At the centre of abuse is ownership. Beneath the charm, the threats and the control lies the conviction ‘you are mine’. To someone abusive, a partner is not recognised as a person with rights and independence but as property to be used, shaped and ruled. When children enter the picture, this attitude often extends to them as well.
This perspective is crucial today. Rates of post-separation abuse remain high, and cases of femicide demonstrate the deadly risk when an abuser’s belief in ownership is confronted.
Viewing abuse through the idea of ownership helps explain why survivors often feel trapped and why abusers respond with such fury when their control is resisted.
Where the Ownership Belief Comes From
The idea that one person can hold ownership of another has deep roots. For centuries, wives were legally regarded as the possessions of their husbands and children as belonging to the father’s household. The laws have changed, but the mindset lingers. In abusive relationships, this shadow continues to influence behaviour. While women can be abusive, coercive control is strongly gendered and most often carried out by men against women.
Culture feeds this as well. Jealousy is disguised as passion, control is framed as protection, and possessiveness is presented as love. In films, TV, and music lyrics, everyday culture romanticises lines such as “you’re mine” or “I can’t live without you,” which makes ownership appear like devotion.
As Emma Katz, in her book Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives, highlights, “societal messages tend to normalize boyfriends/husbands having a degree of ownership and possession over girlfriends/wives… This in turn makes it more likely that coercively controlling behavior from boyfriends/husbands will be excused or romanticized (Katz, 2022, p. 28).
When ownership is disguised as love, abusers feel justified and survivors may be left doubting themselves. A woman can be told she is fortunate to be loved so intensely, even as her freedom is stripped away.
Abusers rarely declare outright that someone is their property, but their actions reveal it. Checking phones, cutting off friendships, or controlling money are not quirks of character or signs of care. They are acts of possession.
When Partners Become Possessions
Once someone is treated as an object to be owned, equality vanishes. One person claims power and the other is expected to obey.
This can appear in many forms:
• Demanding constant updates on a partner’s whereabouts
• Blocking contact with friends or family without consent
• Monitoring social media or demanding passwords
• Treating a partner’s body as available whenever they wish
To outsiders, this might look like jealousy, but at its heart it is ownership and the belief ‘your life belongs to me’.
This is why abuse often intensifies as relationships continue. The abuser views commitment as acquisition, as though shared history grants them the right to greater control, more intrusion and harsher punishment when their partner resists. Instead of respect growing over time, they tighten their grip. Possessiveness is not insecurity, it is the essence of abuse and ownership.
Words That Reveal Possession
The language used by abusers often uncovers their underlying beliefs.
• You are mine
• You belong to me
• If I cannot have you, no one will
• I made you who you are
These are not declarations of love. They are statements of ownership. What may sound harmless in ordinary life becomes a claim of entitlement when spoken in an abusive setting.
Some abusers go even further and mark their partners physically. Evan Stark, in his book Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life, recounts how “abusive men have forced women in my caseload to bear tattoos, bites, burns, and similar marks of ownership” (Stark, 2007).
He explains that the issue is so widespread that the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, in partnership with the American Academy of Facial, Plastic, and Reconstructive Surgery, created a free service to remove tattoos and other forms of ‘branding’ inflicted on women and children by abusive partners.
Children Treated as Property
Ownership does not end with intimate partners. Children are frequently treated as possessions to be shaped, displayed, or used.
For abusive parents, children may be:
• Extensions of their own ego, expected to achieve in ways that boost the parent’s image
• Instruments of control, drawn into loyalty tests or used to manipulate the other parent
• Objects of possession, claimed as “mine” while the other parent’s connection is dismissed
This can result in strict rules that have nothing to do with the child’s wellbeing but everything to do with enforcing authority. Children may be paraded in public as evidence of success yet neglected or frightened at home. Their individuality is erased because, in the abuser’s mind, they are property.
Separation often makes this worse. Men who showed little involvement in parenting may suddenly demand equal custody, not out of care but because they refuse to lose what they consider theirs. Custody disputes become another way to impose control.
The psychological harm to children is profound. They grow up feeling confused, silenced, and torn by divided loyalties.
The outcome can also be fatal. Children are sometimes harmed or even killed to punish the mother. Their lives are not treated as sacred but as extensions of the abuser’s rights of ownership, expendable when control slips away.
When the Belief in Ownership Turns Deadly
The most dangerous point for victims is often when they attempt to leave. Once the illusion of ownership is broken, the abuser’s rage can turn lethal.
Some stalk or monitor their ex-partner, threaten new partners, intimidate supporters, or abduct children. Separation is the moment when their sense of possession faces the greatest challenge, and some abusers will stop at nothing to reassert control.
Sexual violence is also common at this stage. Post-separation rape is a brutal assertion of the ownership belief ‘you are still mine, and I retain rights to your body until I say otherwise’. It is not about sexual desire but about punishing defiance.
In 2024, in Hertfordshire, England, Kyle Clifford, a former soldier, stormed the home of his ex-girlfriend Louise Hunt. He murdered her mother on the doorstep, tied Louise up and raped her, before killing her and her sister with a crossbow.
These atrocities are not isolated. Post-separation killings follow a recognisable pattern linked to coercive control, where the abuser cannot accept the loss of ownership.
As Stark cautions, “the ultimate expression of property rights is the right of disposal illustrated by the statement that frequently precedes femicide, If I can’t have you, no one will” (Stark, 2007).
Reclaiming Selfhood and Naming Abuse as Ownership
Living as someone else’s property leaves profound scars. Survivors often describe feeling hollow or invisible, their sense of self reduced to almost nothing because every decision required permission. These wounds do not disappear the moment the relationship ends. Healing is the gradual process of reclaiming ownership of your own life, step by step, often supported by those who remind you that you are not an object but a human being.
It may seem easier to describe abuse as jealousy or anger rather than face the more painful truth. But naming ownership clears the haze. It validates what survivors instinctively knew, the suffocating experience of being treated as a possession and the constant fear of stepping out of line. It also disrupts the myths that excuse controlling behaviour.
This ownership is not only a private matter. It is also a social one. Courts often reduce children to bargaining tools. Popular culture continues to romanticise jealousy as proof of love. Each of these messages reinforces the very attitudes that sustain abuse.
The truth must be declared. Ownership is dehumanisation. No person is property. No child is a prize. No relationship is a contract of possession.
Healing is not only about escaping the abuser’s grip. It is about reclaiming the deeper truth that you belong to yourself.
References
Katz, E. (2022). Coercive control in children’s and mothers’ lives. Oxford University Press.
Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press.
