How Coercive Control Shows Up in Marriage and Divorce
By Gwendoline Van Doosselaere, CDC Certified Divorce Coach, Founder of Artemis Divorce Coaching
Coercive control doesn't announce itself. It isn't necessarily loud or even obvious to the person living inside it. It's often quiet and subtle.
There's no single incident to name, only a persistent feeling that your marriage is really, really hard. Confusing. Painful, even.
You might not fully recognize yourself anymore and wonder how you got to be the person in the mirror, like you're living someone else's life and the real you is tucked away somewhere deep inside.
Coercive control also doesn't sound like control, at least not at first. It would be easy to spot if your partner came to you and said, "Now I'm going to control you. You can't see your friends or stay late at work."
Instead, it sounds like this: "Ugh, you're hanging out with her again? She's so annoying. What do you even see in her?"
Or: "Work again? You really do care more about your work than this family. The kids are going to grow up thinking all Mommy does is work!"
That's how coercive control works. It flies beneath the radar and often gets missed by those who don't understand it or know what to look for.
Whether you're just beginning to contemplate whether what you're experiencing is coercive control or if you're already months or years into leaving that relationship, this article explains what it is, how it shows up in marriage and divorce, why it is so often missed, and one practical step you can take today.
In short:
Coercive control is a pattern of behavior one partner uses to dominate the other. It limits your freedom, your relationships, your money and your sense of self. Over time, the cumulative toll is that your life and ability to make decisions and have a voice shrink. It does not require physical violence.
It doesn't sound like control and rarely announces itself, at least not at first. It sounds like complaints, care or moodiness, and it shows up in ordinary moments: plans that get revoked, fights that land on important days, a partner who tracks where you go, friends you see less and less.
In divorce, it is often mislabeled as "high conflict." It can continue, or get worse, after separation, including through the court process and in parenting after divorce.
One of the most useful things you can do right now is track the pattern over time, not just the singular incidents.
What is coercive control?
Coercive control is an ongoing pattern of behavior in which one partner dominates the other. They do it by restricting the other person's freedom, isolating them, monitoring them, and punishing them for stepping outside the rules. It happens with or without physical violence.
The term comes from sociologist Evan Stark, whose 2007 book Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life reframed how researchers and courts think about domestic abuse. Stark groups coercive control into four categories: violence, intimidation, isolation and control. He argues it's more common and more devastating than physical abuse alone, yet largely invisible to the professionals meant to help (Stark, Oxford University Press).
Domination is the goal. Punishment is one of the tools.
People often describe coercive control as a partner trying to punish them. Punishment is real and is used to control your choices, your time and your relationships.
Anger, silence, a fight, a withdrawn plan: these enforce the rules. Step outside them and there's a cost. Over time, you learn to stay inside the rules on your own.
How common is coercive control?
Nearly 1 in 3 women in the United States (30.2%) have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner, which includes forms of coercive control and entrapment, according to the CDC's 2023/2024 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (CDC data via Safe States).
What does coercive control target?
The tactics vary endlessly from one relationship to the next. What they aim at is remarkably consistent. In my work with women going through divorce, the details change, but the pattern underneath persists:
Coercive control usually targets six areas of your life:
Your time and movement. Where you go, how long you stay, who you're with. Checking your location, demanding updates, chaos or a mess when you come home from an errand, a night with a friend or a work obligation.
Your relationships. Friends, family, colleagues. Criticizing the people you love until seeing them feels like more trouble than it is worth.
Your money and resources. Access to accounts, spending, work, financial decisions.
Your plans and milestones. What happens and when. Trips revoked at the last minute. Fights that reliably land before a birthday, a presentation or anything that matters to you.
Your sense of reality. What you believe is normal, what you remember, whether you trust your own read on things.
Your voice and your self. Your needs, your boundaries, your identity. Being punished or overridden for having them.
You don't need to catalog every tactic to recognize coercive control. Ask yourself instead: What in your life has gotten smaller, and who decided that? What happens when you ask for something or state a boundary?
Is it coercive control or just a hard marriage?
Not every difficult marriage involves coercive control. Couples fight, and some fights are ugly. The difference is whether one person consistently sets the terms for the other.
Researchers draw this line, too. Sociologist Michael Johnson distinguishes intimate terrorism, where violence or abuse is part of a general strategy of power and control, from situational couple violence, where conflict escalates without being about control (ANROWS summary of Johnson's typology).
