Lasting Effects of Coercive Control
I went to bed late last night hoping for a solid night's sleep and a lazy Saturday morning. I had a bit of a rough night sleeping, so when my dog woke me up at 6:00 a.m. I gave him his favorite treat and slipped back into bed to catch a few more winks. A couple hours later I started to wake from a deep sleep as if I was extricating myself from quick sand. I awoke fully to the realization that I was crying real tears - they were pouring down my face and had drenched my pillow.
The dream that woke me was of my son and his girlfriend recounting to me his proposal. He went on to describe what was important to him in their relationship moving forward, counting off 5 points on his hand. I don't recall what the first 4 were, but they were very complimentary to her. When he got to the last point he paused and looked at me and said to his girlfriend, "Its because of this woman right here that I want you to have independence and autonomy and to be able to pursue your goals and dreams." there was more dialogue in the dream from them about this, all positive, but it's dissipated from my memory by now. I just remember my heart swelling for them and that I started crying real tears for me and all that has been lost over the years. I was instantly taken back to palpable hopelessness, fear and grief.
Coercive control entered my life when I was 9 years old, at the hands of who I've renamed "My Evil Stepmother". I've long since developed sympathy and compassion for her life experience, but because she persists in her dysfunction, we have been no contact for decades, more or less when she left my dad. She entered my life when I was 6 or 7, I believe, and things were great until she got pregnant and moved into our house. This started the darkest time in my life.
Over the next several years she would verbally and physically assault me, isolate me from family and friends, to include my birth mother, and control literally every aspect of my life. She made sure all of my needs went not just unmet, but deliberately neglected. Through a series of very calculated manipulations, she forced me out into the world completely unprepared at 18, and she ensured that I not have the support or means to obtain a college education. The family did have the financial means at the time, due to a recent sizeable inheritance. I also had the smarts and motivation, which was something that she had always resented.
Being on my own at 18, unprepared for life with little guidance and cut off from my family, I went through a series of relationships. By the time I was 23, I had already been married and divorced, and was pregnant by a man I had been with for less than 6 months. One of the most poignant memories I have from our first meeting is that I didn't like him; some alarm deep in my psyche sounded off. But, he charmed me, swept me off my feet, and quickly provided the stability that I was lacking in my life.
Within a year of meeting him, he had control of my vehicle, my bank account, my credit, where I lived, and my medical care. I had dropped out of college to follow him away from any supports I had built since being on my own. He was skillful at using my own beliefs, as well as my hopes and dreams against me. Dreams of moving to a quaint coastal town, buying a house and working part-time to be able to stay home with our new baby...he made it all happen. He also promised that I would be able to go back to school one day soon.
After our first son was born, things started quickly turning sour in our relationship. I took my baby for a weekend visit to my recently divorced father. The time away gave me some perspective, and my dad promised to help me leave if that's what I wanted. When I returned, I laid out my concerns and what I needed to stay in the relationship. He was very apologetic and agreeable, and proposed marriage, which was not something I had asked for. I declined the proposal for the moment, stating that I wanted to see real change first. Within a couple months, I was pregnant again, forced to quit my job, and he had doubled down on the control he had over my life. Once I discovered I was pregnant, I agreed to getting married; in fact I demanded it.
The period of time after our second son was born is probably the second darkest time in my life, and by far the worst period of time in our relationship. He was so good at coercive control that he convinced me that all of the unbearable conditions in my life were my idea or somehow my own fault. I had no where to really go, a high school education, spotty work history, two babies, and was recently diagnosed with Crohn's disease. Despite having a full time job, he made sure I was still completely dependent on him. He was very good at telling me everything I wanted to hear, gaslighting me, and playing my emotions against me. But the threat of physical violence was ever present, I was desperately lonely, more isolated, and post-partum depression had me suicidal.
After discovering an infidelity on his part, followed by an ultimatum to him to work on our relationship, he agreed to marriage counseling for a period of months. The couple of years after marriage counseling I had always thought were the best two years of our marriage. But again, he was very good at coercive control, and I again found myself further isolated now in another state away from my family, he controlled every aspect of our lives, he continued to have relationships outside our marriage, I was suffering deep neglect, and again I was contemplating not only suicide, but homicide. I did not ignore this very loud alarm bell. This time I left, with no looking back.
That was 15 years ago. Even then, coercive control was not widely known or talked about. Emotional abuse wasn't a common term yet. He had never physically abused me, so people weren't really sympathetic or understanding. Why didn't you just leave? Things got worse for a while, but then I started to heal, and support eventually rallied around me. I started consuming self-help literature, journaling, and went to therapy when I could afford it. It wasn't until a couple years after leaving that I even started to acknowledge that I had been abused. I'm still learning about the depth of his planning and intricacies of his control.
But I left with little money, a mountain of debt I didn't incur, low credit scores, a vehicle I didn't own, no rights to any assets, no higher education, and two teen age boys to parent. He did everything he could to both make my life as difficult as possible and to engineer us reconciling through my own desperation and his love bombing. Fortunately I didn't fall for it and continued to heal from both of the diabolical relationships that had conspired to put me at a disadvantage in life.
I was raised in the '70's and '80's, when women were still expected to primarily support the lives of their husbands and children. Inequality in pay, education, and little access to healthcare and other services outside of a marriage were accepted norms. My own father, in 1987, said I should pursue a husband in college, not a degree. The churches my stepmother dragged me to instilled sacrifice and subservience to men as qualities a woman should aspire to. So I found not one, but two husbands, and did exactly as I was raised to do. It wasn't just my step-mother and my husband that caused damage and held me down, but the very structure and systems of our society and culture have worked against my healing and recovery.
Today, 15 years later, I'm still cleaning up the wreckage of the psychological abuse and the financial abuse. During these 15 years, I've been hospitalized twice, changed careers, had to move several times, I battle cPTSD, depression and anxiety as well as manage my chronic illness. But most painful of all, I lost my younger son to suicide 7 years ago, also a by-product of his father's abuses.
I am painfully aware of how the lack of higher education has limited my ability to earn an income that will support me into retirement. I am angry about the fact that coercive control prevented me from establishing my stake in shared assets and later fighting for them. I am also deeply saddened by the grief of what I could have done in my life and the person I could have become, had I been nurtured and supported early in life and in my marriage(s).
So now, I am passionate about women pursuing education, financial independence, and equal shares of combined assets in a marriage and a divorce, especially if she is the primary caregiver of shared children. I've been vocal about it to my son and his girlfriend both. My son is now 30, and only just starting to grasp what my experience was in the relationship with is father. He's only just now starting to fathom the impact that experience is still having on my stability today and into the future.
Most days I'm good, in fact I'm really great. But sometimes on a random Saturday morning I wake up in tears, awash in the shame, helplessness and desperation I felt in my abusive relationships like it's happening in real time. That is the power and residual effect of coercive control in a person's life.
