What Looks Like Love Is Coercive Control
- Julie Vogler
- Jan 16
- 4 min read
How Male Anxiety, Entitlement, and Poor Differentiation Get Normalized as Intimacy
Disclaimer: This article does not claim that men are abusive, nor that anxiety itself is harmful. It examines how coercive control can emerge when male anxiety and entitlement are normalized under patriarchy. “Not all men” arguments, gender-neutral reframing, or intent-based defenses miss the point and are outside the scope of this discussion.
When people hear coercive control, they often
imagine obvious abuse: threats, intimidation, financial restriction, or overt dominance. But coercive control is frequently far quieter than that—so quiet it often passes as concern, attachment, or even love.
At its core, coercive control is the systematic erosion of another person’s autonomy. It does not require malicious intent. It does not require conscious awareness. And that is precisely why it is so dangerous—and so normalized.
Coercive Control Is About Regulating Another Person to Soothe Yourself
Coercive control is not defined by aggression; it is defined by entitlement to emotional regulation through another person.
It can look like:
Persistent pressure for reassurance
Subtle punishment when a partner asserts independence
Emotional withdrawal when needs are not met on demand
Framing a partner’s autonomy as abandonment
“Accidental” guilt induction
Needing constant access, updates, or proximity
Anxiety that morphs into surveillance
Boundaries being treated as rejection
None of these behaviors require cruelty. They require dysregulation paired with entitlement.
How Anxious Attachment Becomes Control
Men with anxious attachment styles often live with a chronic fear of loss, rejection, or emotional invisibility. Internally, this may sound like:
“If I don’t stay close, I’ll be left.”
“If you pull away, something is wrong.”
“If you loved me, you wouldn’t need that much space.”
When these fears activate, the nervous system seeks immediate relief. For many anxiously attached men, that relief comes through external regulation—attempting to stabilize internal distress by stabilizing a partner’s availability, attention, or physical proximity.
This is where control enters.
The behavior is driven by an undeveloped capacity for self-regulation, low differentiation, and a reliance on relational closeness as a calming mechanism. The partner becomes the regulator. Autonomy becomes a threat.
Patriarchy Normalizes Emotional and Bodily Entitlement
This pattern does not emerge in isolation.
Patriarchal conditioning teaches men—often subtly, often unconsciously—that:
Women are emotional caretakers
Women are responsible for soothing male distress
Emotional discomfort is a relational failure, not an internal signal
A man’s needs take priority in intimate spaces
Access to a woman’s body is part of connection
Within this framework, distress becomes justification. When an anxiously attached man feels dysregulated, he is culturally primed to seek resolution through her—her reassurance, her attention, her availability, her body.
Because this belief system is normalized, entitlement is rarely named as entitlement. It is often reframed as closeness, desire, or love.
Touch as Regulation Disguised as “Love Language”
One of the most overlooked expressions of coercive control is bodily entitlement, particularly when touch is framed as a “love language.”
For many anxiously attached men, physical contact is not simply affection—it is nervous system regulation.
Touching her:
Calms him
Grounds him
Reduces anxiety
Reassures attachment
Restores a sense of safety
The problem arises when:
Her body is used without attunement to her state
Touch is initiated to manage his distress rather than connect
Withdrawal of access is met with guilt, hurt, or pressure
Her “no” is interpreted as rejection rather than boundary
In these cases, touch is not relational—it is regulatory.And when a woman is expected to provide access to her body to stabilize someone else’s emotions, coercive control is present, regardless of how loving it is framed.
Calling this a “love language” obscures the power dynamic and erases consent as an ongoing process.
The “Nice Guy” Expression of Coercive Control
This is why coercive control often goes unrecognized when it comes from men who are:
Sensitive
Verbally expressive
Non-aggressive
Self-identified “good guys”
Supportive of women in theory
Control does not require hostility. It requires poor differentiation—the inability to experience oneself as emotionally separate from a partner.
It often sounds like:
“I just miss you. Is that wrong?”
“I thought relationships meant prioritizing each other.”
“You’re pulling away.”
“I don’t feel secure when you do that.”
“I guess I just care more than you do.”
These statements are frequently mistaken for emotional honesty. In reality, they reflect a lack of self-honesty.
Rather than identifying and owning internal states—fear, insecurity, abandonment anxiety—the speaker externalizes them. The feeling is framed as something caused by her behavior and therefore something she is responsible for resolving.
What is missing is self-contact:
“I am feeling anxious.”
“I am afraid of being left.”
“I am dysregulated and looking for relief.”
And what is displaced is responsibility.
The emotional labor is quietly transferred to the woman, who is now positioned as regulator, reassurer, or source of relief. This is not vulnerability. It is emotional irresponsibility disguised as openness.
Impact Over Intent
Coercive control is defined by its impact, not by intent.
Control is present when one person:
Feels responsible for regulating another’s emotions
Feels pressure to offer reassurance, touch, or access
Begins shrinking, explaining, appeasing, or over-accommodating
Loses access to their own pace, boundaries, or inner authority
Feels guilt for autonomy or bodily sovereignty
Women—particularly emotionally attuned women—often adapt first. They soften, justify, reassure, and offer access to preserve harmony. Over time, their nervous system becomes organized around preventing the other person’s distress.
This is not intimacy. It is emotional and somatic compliance.
Intimacy Requires Differentiation and Autonomy
Healthy intimacy cannot exist without differentiation—the capacity to remain emotionally connected while psychologically and somatically separate.
Differentiation means:
Your partner’s discomfort does not dictate your choices
Love does not require access to your body
Closeness does not eliminate separateness
Boundaries are not punishments
Autonomy is not abandonment
When differentiation is absent, attachment collapses into fusion. And fusion always produces control.
Love is not proven through availability.
Security is not created through proximity.
Connection is not sustained through self-erasure.
Real intimacy requires two regulated adults choosing connection, not one person outsourcing regulation to another’s emotions, body, or compliance.
Until we are willing to name how normalized emotional and bodily entitlement masquerades as love, coercive control will continue to hide in plain sight—quiet, reasonable, and deeply harmful.
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