My Abusive Husband Never Told Me What I Should Wear

My abusive husband never told me what I should wear, but I ended up avoiding the clothes he didn’t like anyway. This is how coercive control works…

One day, I came to the kitchen wearing a black blouse. My husband screwed up his face and asked me why I was wearing black (he believed it was the color of evil).

He said I looked ugly in that blouse and that he didn’t like it. I told him that was fine, he didn’t have to wear it.
Then he brought our 5-year-old son into the room. “Mummy doesn’t look good in black, does she?” he asked our child. Looking at his father and knowing very well that it’s best to agree, he nodded. “Yes, black is not a nice color mummy,” he told me.

Fuming that he’d involve our child, I told him he was not to comment on my clothes again, nor involve our child. And that set him off…He lectured me for 2 hours on how I should work on my reactions to improve myself, how he has a right to give his views, and so on. In total, the discussion about the blouse lasted 3 hours.

A month later, I was choosing my outfit, and I went to reach for my black blouse, but then I hesitated. Was it worth the hassle? Did I really have the energy to go through all that again? I decided I didn’t and I chose something else.

And this is exactly how coercive control works. You learn to choose the easier option just to keep the peace and avoid the negative consequences.

And bit by bit you fall in line with how they want you to be, until eventually there is no part of you left. Everything about ‘you’ is exactly how they want it.

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