Conflict | Coercive control | |
Who sets the rules | Both partners negotiate | One partner decides |
What fights are about | A specific issue | Whether you are allowed to have a say |
Saying no | Both can, without lasting cost | Brings punishment |
Over time | Life stays roughly the same size | Your world gets smaller |
Who adapts | Both, sometimes | Mostly you |
Coercive control vs. narcissism
Narcissism describes a personality trait or a diagnosable disorder. Coercive control describes a pattern of behavior. They can overlap, but you don't need anyone diagnosed to name what is happening. The pattern is enough.
Why is coercive control so hard to recognize from the inside?
Coercive control is hard to see because it's cloaked in everyday language and builds slowly.
It would be obvious if it were all bad, all the time, but it's not. There are good days and kind gestures. That's what makes coercive control so insidious and confusing.
You think it's a spell, a moment. You tell yourself: they're stressed, they've been drinking, they're emotionally immature, it's their childhood. Things will change once they get the raise, once the kids are older, once this project ends. Each explanation may be partly true. None of them explains the whole pattern.
Often the clearest evidence isn't any single thing they do. It's what you do to live around them. You time your requests to their mood. You make rules for yourself, like never raising anything serious after a long workday. You hold plans loosely because they might be cancelled. You stop mentioning your family or committing to evenings with friends.
Those adaptations can look and feel like patience or flexibility. With coercive control, they are often the shape control has carved out of your life.
Signs of coercive control: questions to ask yourself
Do you plan what you say around your partner's mood?
Does your body react to the emotional temperature of the home? Do you notice cycles of being stressed, anxious, or in pain right before a fight or disagreement?
Do plans feel temporary until your partner decides? Can they change on a whim? Are commitments kept with other people or with the kids, but left in ambiguity with you?
Do birthdays, work events or other important days tend to bring a fight? For example, do you find yourself going into a big presentation more perturbed by the explosion you just had at home than focused on what you spent all week preparing?
Are you seeing friends and family less and less? Has your social circle become smaller and smaller? Does seeing, being with or talking about your family always feel heavy, overloaded or burdensome?
Are you criticized for things your partner does themselves?
Do you feel like you're being talked to like a child or someone who's in trouble?
When you express a need or a boundary, does that lead to the biggest blowups? If you state a need, are you told that you're being a nag or oversensitive or too demanding?
Do you feel like a spectator in your own life?
One yes doesn't mean coercive control. Several, especially over a long stretch of time, are worth paying attention to. The pattern is what matters.
You don't have to sort this out alone. This is what Artemis Divorce Coaching supports. Reach out now.
How does coercive control show up in divorce?
Coercive control is concentrated in contentious divorces, and it often continues after separation and long after the decree is signed.
It's common among divorcing couples. In a study of 965 couples in a court-mandated divorce mediation program, just over 90% reported some type of intimate partner abuse (U.S. Office of Justice Programs). A Family Law Quarterly review reports coercive control has been found in 75% of so-called high-conflict divorces (Family Law Quarterly).
It often continues after separation. Researchers call this post-separation abuse. In one UK study, 90% of women reported experiencing it (Hulley et al., Journal of Interpersonal Violence).
The court process can become a tool. Researchers developed a Legal Abuse Scale to measure how ex-partners use legal proceedings to keep control: forcing face-to-face contact, attacking parenting time, filing repeatedly (Legal Abuse Scale, PMC). A 2026 study of 173 divorcing mothers recommends that family courts know how often coercive control occurred during the marriage before a case moves forward (Journal of Family Violence, 2026).
Children can get pulled in. Research on children after separation found that controlling fathers sometimes performed caring, concerned parenting for professionals in ways that hid the control (Laitinen, Katz and Nikupeteri).
How do courts and the law understand coercive control?
The law is catching up, but slowly and unevenly. Courts are still more comfortable with single incidents than with patterns.
In family court, it's often mislabeled. A review in the American Bar Association's Family Law Quarterly found coercive control in custody cases is often misread as mutual parental conflict and that victims of abuse may be labeled "unfriendly" or "alienating" (ABA Family Law Quarterly).
Parental alienation claims are contested. The same review reports that courts sometimes give more weight to alienation claims than to substantiated abuse, and that mothers fare worse in cases with cross-allegations. Other researchers dispute the gender pattern; one study of 500 Canadian cases did not find it (ScienceDirect). This is an active debate.
In the United States, most recognition is civil, not criminal. Hawaii is the only state that has made coercive control a standalone crime. States including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Washington recognize it in domestic violence, protective order or family law frameworks (Psychology Today). In 2026, Colorado began requiring family courts to screen for domestic violence, including coercive control, before deciding custody (Evara Consulting).
In the United Kingdom, controlling or coercive behavior is a criminal offense. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 removed the requirement that partners live together, so the offense can now cover behavior after separation (UK Home Office).
