By Mark Ryan, BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist
If you are in danger now, call 999. If you want to talk to someone about control or abuse in a relationship, the National Domestic Abuse Helpline is free, confidential and open at any time on 0808 2000 247. You do not need to be certain what is happening before you pick up the phone.
Two couples can both describe themselves as fighting constantly. One of them is dealing with a communication problem that couples therapy is built to help with. The other is dealing with something the law in England and Wales treats as a criminal offence. From inside a relationship, and from outside it, the two can look much alike. Telling them apart matters, because it changes what kind of help is right.
I have written before about the signs that point towards emotional abuse and what does not necessarily belong in that category. This piece goes a step further into one distinction, between coercive control and ordinary relationship conflict. It is written to be careful and not to blame anyone. Most couples who argue are not abusive, and many people who read about control worry unnecessarily that their own relationship fits. A few people read it and recognise something they have been living with for a long time. Both are welcome here.
What ordinary conflict looks like
Most conflict between partners does not fit the picture people imagine when they hear the word abuse. Johnson's well known typology separates situational couple violence, which arises out of particular disputes, from intimate terrorism, which is part of a general pattern of control. A meta analysis of 149 studies that used this typology found that the markers of control, jealousy and power were stronger risk markers in clinical samples such as shelters and offender programmes than in general population samples. The authors suggest that the typology may be best thought of as a continuum, with control making violence more severe, and they call for interventions to be tailored to the level of violence (Love et al., 2020).
You do not need the academic terms to use the idea. In my experience, ordinary conflict is specific to a dispute, runs in both directions and settles, even when it is frequent, loud and painful. What it does not do is strip one partner of independent access to money, contact with other people or confidence in their own judgement.
Plenty of couples arrive at therapy frightened that their arguments mean something more sinister is happening between them. Shouting, slammed doors and things said in anger that both people regret are not, on their own, evidence of coercive control. A couple who both raise their voices over money, both apologise afterwards, and both still see their own friends and make their own decisions the next day are having a hard time. They are not living inside a controlling dynamic. That is much closer to the ordinary feeling of not being heard by a partner than to anything organised around dominance. What I listen for is whether the pattern has a direction to it that only ever runs one way.
What coercive control is
Coercive control is a sustained pattern in which one person gradually takes over another person's choices. It is usually built from isolation, intimidation, belittling and the day to day management of ordinary decisions, and not from any single dramatic act. It does not need physical violence to be present, although the two often go together. What defines it is its direction and its scope. Money, movement, contact with friends and family, what someone wears and what they believe about themselves all become areas where one partner's say slowly crowds out the other's.
A review of the evidence by Evan Stark and Marianne Hester makes some points that are useful for ordinary readers. Coercive control is not a type of violence, and the level of control predicts a range of poor outcomes once thought to belong to physical abuse, including violence after separation. The review also notes that the dynamics of control differ between male same sex couples and lesbian couples (Stark and Hester, 2019). In practice this means control is worth taking seriously even when no one has been hit, and that it needs to be recognised in LGBTQ+ relationships as well as straight ones.
This is structurally different from situational conflict. It is not organised around a dispute that flares up and settles. It is organised around keeping one person's say above the other's, continuously, whatever either of them happens to be disagreeing about that week.
The law in England and Wales
This distinction is not only clinical. Since December 2015, controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship has been a specific criminal offence in England and Wales, under section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. The offence needs behaviour that is repeated or continuous and that is controlling or coercive, between people who are personally connected, such as current or former partners, spouses, civil partners, relatives or parents of the same child. The behaviour must have a serious effect, meaning it makes the person fear violence on at least two occasions, or causes serious alarm or distress that substantially affects their usual day to day activities. The maximum sentence is five years in prison. Since April 2023 the offence no longer depends on the two people living together.
Guidance around the offence recognises that single incidents can look unremarkable. A restriction on spending, a demand to account for your whereabouts or a rule about who you can see might each seem minor, or even reasonable, on its own. What matters is the cumulative pattern and its effect, which mirrors how this shows up in therapy. Nobody describing control from inside it tends to open with one dramatic incident. They describe a slow accumulation of restrictions that, taken together, added up to losing control over their own life.
