Beyond Boundaries

Moving beyond boundaries to strategy.

Aug 21, 2023

When the topic of abuse comes up, so inevitably does the topic of boundaries. “Victims need boundaries,” people say, and they treat boundaries as though they are the magical, golden ticket that will keep victims safe. As an advocate with a seasoned understanding of coercive control, I am concerned with the way we talk about boundaries to victims. Don’t get me wrong: Boundaries are really, really important. But are boundaries really the answer? Is a victim’s lack of boundaries really why she is abused? Will her boundaries actually stop his abuse? Are we giving victims a false sense of hope when we promise them that boundaries will fix everything for them? I would suggest that, no, boundaries aren’t really the answer and, yes, we are giving her a false sense of hope. I would suggest that we need to move the conversation about boundaries beyond boundaries to a conversation about coercive control and strategy.

Terms

First, let’s define some terms:

Coercive Control: The “conscious, intentional and premeditated pattern of controlling and dominating an intimate partner.” (1) Coercive control is rooted in patriarchal gender inequality.

Agency: “The power to direct one’s life.” (2)

Autonomy: “The ability to make your own decisions without being controlled by anyone else.” (3)

Response: The different ways that victims respond to abuse/violence.

Resistance: The different ways that victims resist (fight against) abuse/violence.

Coercive Control

Understanding coercive control is absolutely essential to supporting victims and to understanding why victims do or do not have boundaries. Many resources still define abuse in terms of a narcissist/empath paradigm, where the abuser is portrayed as a malignant narcissist who is sucking the life out of his victim, and the victim is portrayed as an empath and rescuer who meets all of the narcissist’s needs to her own detriment and has no boundaries. Resources often say that victims attract abusers and call victims and narcissists “two sides of the same coin.” This paradigm, however, is inaccurate. It is important to understand that very few abusers actually are narcissists. (4) Most abusers, however, are coercive controllers. (5) So many abusers, in fact, utilize coercive control to dominate and control their intimate partners that “coercive control” is used almost synonymously with “abuse” in many domestic violence resources.

A coercive control paradigm is very different from a narcissist/empath paradigm. It is also more realistic to what the majority of victims experience, especially victims who are experiencing post-separation abuse from their abusers in the family court system. Unfortunately, many resources for victims do not even mention coercive control.

Here’s how coercive control works: Abusers are men who hold a belief system where they believe that they are entitled to dominate and control their female intimate partners. These men believe that their partners are their property. Abusers strategically use coercive control to remove their partner’s agency and autonomy. Victims strategically respond to and resist this abuse in an effort to maintain their dignity. (6) The traditional narcissist/empath paradigm paints a picture where the abuser is an emotionally stunted, childlike adult, who seeks out and finds an empath to fill his emotional needs for him and take care of him. She, in return, seeks out and finds him in order to fill her emotional needs because she has a self-love deficit and needs him to feel whole. Boundaries are said to be her answer to stop the abuse, because once she learns self-love and boundaries, she can leave him, and then her problem will be solved. As much as people who use this paradigm declare that they are not mutualizing abuse and blaming victims for a role in their own abuse, that is exactly what they are doing. “Like attracts like,” they say, and victims are seen as one deficient side of the abuse coin.

Coercive control tells us a completely different story. A coercive controller is a fully rational, grown-up adult man. He seeks out and finds a partner to victimize because he believes he is entitled to power and control over women. He sees her as his slave and property. His victim, on the other hand, is usually a completely normal woman whom he deceives and entraps. Coercive controllers are smart, intentional, and strategic. They do not dominate and control immediately. If they did this, they would never find a partner. Instead, they are very charming at first and exploit their victim’s hopes, fears, wishes, dreams, feelings, personality, beliefs, family, children, social circle, and vulnerabilities over a long period of time. She usually does not know what he has done to her until she has already been entrapped. Victims are hostages of a terrorist. They cannot just walk out the door. Abusers slowly and strategically entrap their victims, and by the time she figures out what he has done to her she does not know how to escape and survive with her children.

