A Day In the Life of a Coercively Controlled Woman
Many believe that the criminalization of coercive control is an overreach into private relationships — this is why they are wrong.
It’s 5.32pm. I pull into the driveway and walk quickly to the front door. I’m late, I take a deep breath and brace myself. The reprieve is over, 14 hours until I can again drive away to the office, what I refer to in the privacy of my own mind as day release. Tomorrow is Friday.
I hate Fridays.
For years my real workday commenced when I got home from the office. Unlike the law practice that I part-own, where people listen to what I have to say and I can express my opinion without risk of belittlement, home was a place where the floor consisted of eggshells and the atmosphere could be cut with a knife.
Unlike work, where I am valued for my skills and experience, at home I faced a daily enemy, one that sought to erode any fragments of worth that I may have scraped up during my hours away.
I didn’t know it then, but I was a victim of coercive control. My husband was engaging in a pattern of behavior designed to gain complete control over every aspect of my life.
For years the man who had promised to love and protect me spun a web of confusion in which I became more and more entrapped. Gradually, with two steps forward and one step back, he assumed control over my life. Ultimately, after decades, of some good, and many baffling times, I surrendered agency of my life to him.
It was simply easier that way.
A day in the life of a coercively controlled woman.
It’s 5.32pm. I pull into the driveway and walk quickly to the front door. I’m late, I take a deep breath and brace myself. The reprieve is over, 14 hours until I can again drive away to the office, what I refer to in the privacy of my own mind as day release. Tomorrow is Friday.
I hate Fridays.
Without changing out of my suit and heels I go straight to the kitchen to start preparing dinner. I’m in need of a shower and some comfortable clothes but to change would likely trigger his wrath. I’d be accused of dressing up for people I work with and making no effort for him. He ignores the fact that I need to dress professionally for my work as a lawyer, he cares nothing for my tired feet, only for himself, and my role as the woman responsible for meeting his needs.
Back to cooking. He likes bland food, which I hate. Insists on his vegetables boiled and his meat well done. I love cooking, he just wants his meat and veg on the table by six.
And that’s my job.
All the while Jack sits in front of the TV waiting for his bath and dinner, I’m not game to sit and play with him. It’s a good thing I wasn’t another three minutes late. When that happens he makes Jack toast for dinner and carries on as if I wasn’t coming home, like I had deserted them.
Accuses me of stopping on the way home. Is he crazy? I know I’m not allowed to stop. I ring when I leave the office and I have twenty-five minutes to get home. If I’m late and blame the traffic, he will check the app. If my story is not corroborated, there will be hell to pay.
Like yesterday when one of my team was having an issue and really needed to talk to her boss. I didn’t get away until 5.15pm, so I was really late, ten minutes to be precise.
Apparently, I must be having an affair.
Back to dinner, I eat in silence. He tried to get me to talk but what can I discuss? He hates me talking about my work, despite the money it brings in. The only thing he hates more is other people talking about it. He’s still bringing up the conversation we had with a friend at the shops months ago. He made some comment to my husband, about how proud he must be that I made partner within three years, whilst raising our son with all his challenges. My husband smiled through gritted teeth, and I prayed for the ground to swallow me up.
I never asked for praise, I silently pray that no-one will ever say anything nice about me in front of him. Because I’ll pay later, and he will bring it up over and over again. He will accuse me of having an affair, or of making him feel inferior. Any compliment directed my way is an affront to him. He works so hard to keep me small and insignificant, to ensure I don’t forget that my whole existence is dependent on him, that I could never function without him.
Best I remember that.
I can’t talk about our son either. Autism, school, medical appointments are all off-limits.
The only safe subject is him, his work, his feelings, how he has been wronged in his day. What is wrong with me? Why don’t I remember that? He matters, he is the one who is really suffering. It’s hard to be misunderstood like he is. So many people are offended by him, everyone is so sensitive. It’s not his fault he can’t make or keep friends. Building him up is my job, and I can’t even do that right.
Before long it’s bedtime, where the real work begins. Jack is asleep. Hopefully, he stays that way and I’ll only have one to deal with. Sometimes he wakes during the night, for hours. All I want is the morning to come, sleep is a bonus.
But before my husband will depart for his separate room he will require his needs met. He actually says to me ‘this is what I require’. I don’t argue, I’ve tried that before and the consequent sulking, put downs and reminders weeks later of my failings are too exhausting. Yes you can pretend you are raping me, yes I’ll scream no and let you keep going. Yes you can hold me down. Yes you can gag me and make a mess all over my face.
That’s on an easy night, it can be a lot worse. I vomit afterwards, every single time. Then scrub myself red in the shower.
He’s asleep for now.