Screening is still rare. One survey found only 11% of family mediators screened for intimate partner violence before mediation. Screening tools that ask about specific behaviors, like the free MASIC-S, identify more abuse than general questions (Resolution Systems Institute).
What does it take to leave a coercively controlling marriage?
Coercive control is still poorly understood by many legal, judicial and financial professionals. Exiting from coercive control requires a specific strategy, one that helps you move through a system that often can't see what you've lived and doesn't inherently understand the risk or potential harm.
At minimum, consider the following:
Separation is a known risk point. It's the moment when control is most threatened, and when safety measures should be in place.
Criminologist Jane Monckton Smith studied 372 intimate partner homicides in the UK and found an eight-stage pattern. A trigger that threatens the controlling partner's control, such as the relationship ending, is one of the stages. Her research also found that controlling behavior, not past violence alone, is a key warning sign (University of Gloucestershire).
Most divorces involving coercive control do not end in violence. But the research is a reason to plan with care rather than announce and hope.
If you are afraid for your safety, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. An advocate can help you make a safety plan. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
Build a team that understands the pattern. That usually means an attorney experienced with high-conflict cases and domestic abuse, a therapist, a domestic violence advocate when safety is a concern, and a divorce coach to help you organize and decide. When you interview professionals, ask how they handle coercive control. Their answer tells you a lot.
Expect it may not stop at the courthouse door. Support for women in this situation tends to focus on the moment of leaving, not the months or years after (Dr. Emma Katz). Plan for co-parenting dynamics, finances and court timelines with that in mind.
One thing you can do now: track the pattern, not just the incidents
A single incident is easy to explain away, by you and by a court. A pattern is much harder to dismiss. Writing things down is how a pattern becomes visible.
Tracking the pattern does three things:
It validates your own experience. When you've long been gaslit, this is critical. You deserve to see and acknowledge the reality of what you've survived.
It gives your divorce professionals a pattern to work with. It helps you explain and substantiate what you've lived through, and plan how to move strategically through divorce and beyond.
It captures evidence that may be useful down the road.
For each entry, note:
The date.
What happened, in plain words. Stay factual.
What came right before it. Had you stated a need or set a boundary? Made a plan? Was a birthday, work event or family visit coming up? Had you spent time with friends?
The impact of their behavior. Did you cancel something, stay quiet, apologize, or stop bringing something up? Did it negatively impact your children, their wellbeing or their ability to participate in something? Document how you or your children felt and the consequences for you and them.
Read back over your notes once a month and season. Patterns that are invisible day to day often become obvious on paper: a blowup that returns every few weeks, or one that lands right before the moments that matter to you.
Keep your notes private and safe. Use a place your partner cannot access, not a shared device or a shared cloud account.
Share it with your team. A written pattern goes beyond general feelings or a vague sense of confusion or of being controlled. It also gives you language for professionals who are used to thinking in single incidents.
You don't need the whole picture to begin. Start with one entry. Over time, the pattern becomes easier to see, and harder for anyone, including you, to dismiss.
Frequently asked questions
Is coercive control a form of domestic abuse?
Yes. Coercive control is widely recognized as a form of domestic abuse. The CDC counts it within psychological aggression by an intimate partner, and in the United Kingdom it is a criminal offense.
Can coercive control happen without physical violence?
Yes. Coercive control can exist with no physical violence at all. Evan Stark, who developed the concept, argues it is often more damaging than physical abuse alone.
Does coercive control stop after divorce?
Often it does not. It can continue through co-parenting, finances and repeated court filings. Researchers call this post-separation abuse.
Can men experience coercive control?
Yes. Research finds coercive control is most often perpetrated by men against women, but women can also perpetrate it, and men can experience it.
How can you tell if it's coercive control or just a bad marriage?
Look at who sets the terms. In a hard marriage, both people push back and negotiate. In coercive control, one person decides, the other adapts, and stating a need or boundary brings punishment.
Should you go to mediation if you've experienced coercive control?
Mediation is not always appropriate when coercive control is present. Talk with your attorney first. Ask any mediator whether they screen for abuse and whether they offer separate sessions.
Where to go from here
Naming coercive control doesn't make the decision for you. It gives you clearer ground to make it from, and a way to explain your situation to the people who can help.
If you want company while you sort it out, join The Support Group, a free drop-in space on Zoom for women navigating divorce.
If you are ready to plan, book a consult to talk through your situation and your next steps one-on-one.
Work with me
If you recognized yourself here, you don't have to build your strategy alone. Book a free consultation or join the free Support Group, a drop-in Zoom space for women walking the same terrain. You deserve support with
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