So how exactly does coercive control work? Coercive controllers wage a never-ending war on their victim’s agency and autonomy. He does not believe she has any right to direct her own life or make her own decisions. That right, he believes, belongs to him. Whenever she tries to direct her own life or make her own decisions, he starts out on a hidden search-and-destroy mission. At the start of the relationship, he doesn’t do this as often because he knows that would be too obvious. He also knows that he needs to stay under the radar or he will get caught, so he operates his search-and-destroy missions to be as low-key as possible. If a calm chat will do the trick, he’ll choose that over yelling. If gaslighting will work, he’ll choose that over assaulting her. If displaying a weapon in front of her will do the trick, he’ll choose that over threatening to shoot her. If threating to kill himself will work, he’ll choose that over threatening to kill her. He is also always cognizant of the legal system, so he often will try abuse in “legal” ways so that he does not get caught. Victims, on the other hand always respond to and resist abuse. When he chats with her, she may argue back. When he gaslights her, she will often feel confused and might get very angry with him. When he displays his weapon, she will likely feel scared, and she might go hide upstairs. When he threatens to kill himself, she might feel afraid that he actually will and may call the police. The arguing, getting angry, the hiding, and calling the police all are acts of resistance. This is her way of fighting for her own agency and autonomy and how she keeps herself safe.

But coercive controllers don’t stop there. Abusers anticipate their partner’s resistance and strategically plan how to overcome it in advance. So, when he has a “chat” with her, he’s already preemptively thought about all the ways she might object and has come up with counterpoints to each of her objections. When he gaslights her, he anticipates that she is going to get angry with him afterwards, and then he uses her anger to gaslight her further into thinking that she is crazy. When he displays the guns in front of her, he thinks about how she is going to try to hide upstairs and sits down on the stairs in order to block her way. When he threatens to kill himself, he anticipates that she does not want him to die and tries to make her feel sorry for him. If she calls the police, he makes sure to tell them that he’s feeling this way because of how she treats him.

To quote Evan Stark, “If abusive relationships were filmed in slow motion, they would resemble a grotesque dance whereby victims create moments of autonomy and perpetrators ‘search and destroy’ them.” (7)

Many people define abuse by a list of behaviors. This is actually not a good way to define abuse. Coercive control can be any behavior whatsoever from a simple look to a full-blown physical assault. Abuse is whatever behavior the abuser needs to use in order to get the control he wants. Victim responses and resistance can also be any behavior from a simple look to physically fighting back. Coercive control is the umbrella mode of operation abusers use to get the control they want. Abusive behaviors, from psychological abuse to emotional abuse to physical abuse to sexual abuse are all simply tactics coercive controllers choose from in order to get the control they want. Because victim responses can so often look exactly like abusive behaviors, it is absolutely vital for the pattern of coercive control to be identified.

Boundaries and Coercive Control

Victims respond to their abuser’s search and destroy missions with their own strategic planning and resistance. They know what they need, they know what their abuser is going to do, and they strategically plan out what they are going to do in order to get what they need. When her abuser has a “chat” with her, she has already anticipated what he is going to say and has thought through what to say back to him and how to say it so that she has the greatest chance of getting what she needs. When he gaslights her, she goes to Google and starts typing words like “crazy conversations with my spouse” into Google in an attempt to understand what is happening. When he displays the guns in front of her and blocks the stairs, she takes the children outside to play. When he threatens to kill himself, she has already decided based on the last time he did this, that she is going to demand that he get counseling.

Abuse victims often already have boundaries. In the popular narcissist/empath paradigm, however, those boundaries are missed because victims are told that they are simply compliant and just role over and do whatever their abusers want. This is not a correct understanding of victims, and it misses how victims strategically respond to and resist his abuse daily. Victims know exactly what they can and cannot safely do, and they plan their boundaries accordingly to minimize harm to themselves and their children.

When people tell victims, “You need boundaries,” the boundaries victims already have or the strategic reasons they do NOT have boundaries are missed. Instead, victims hear, “Something is wrong with me. I need to get better boundaries to fix this.” So, she goes and starts putting up bigger boundaries. Her abuser, however, has no intention of honoring her boundaries. He sees her boundaries as a threat. They are a challenge to his right to rule. He will only ever search out and destroy them. This is why abuse escalates. When victims put up big boundaries that threaten the dominance and power and control of their abusers, he then escalates his tactics. When he used a “chat” before, now he yells. When he used gaslighting before, now he physically assaults her. When he displayed weapons before, now he loads the gun and points it at her head. When he threatened to kill himself before, now he threatens to kill her and the children. For him, it’s strategic trial and error. He sees a new boundary, he sets in motion his search-and-destroy mission, and then he tries to find the path of least resistance to destroy the boundary. If one tactic doesn’t work, he escalates and tries something else. He keeps trying new things and escalating until he gets the desired control he wants.

