Seductive Coercive Control
Dr Glyn Hudson-Allez
Seductive Coercive Control
Our understanding of coercive control in situations of domestic violence in family situations is now well understood. Often this form of behaviour precedes later aggressive acts, as the desire to control intensifies. Such behaviour may include:
- Isolating the person from their friends and family
- Repetitive messaging or phoning wanting to know where the person is, or who they are with.
- Choosing what the partner may wear to work or social situations.
- Limiting the amount of money the person can have access to.
- Not allowing the person to travel alone, either in their own car or on public transport.
- Being rude or aggressive to the person’s colleagues or friends.
Any form of rebellion against these prohibitions can lead to angry outbursts, sulking and not speaking for days, gaslighting the person’s understanding of the events, and eventually physical punishment.
But there is also a syrupier form of coercive control that can occur within relationships and within families. This is becoming more common, again online, where a lonely person meets another on a dating app and they feel they are in a loving relationship with someone they have never met. Or where one member of the family wants access to another member’s funds and therefore tries to convince them of how reasonable that is. There is no overt aggression behind these demands; actually, to the contrary:
"You know I love you, and I want to be with you, but…”
“If I just had the resources, we could be together for ever.”
“It’s because I love you that I am suggesting this.”
“You know it makes sense, and I just want what is best for you.”
“This wouldn’t be an issue if I didn’t care about you.”
There is a technique to seductive coercive control. They often start off small, drip feeding the request for small amounts of money. They are very convincing in their narratives of the difficulties in which they find themselves, and if you loved them, the way they loved you, you wouldn’t think twice but to offer it. Any resistance to the requests is often met with protestations of how you have misinterpreted what they were suggesting. They weren’t really asking you to give them your savings, release the equity on your property, or changing your will in their favour, they were merely sharing with you the situation they find themselves in. This invokes personal shame and embarrassment in the listener: this person is having a really hard time, I love them and I want to help.
You may share with someone else what has been said, and have been warned that this may be a scam, or a friend/relative with a personal agenda. But instead of making you more cautious, it invokes an outburst to protect the person who is in such difficult circumstances.
But there is also a little nagging doubt in the pit of your stomach:
“What if the funds are not returned as promised?”
“What if I run out of money and my car breaks down?”
The other common technique in this scenario is repetitive processing. Every time you meet or speak online, the same issue is being raised. You want to push that to one side and talk about other things, but they keep bringing the topic back to:
“I would love to, but I can’t afford this”.
It wears you down. You argue with yourself that you are being unreasonable, intransigent, selfish. You may even express this out loud to them, only to be met with a silent, tacit agreement: “Well…”
It can be very difficult to say “no” to someone you love, but it creates a lot more angst for yourself if you delay saying it, or give in because you are so fed up of hearing it. So learn to say: “No. And I don’t want to talk about this anymore” at the earliest opportunity. This will be a test of the validity of the relationship.
