When Love Becomes Controlling

In coercive controlled relationships, the same person causing emotional harm may also become the person providing comfort afterward, explains Tanvi Singh.

Key Points: Coercive Control Facts

• Hidden Abuse: Coercive control often operates through manipulation, fear, guilt, and emotional dependency rather than physical violence.
• Disguised As Love: Controlling behaviour is frequently mistaken for deep care, protectiveness, or emotional intensity in relationships.
• Emotional Isolation: Victims may slowly withdraw from friends, family, and support systems to avoid conflict with their partner.
• Mental Health Impact: Coercive control can trigger anxiety, hypervigilance, self-doubt, and emotional exhaustion over time.
• Healing Takes Time: Recovery involves rebuilding self-trust, emotional safety, independence, and supportive relationships.

When people think of abuse in relationships, they often imagine visible violence, shouting, or physical harm. But some of the most psychologically damaging relationships are much quieter.

They unfold slowly, through emotional pressure, fear, manipulation, surveillance, guilt, dependency, and control so subtle that the person experiencing it may not even recognise it initially.

• ALSO SEE: What is a Trauma Bond?

This is known as coercive control. 

What Are The Signs Of Coercive Control?

Coercive control is not usually one dramatic event. It is a repeated pattern of behaviour where one person gradually gains power over another person's emotional reality, choices, boundaries, routines, and sense of self.

The goal is not just conflict or dominance during arguments; it is control over how the other person lives, thinks, behaves, and feels.

What makes coercive control particularly dangerous is that it often begins disguised as love.

The controlling partner may initially appear deeply caring, emotionally invested, protective, or intensely attached. They may constantly want updates, become upset over delayed replies, question friendships, dislike certain people in the partner's life, or slowly begin influencing how the other person dresses, spends time, or communicates.

Many of these behaviours are socially normalised as signs of 'deep love.'

This is visible in films and series that portray obsession and control as romance. In the Netflix series You, Joe Goldberg constantly monitors, isolates, manipulates, and psychologically controls the women he claims to love. He frames surveillance and possessiveness as care and emotional protection.

While the show presents an extreme version, it accurately demonstrates how coercive control often operates through emotional dependency, monitoring, guilt, and gradual isolation.

A more subtle example can also be seen in the Hindi film Kabir Singh or the more recent Telugu film The Girlfriend. While the former film generated significant debate, many mental health professionals pointed toward the controlling and emotionally volatile dynamics portrayed in the relationship.

Intense possessiveness, emotional aggression, blurred boundaries, and the normalisation of destructive behaviour in the name of love reflected patterns that many people experience in unhealthy relationships.

The problem is that society often romanticises emotional intensity without questioning whether the relationship feels emotionally safe.

Over time, coercive control changes the psychological environment of the relationship.

The controlled partner may begin modifying their behaviour to avoid conflict. They may stop expressing disagreement, become anxious about upsetting the other person, withdraw from loved ones, or constantly monitor the emotional state of their partner. Many people describe feeling like they are 'walking on eggshells.'

This has significant mental health consequences.

Why Coercive Control Is Bad For You

From a psychological perspective, coercive control gradually pushes the nervous system into a prolonged survival state.

When someone is constantly trying to prevent emotional explosions, guilt, withdrawal, anger, or manipulation, the brain becomes hypervigilant. Emotional regulation becomes harder. Anxiety increases. Decision-making weakens. Over time, the person may lose confidence in their own judgment and begin doubting their perception of reality.

This is why coercive control can become deeply confusing for the person experiencing it.

Why Do Couples Stay in Such Relationships?

People often ask: 'If the relationship is unhealthy, why don't they just leave?'

But coercive control rarely functions through fear alone.

These relationships often involve cycles of affection, apology, reassurance, emotional dependency, guilt, hope, and instability. The same person causing emotional harm may also become the person providing comfort afterward. This creates powerful emotional attachment and confusion, often referred to as trauma bonding.

In a trauma bond, your partner makes it hard for you to leave the relationship. In coercive control, s/he creates an environment to trap you in the relationship.

In many cases of controlled relationship, the victim would slowly become isolated from emotional support systems. Their self-worth may reduce gradually, and they may begin believing they are responsible for the other person's reactions or emotional well-being.

Healing from coercive control is therefore not just about physically leaving the relationship.

Even after leaving, many people continue experiencing anxiety, hypervigilance, guilt, emotional numbness, difficulty trusting themselves, or the urge to return despite recognising the harm. This is because coercive control affects not only emotions, but also the nervous system and sense of identity.

How to Heal and Recover From Coercive Controlled Relationships

Recovery often involves rebuilding self-trust, reconnecting with supportive people, restoring independence, seeking psychological support, and slowly learning that love should not require fear, emotional shrinking, surveillance, or loss of selfhood.

Healthy relationships can involve conflict, emotional complexity, or difficult phases. But they should still allow both individuals to feel respected, emotionally safe, and free to remain fully themselves.

Because control, even when disguised as care, is still control.

• How to identify a toxic relationship? Ask rediffGURUS HERE!