Control

I first learned from one of my books on domestic violence that it’s all about control.  And Loïc was a control freak, I wasn’t the only one to notice that.   I’d never run into such big issues over control in a relationship before, so I wasn’t clear about what was going on when I first noticed his controlling behavior.  Now I know that it’s a red flag for physical violence.  When we were in Italy for a few months, before going to Japan, I first noticed his controlling tendencies.  I’d just graduated, and followed him for his work, so for the first time I was with him without money.  Each day I’d meet him at the office for lunch, then he’d give me just enough money to go out for a coffee, then I’d return in the afternoon to get money for our evening’s snack.  This bothered me, but I didn’t say anything since I had to go back and forth to the office at least twice a day, since our meals were with colleagues and payed for by the office.  One evening, when we were trying to figure out how to get back to our hotel, I said there was a bus that stopped just a few meters from where we were standing,  He knew the city better than I did, and was adamant that I was wrong, he physically blocked me from walking over to the bus stop to confirm that the right bus stopped there--that triggered a big argument.  Very disturbing to me was that he began controlling words and phrases in French, using them and then telling me that they meant something other than what I’d understood.  Since I wasn’t in France, I couldn’t confirm the meanings with anyone.  He would put me down and then deny it.  The acts of control at the time seemed small and inconsequential, but they left me quite disturbed, questioning whether or not I should go to Japan with him when we’d hadn’t known each other for that long.  What was he really like?

In Paris, after we’d returned from Japan, the control escalated dramatically.  Each day he gave me just enough money to buy one evening’s worth of groceries.  I had to go to him for every small expense.  Not giving me pocket money obviously gave him complete control over my activities.  He would call several times a day from the office to check on me, supposedly because he knew that I was alone all day and he didn’t want me to feel lonely.  If the phone was busy he’d ask who’d called, and what they’d said.  He would say that he wished I were small enough to carry around in his pocket.  An idea which I found suffocating.  When I got letters he insisted on reading them first, supposedly because he was so interested.  I couldn’t protest about his interest in phone calls and mail, because it was loving, as was his desire to have a pocket sized version of myself.  Many of his means of control were disguised as loving acts, which made it difficult to recognize and feel upset by, still there a vague sense of something being terribly wrong.

Next Loïc began using another tactic typical of batterers: he cut me off from others.  First, he put down the two women friends I had, saying terrible things about them and that they were beneath me.  When I’d plan to meet them, he find ways to keep me from going, and so after a few incidents like that, they dropped me.  Then he set about demolishing each member of my family in detail, going to great lengths to show that they weren’t supportive of me, weren’t to be trusted, that I shouldn’t be in touch with them.  When I ran into people in the street, he would stand between us looking terribly impatient to go, so others would cut the conversation short.  He had all sorts of tactics.  Once when I’d just arrived at a friend’s for lunch, Loïc called saying that he’d forgotten to drop off his income declaration, that it was the final day, and I had to go and do it immediately or he’d pay a heavy fine.  I stood my ground for a few minutes and then gave in and agreed to go, which infuriated my friend.

Loïc’s main way of controlling me was through fear, which it had taken that one single severe beating to instill deeply in me.  After that, he could tell me what to do, and all he had to do was get irritated if I didn’t jump to do it.  He would constantly speak to me from the other room so I couldn’t hear what he was saying, and then shout out for me to come into the room where he was.  His irritation terrified me, because it signaled possible violence on the horizon.  He expected me to serve him and so I served him.  Some of the expectations were small but irksome.  It was my task to open the wine each night and serve him a glass.  I walked on eggshells all of the time, fearing the flare ups of irritation, doing my best to keep the peace.  The littlest things were terrifying.  He criticized the way I made the bed--it was never good enough.  Each evening when he got home, the first thing he did was to inspect it.  So each day I would make and remake the bed, a nervous wreck, trying to get it right.  

If anyone had told me before I met Loïc that one day I would be servile and obedient to a man, I would’ve told them they were out of their minds.  After all I had strong female role models.  My grandmother was a fiercely independent woman.  She’d marched in suffragette parades, and had insisting against her father’s wishes to go to University when women had just obtained the right to attend university, thus becoming the first member of the family to go to university.  My mother was active in the feminist movement, and some of my early memories are of making posters for women’s rights.  Thus I’d grown up a feminist, expecting to be an equal in a relationship.

Because of the fear, gradually over the years I gave in on things more and more, small things and big things, until I felt that the only ground I had to stand on was the ground precisely beneath my feet.  I didn’t know how to say no or to say it firmly and loudly enough, to set my boundaries.  The ground I gave up was part of myself, my desire, my voice, and my independence.  One single step and I’d fall.  That’s how much my self-esteem and sense of self had been damaged by the psychological abuse.