This Is Coercive Control

Disclaimer: I am not a qualified clinician and my ex-partner was never diagnosed with pathological narcissism or narcissistic personality disorder. The material on this site serves only to describe my subjective experience.

This blog site is a repository of everything I learnt from my escape and recovery from what I belatedly came to realise and accept was a six-year highly toxic, manipulative and abusive relationship that came to a head in late 2017.

It also chronicles my experience of not being believed by police, multiple wrongful arrests and a complex police investigation and prosecution that eventually resulted in serious criminal charges including controlling and coercive behaviour, being brought by against my then wife.

It covers the shock, anger, disbelief and sense of utter betrayal I felt when the case was inexplicably abandoned by Kent Police and the CPS in April 2020, in the middle of the first pandemic lockdown, following, as I discovered later, a fatally inaccurate and misleading final police submission to the crown prosecution service after the trial date had been set.

​

If they understand it at all, most people believe coercive and controlling behaviour is something primarily perpetrated by men against women and that it is something underpinned primarily by the threat or use of physical violence and aggression. This is often the case, but as I found to my cost, as many women use coercive control as men - it is NOT a gendered crime despite what the government's VAWG policy may have you believe. It is often so subtle, so insidious so "under the radar" that victims don't realise what is happening and how they are changing until it is too late.

The aim of this site is to use my experience of the abuse and my recovery to shine a much needed light on this highly toxic form of domestic abuse known as Narcissistic Abuse. I hope to raise awareness for everyone affected by toxic relationships about the tragic cycles of abuse that all too often result in childhood trauma from abusive or neglectful parenting metastasising maladaptive coping behaviours into personality traits that persist into adulthood as criminally abusive and manipulative relationship patterns.

The tragedy in my case is that she was a victim too, a victim of a traumatising childhood that trapped forever, a deeply hurt child in an adults body. It wasn't until after the damage was done in our relationship with all the police and criminal justice system involvement, that either of us gained some insight into what was happening and why.

​

This site is intended to be a learning resource for victims of domestic abuse, narcissistic abuse, for professionals in the field and anyone wishing to better understand this poorly understood crime including those with "people pleaser" type personalities that are particularly vulnerable to manipulative styles of abuse.

​

This site also documents the secondary abuse I suffered through my ex-partner's reflexive manipulation of police and criminal justice systems by taking advantage of the institutional gender bias, prejudice and discrimination against male victims of domestic abuse, weaponised by the deliberately gendered approach to domestic abuse policy.

​

Andrew Fleet - Narcissistic Abuse Survivor