I mention the legal definition because it is a useful anchor and not because this is a legal advice piece. If a pattern would meet that threshold, that is a strong signal it is coercive control and not a couple who simply argue badly. If it would not, it may well be something conflict focused work can help with, whatever language either of you has been using to describe it.
Why the same words get used for both
Part of what makes this confusing is that everyday language has flattened the distinction. A partner in a controlling relationship and a partner in an ordinary, badly handled argument might both use words like control, gaslighting or toxic. Those words have moved from clinical and legal vocabulary into everyday speech faster than most people's sense of what they were built to describe. Someone in a conflictual but not controlling relationship is not lying or exaggerating when they reach for that language. They are using the vocabulary that is culturally available for distress, and it happens to have been built for something more specific and more severe. For that reason, the words someone uses to describe their relationship are a weaker signal than the pattern of what is happening in it.
Why it is not obvious from outside
Friends and family often cannot tell these apart, and neither can the couple, at least not easily. A couple in situational conflict can sound alarming from the next room, with raised voices, harsh words and sometimes language borrowed from therapy or social media that makes things sound more clinical than they are. A controlling relationship, meanwhile, can look calm to everyone outside it. Control does not need volume. Some of the most entrenched patterns involve no visible conflict at all, because one partner stopped contesting anything long ago.
The clearest marker is not how loud things get. It is symmetry. In situational conflict both people are frustrated, both sometimes behave badly, and both keep a working sense of their own autonomy even in a bad patch. In coercive control the traffic runs one way. One person's world keeps contracting while the other's does not.
A useful if uncomfortable question is what a year of the relationship has done to each partner's independent life. Has one person's circle of friends, financial independence or confidence in their own judgement grown or stayed roughly the same, while the other's has visibly shrunk? That kind of asymmetry, tracked over time and not judged from a single week, tends to tell you far more than the volume or frequency of any argument. It is usually easier for someone outside the relationship to notice than for either partner to see from inside, which is part of why an outside professional's read can differ from either partner's account. Neither of you need be lying. Both of you may simply be too close to a slow accumulation to measure it.
A few questions can help you take stock, whoever you are in the relationship.
Do I need permission, or fear a reaction, for ordinary things such as seeing a friend, spending money or going out?
Has my circle of friends and family shrunk over the past year or two?
Do I spend a lot of energy predicting someone's mood so that I can stay safe?
When we disagree, can both of us say no, and can both of us repair afterwards?
Am I frightened of this person, and not only frustrated with them?
Several yeses to the first four, and above all a yes to the last, are worth taking to a trusted person or a specialist service.
Coercive control is a sustained strategy for subordinating another person, built from isolation, intimidation, degradation, and the ongoing micromanagement of everyday choices, rather than any single dramatic act
Why the distinction changes what kind of help is right
This part has direct consequences for what happens in a therapy room. Research on couples work in the presence of partner violence has moved past a simple yes or no. A review of the literature notes that feminist theorists have argued conjoint counselling is generally contraindicated in cases of intimate partner violence because of the risk of continuing or increasing violence, while several studies have found that conjoint approaches do not increase the risk of harm to the victim. The authors conclude that a conjoint approach may be beneficial only after a thorough assessment of the dynamics of violence and with adequately trained counsellors (Hurless and Cottone, 2018). In other words, assessing which pattern is present should come before deciding on a way of working, and not after.
Couples dealing with situational conflict, including conflict that has become frequent, hostile or exhausting, are typically well suited to working on it together. Couples where coercive control is present are a different matter. Sitting both partners down as though this were an ordinary disagreement can give the controlling partner more information, more leverage or simply another audience. It can also frame something one directional as though both people share equal responsibility for it, which is not an accurate account of what is happening.
When there are children involved
Coercive control rarely stays contained to the two adults in a relationship where children live. Controlling money, monitoring movements or dictating who the family sees shapes a child's experience of home, even when nothing is said or done to the child directly. Stark and Hester also note that how children experience coercive control is an area where more research is needed. Children also learn from the model of relationship the adults around them provide, which is one reason that professionals treat this pattern differently from ordinary parental disagreement about how to raise children.
Situational conflict between parents, even frequent and difficult conflict about schooling, discipline or parenting decisions, is a different clinical picture and usually a more workable one than a home organised around one adult's control of everyone in it. If you are worried about a child's safety, speak to your GP, your child's school, or the NSPCC helpline, or call 999 if there is immediate risk.
