When “love” comes with conditions, scripts, and invisible walls.
I’ve been reflecting on how, in my family—and unironically, in the family of the man I had children with—belonging was not rooted in mutual care, nuance, or individuality. It was…
My sons learned, by design, to have zero tolerance for their mother. Ordinary acts of parenting—direction, correction, consequences, even simple questions—were rejected and reframed as manipulation or control. I once…
Looking back, I notice how often I gravitated toward people who couldn’t tolerate my pain but expected the world to organize itself around their pleasure. When they were uncomfortable, everyone…
Coercive control is a strategic pattern of behavior used to dominate another person and strip away their sense of autonomy. It is not defined by a single violent event, but by…