I want to add the experience of some of the clients we've worked with as examples.
As Carmen was talking, I was reflecting on a client we had who talked about the first time she went out for dinner with the person who ended up being her husband. He said to her, “Maybe you want to order this.” The next time they went out, he ordered for her. The time after that, he told her exactly what she should eat and what she should wear. The time after that, when she got into the car, he made her go back and change.
One of the analogies we use is a frog in boiling water: They don't realize until the water is boiling. All of a sudden she found herself in a situation of being married to him and he was controlling every single aspect of her life. He had isolated her from her friends, but it happened in small, incremental steps until she was fully in that situation.
The other thing I want to note is that coercive control—and I think Laurel Collins talked about this—is very much about the experience of the individual. For some individuals, if their partner is ordering food for them, it doesn't feel like control. It feels like a choice they're making because that's what they want. However, if they're afraid that if they order the food themselves there will be repercussions later because they're fearful that there's going to be force involved or something like that, that's when it becomes coercive control.