This is why leaving is the most dangerous time for victims. Abusers know that they are losing complete control over their victims, and so they resort to more and more severe forms of violence, including murder, if necessary, in order to maintain the power and control they want.

Beyond Boundaries

When we tell victims, “You just need boundaries!” we are completely missing how coercive controllers work, and we are compromising her safety by promising her more safety when in fact boundaries will give her the opposite of safety. Boundaries do not equal safety for victims. Boundaries equal escalated violence. Again, don’t get me wrong. Boundaries are good and necessary, but any conversations about boundaries that we have with victims must be predicated by the understanding that those boundaries will cause her abuser to escalate his violence. This means that she must strategize instead of simply putting up boundaries. Victims are the individual experts of their own unique situation. No one knows him better than she does. She knows which boundaries she can get away with and which boundaries will cause him to escalate. Supporting her while she escapes is not a simple “she needs boundaries” trick. It is a long-term, strategic commitment to planning that involves an honest assessment of what boundaries will work and what boundaries will not work, always following her lead, with the expectation that her escape might take a very long time or might never happen at all. In all of this, we honor the many ways she is already strategically resisting his abuse, and we do not shame her for not putting up the boundaries we think she should have. We do not know him like she does, and we put her in danger if we think we know better about what boundaries will work for her than she does.

Strategy

Victims need strategy, not boundaries. Boundaries are fine. They are fine to talk about and fine to incorporate in. But whenever we talk about boundaries with victims, we must strategize about how her abuser is going to escalate his violence in response to her boundaries. This means that our discussion needs to be less about boundaries and more about strategy and supporting her in figuring out what is the best course of action to keep her and her children safe. Since abusers use strategy to destroy their victim’s resistance, agency, and autonomy, it makes sense that victims must use strategy to fight back and stay safe. Strategy is never more important than when victims file for divorce and enter the family court system. So many advocates and therapists have the end goal of getting victims to leave that they do not even mention to her the disaster that is waiting for her in family court. Leaving is perhaps the biggest boundary of all. So many victims are shamed by well-intentioned professionals for staying with their abusive partners when it is actually the professionals who do not understand her entrapment and instead blame her for a perceived lack of boundaries. When she finally does file for divorce, many advocates and shelters wash their hands of her. “Hooray!” they cry. “We accomplished our goal! She is free!” Then she is plummeted face-first, completely unsupported into the abyss that is family court. Here she receives the shock of her life: His abuse never had anything to do with her lack of boundaries. It always had to do with his choice to coercively control her, and now he is still doing that, even though she put up all the boundaries she was told to put up. But those boundaries didn’t fix his abuse. Now he is in his element, his favorite playground, the place where he can abuse her with the court-sanctioned blessing of judges and family court professionals. In this space, her boundaries and resistance are often seen as evidence that she is an uncooperative coparent, and she risks losing custody of her children to her abuser because of them. While her therapist tells her that she absolutely needs hard boundaries, family court professionals want her to hold hands with her abuser and go skipping off happily together with him into the sunset. For family court, especially, boundaries are not the answer to his abuse. Strategy is the answer and learning when to have boundaries and when to not have boundaries, depending on the specific expectations of the systems looking in. It’s about learning when to hold hands with her abuser and sing kumbaya and when to keep him at a distance in order to protect herself and her children. The simple, “She needs boundaries” model just doesn’t cut it. Boundaries won’t keep her alive or her kids safe in family court. Strategy will.

It is time for us to move past a shallow “victims need boundaries” model. This model compromises victim safety. Abusers strategically use coercive control to dominate and control their intimate partners. Victims strategically resist coercive control. We need to honor the many ways victims are already using boundaries and support them in strategically planning how best to move forward and how to safely incorporate what boundaries they can into their lives. We also need to be able to support them even when they cannot safely have boundaries. For victims of coercive control, boundaries do not equal safety. Boundaries equal escalated abuse. We need to be cognizant of this as we support her, especially when she is leaving and when she is making her way through the family court system. Ultimately, strategy, not boundaries, will win the day.

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