What happens in an initial conversation
When I see a couple together, I listen for which of these patterns is present, and I do not assume either one by default. That usually means understanding what happens around conflict and not only the conflict itself. Can both people disagree and still function independently afterwards? Do apologies and repair come from both sides over time, or only ever from one? Does either partner describe needing permission for ordinary parts of life, or feeling less able to see friends, spend money or express an opinion than they did a year ago? None of this is assessed through a single question or a checklist. It comes out of listening to how each of you describes a recent disagreement in detail, and noticing where the account of who did what to whom stops matching up.
Where the answers point towards coercive control, the right next step is usually individual work for the partner affected, alongside appropriate specialist support, and not joint sessions. Where they point towards situational conflict, however entrenched or painful, couples therapy is exactly the right tool and is often effective.
This screening happens whether or not either of you has used the word abuse. Some people arrive already using that language, sometimes accurately and sometimes borrowed from something they read online that does not quite fit. Others describe what sounds like an ordinary rough patch, and on closer questioning it turns out to involve a level of control neither partner had named aloud. Neither starting point tells me much alone. What matters is what emerges once we look at the actual pattern, and not whichever label either of you walked in with.
If you have recognised controlling behaviour in yourself, that takes courage to face. It is possible to change, and it is better done with specialist support than through a couple's argument. Please speak to your GP or a specialist service about it.
If you need specialist support
If what you are describing suggests a risk to your safety, that is not something to work out through a website article, and couples therapy is not the right first step. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247 is free, confidential and open at any time, and is a better starting point than anything written here. Galop is a specialist service for LGBTQ+ people experiencing abuse, and the Men's Advice Line supports men. Control and abuse happen in same sex relationships, in consensually non monogamous relationships and in every kind of partnership, and you deserve to be taken seriously wherever you are. Reading this on a shared device can be risky if someone monitors it, so use a device or browser that only you can access.
How therapy can help
If the pattern between you is conflict and not control, however bad it has become, couples therapy is where that gets addressed directly, with both of you in the room, working on the communication and repair skills that have broken down. A lot of what looks unsalvageable from inside a bad patch responds well to fairly structured work. That includes learning to argue about the actual issue and not reopening every past grievance, noticing when a conversation has stopped being productive and needs a pause, and rebuilding the basic trust that repair after a fight is possible. My piece on how to stop arguing with your partner has some practical starting points.
If it is control and not conflict, my role changes. I am not there to explore dynamics between two equally responsible people, because that is not an accurate description of what is happening and treating it as though it were risks making things worse. The more useful next step is individual support for the partner affected, and where appropriate, connecting that work to the wider network of domestic abuse services this kind of pattern usually needs alongside therapy. You are not obliged to leave, and you are not obliged to stay. Support is there either way, and the decision is yours to make in your own time. Couples therapy is one of the more effective tools for working out whether a relationship has a viable future or has reached its end, but only once we have established which of these two situations we are looking at.
You do not need to arrive already knowing which one applies to you. That is part of what the first conversation is for, and it is a different conversation depending on the answer, and not a formality before the real work starts. Most people find that being asked these questions directly, without being assumed one way or the other, is a relief in itself.
If you feel now might be the right time to have that conversation, I offer a free 30 minute consultation in person in London or online.
If anything you have read here feels urgent or unsafe, please do not wait for that conversation. Call 999 in an emergency, or ring the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.
About the Author
Mark Ryan is a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist working in person across central London, from rooms in Pimlico, Kensington, and Angel. He works with couples, individuals, and polycules on relationship issues including jealousy, affairs and betrayals, sex problems, and considered separation. His practice is integrative, sex-positive, and affirming of all relationship structures and identities.
References
Hurless, N., & Cottone, R. R. (2018). Considerations of conjoint couples therapy in cases of intimate partner violence. The Family Journal, 26(3), 324 to 329. https://doi.org/10.1177/1066480718795708
Love, H. A., Spencer, C. M., May, S. A., Mendez, M., & Stith, S. M. (2020). Perpetrator risk markers for intimate terrorism and situational couple violence: A meta analysis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 21(5), 922 to 931. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838018801331
Stark, E., & Hester, M. (2019). Coercive control: Update and review. Violence Against Women, 25(1), 81 to 104. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801218816191
