He controls the entire family income, or you must account for every naira including money you earned yourself. Your business capital is taken as needed and never repaid. This is covered in detail in Financial abuse: when he controls all the money.
- Movement. He decides by force whether you work, study or leave the house. Journeys are timed. You are collected rather than travelling alone.
- People. You have stopped seeing your own family because he will not allow it. Friends have fallen away, each one for a separate and reasonable sounding cause.
- Information. He forcefully checks your phone, your messages, or where you have been. See When the abuse follows you onto your phone for what that looks like now that most of it happens through a device.
- Sex. Declining carries a cost. This is addressed directly in Sexual violence in marriage.
- Reality. You are the only one who apologises, always, regardless of what happened. You have started to think you are the problem.
That last one deserves its own paragraph. Being told repeatedly that your memory is wrong, that you are too sensitive, that you caused it, is a recognised pattern with a name. It is called gaslighting and it is one of the main reasons women stay far longer than they would ever have predicted. We have written about it separately because it does more damage than almost anything else and is the hardest to describe to anyone else.
Why the pattern matters more than the incident
If you tried to explain your situation to a police officer or a doctor and felt that it came out sounding small, you are not a poor witness. You are describing something that is genuinely difficult to describe.
Each individual event, told separately, sounds like an ordinary marriage on a bad week. He said my cooking was bad. He did not speak to me for two days. He took my phone. Nobody hearing those one at a time will understand, because the harm is not in any single one of them. It is in the accumulation, and in the rules that grew up around them.
This is why we ask women to write down the pattern rather than only the events. Not just what happened, but what the rules are. I must send a photograph when I arrive anywhere. I cannot visit my mother without him. I do not mention my salary. A list of rules is often far more persuasive, including to yourself at three in the morning, than a list of arguments.
Coercive control is the name for a pattern held together by rules and consequences rather than by violence. If most of what you recognise is in that paragraph rather than in a list of injuries, start there.
It counts even if
It counts even if he has never hit you. Control over money and movement, threats, forced sex and constant belittling are recognised in Nigerian law under the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act, which names psychological, emotional and economic abuse alongside physical violence.
It counts even if he apologises afterwards and means it. A very good apology is not evidence that it will not happen again. It is usually part of the cycle, and for many women the apology is the most emotionally intense moment of the whole relationship, which is exactly what makes it work.
It counts even if he is under pressure at work, even if his father did the same to his mother, even if he is different when he has not been drinking. Explanations are not permissions.
It counts even if your mother says every marriage has this. Family pressure is often the loudest voice in the room and it is usually well meant. Being well meant does not make it right about your safety.
It counts even if you love him, which many women do, and which is not a contradiction to be embarrassed about.
It also counts if it is not your husband. Abuse from a partner you are not married to, from a fiance, from a former partner who will not accept that it is over, or from a father, a brother or an adult son is still abuse. Abuse by an adult child is common and almost never discussed.
What you can do today, without deciding anything
You do not have to make a decision about your marriage in order to ask a question. Most of the women we work with are not leaving. Some never leave, and we help them anyway. That is not a slogan, it is how the service is designed.
Three things are worth doing whether you stay for another twenty years or leave next month.
Tell one person
Isolation is what makes this dangerous. One person who knows is an enormous improvement on nobody, because it means there is somebody who can tell you next month what you told them this month. If you are not ready to tell anyone who knows you both, tell us. If you are worried about how to raise it with a friend, the article we wrote for the person on the other side of that conversation may help you predict how it will go.
Write it down
Dates, what happened, what was said, any injury, anyone who saw or heard it. Keep it somewhere he cannot reach, which for most women means an email sent to an account he has never heard of rather than a notebook in the house.
A contemporaneous record is difficult to argue away, including in your own head on the days when you are not sure you did not exaggerate. It is also the single most useful thing you can have if you ever apply for a protection order.
Know where you would go
Not as a plan to leave. As the answer to a question you hope never to be asked at two in the morning. A safety plan is a set of decisions taken while you are calm so that you are not taking them while frightened, and it works whether or not you ever use it.
If you are reading this about someone else
If you recognised your sister, your daughter, your friend or a woman at work in this article, the most useful thing you can do is ask her once, plainly, in private, and then believe what she says. The two articles written for you are How to help a friend or sister who is being abused and What not to say to someone experiencing abuse.
Do not confront him. Do not report on her behalf without her agreement unless a child is at risk of serious harm. Both feel like helping and both usually make her less safe.
Questions people ask
Is it still abuse if he has never hit me?
Yes. Control over money and movement, threats, forced sex and constant belittling are all forms of abuse and all are named in Nigerian law. Many women who are seriously harmed are never hit.
What if my family says this is normal?
Families often say stay, usually out of love and out of fear of shame. That does not make them right about your safety. You can listen to your family and still ask somebody else what your options are.
Will you tell me to leave?
No. We are not here to judge anyone’s marriage or to tell anyone to leave it. Many of the women we work with stay, at least at first, and the support is the same either way.
Do I have to give my real name to ask a question?
No. Many women do not, and it does not change the help you receive.
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.
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