Now is when I sleep, maybe till 1am, then he will be back, at my bedside. It’s time for my nightly reminder, of how awful his life is, and how it’s my fault. How he is going to kill himself if I leave, or if I don’t change my ways. I need to lose weight he says, it’s embarrassing having a wife who carries too much weight, don’t I ever think about him?
I’m not to cry at his grave he tells me, after all, I wouldn’t help him while he was alive. How do I help?
By looking better, having fewer opinions and remembering that he has needs that I need to meet. And please stop talking about my work and using words he doesn’t understand. Apparently, I do that to make him feel inferior.
He tries to bargain with me, if I agree to anal sex he won’t kill himself, and I have to lose more weight. Sounds like a reasonable deal, except a few weeks ago he forced me and I bled the next day.
At 4am he lets me return to my room and I fall sleep.
Thank goodness I can go to work soon
But that’s right, it’s Friday.
I hate Fridays.
This was a typical, not the best and not the worst day during my life in a marriage marred by daily coercive control.
A relationship where he did all of the above and worse, threw things, broke things, made me feel like he could end mine and my son’s life at any moment. He did these things with enough regularity to keep me terrified, but in-disbursed enough times where he was almost kind, just to keep me confused, and trapped.
He did all this, but he never hit me, not once.
Making coercive control a crime.
Various Australian states are currently debating the introduction of new laws that would make coercive control a crime (1). For survivors it’s way overdue. Overdue because as it stands it isn’t a crime to hold your partner hostage in her own home, to monitor her movements, isolate her from family and engage in intimate terrorism so severe that it erodes her sense of self to the point that she has no idea who she is.
It isn’t a crime to take someone’s life, with all its potential and make it your own, to ravage her life to such an extent that she has no existence outside of the relationship. There are no consequences where a person, usually a man, takes whatever steps are necessary to ensure that she will never have the courage to make his worse fear a reality.
His fear that she will leave him.
Coercive control is an unfamiliar term to many, but what it encompasses is all too familiar to survivors like me, and countless others.
The New South Wales State Government’s discussion paper defines coercive control in domestic and family violence contexts as:
“patterns of abusive behavior designed to exercise domination and control over the other party in a relationship”
It’s a crucial term to understand because it shifts the focus from physical violence to intimate terrorism.
Unfortunately, in the minds of those who oppose the criminalization of coercive control, I was not a victim of domestic violence, because he never hit me.
He didn’t need to. He had coerced me into a place where I lived in constant fear of violence.
Why the controversy?
Across Australia debate is raging. We of course have the usual culprits. Men’s Rights Activists disguised as non-gendered domestic violence awareness groups do all they can to undermine any progress toward the eradication of gendered violence.
Organizations like One in Three and the Brotherhood of Fathers use questionable statistical data to try to convince the community that the prevention campaigns and support services for victims of domestic violence are set up to enable women to use false claims of domestic violence to bring down and hurt men.
They use flawed definitions of abuse and statistics from surveys that were taken for entirely different purposes to attempt to bolster their false narrative.
The false narrative that one in three victims of domestic violence is male.
MRA’s and Father’s Rights Groups are angry about the attention that the potential criminalization of coercive control is receiving.
But what has astounded me with the current debate is not the propaganda of MRA’s and Father’s Rights groups, it’s the ignorant comments of apparently everyday Australians in the comments sections of our major newspapers. Remarks that demonstrate just how desperately we need these laws, together with a comprehensive education campaign.
Because it’s the widespread ignorance of the dangers and devastation of coercive control in intimate relationships that results in victims not recognizing what is happening to them as abuse. The focus on physical assaults, which is the predominate narrative when one mentions domestic violence keeps women trapped in confusing, frightening and life-destroying relationships.
The lack of education leaves concerned family and friends unsure as to whether, and how, they should intervene.
As it stands most people are clueless as to what coercive control is, and the damage it does.
It’s a massively important issue and sadly, large parts of the community are ignorant to its prevalence and damage. Here’s just a handful of comments from readers of The Australian to a recent article about the progress of this much needed legislative change:
Particularly in financial matters it is sometimes essential for one partner to take control. The alternative can be bankruptcy or homelessness. Government needs to keep it’s nose out of peoples personal affairs except in the case of threats or actual violence
and this
Since we are legislating our way to Utopia, we should include the offences of “Not taking out the bins,” “Watching too much sport” and “Failing to put the seat down.”
These comments, and numerous others demonstrate exactly why we need coercive control law and a widespread education campaign to teach the community what it is.
Because clearly very few people truly get it.
Especially women who are living in it, or like me, are trying to piece together the remnants of her life after escaping.
Women are depending on our governments to legislate to protect us, educate our communities, and hold our abusers accountable.
It’s time.
- New South Wales has established a Joint Select Committee on Coercive Control. Queensland has followed suit and set up a task force to investigate possible legislative change. Tasmania has passed legislation to criminalize coercive control and the issue is in early discussion stages in other states and territories.