Controlling and monitoring
Tracking where you are, checking your phone, demanding an account of your time, or deciding where you can go.
What it looks like
- “Send me a picture of where you are,” and a mood if you do not.
- Your passcode, requested as proof that you have nothing to hide.
- Location sharing that was his idea, and a question about every stop.
Why it is easy to miss
It arrives dressed as closeness or worry. He wants to know you are safe. He is insecure because he cares. Each request on its own is small enough to grant, and granting it makes the next one normal. By the time it is a rule you did not agree to, you have already been living under it.
What it is not
Sharing a location on a late night because you both chose to, or being asked, once, how your day went. The pattern is control: the asking runs one way, the consequences for not answering are real, and your world gets smaller.
What to do
- Keep a private account of what is being asked and what happens when you say no, somewhere he cannot read.
- Tell one person outside the relationship what the rules have become, in plain words.
- Notice how many of your decisions now route through what he will think.
Help that is there now
- In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is free and confidential at any hour: call 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.org. Monitoring and control are things they talk through, including when you are not sure it counts.
- If he has access to your phone, keep that in mind before you write anything down, in Bondary or anywhere else.
How Bondary reads it
Control is a risk she names directly, without weighing it against the good weeks, and she does not analyze it into a communication style. She tells you plainly what she sees.
She does not weigh this against the good weeks, and she does not tell you what to do. What happens next is yours, and it does not have to be decided tonight.
Tell her about someone.
Bondary is an AI dating coach who's on your side. She keeps the record and gives you an honest weekly read. For iPhone.
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