One afternoon in 2021, I discovered the extraordinary lengths my husband had gone to monitor my every move. While searching for parking before a meeting, my phone rang repeatedly with missed calls from him. I couldn’t pick up because I was running late, and I needed to focus on getting a spot in a very busy street.
When I finally answered, his voice was filled with fury. “Why didn’t you answer?” he demanded.
I explained I was parking, but his response disturbed me: “No you weren’t. I could see your car moving on the map – you’re lying.”
When I asked him what he meant, he casually explained that for eighteen months, he had been tracking my movements through my car’s app, which he had installed on his phone.
With this app, he could monitor and scrutinize every trip and every outing I made without my knowledge or consent.
Control Disguised as Care
I now realize how skillfully abusers can disguise control as care. They frame surveillance as concern for your wellbeing, making it harder to recognize the violation. “I just want to know you’re safe,” they say. “I worry when I can’t reach you” or “It helps me to know when you’ll be home.” These seemingly caring and ‘logical’ statements conceal a darker truth: a need to dominate and control every aspect of your life.
Abusers exhibit pervasive patterns of behavior aimed at exerting power over their partners. Isolating you from loved ones, monitoring communications, controlling finances, using threats and coercion, blaming you for their actions, minimizing the abuse, manipulating through guilt and gaslighting. These tactics create an environment of fear and submission that allows them to maintain their hold.
The revelatory phone call exposed the true nature of his surveillance. It wasn’t about safety or convenience; it was about control. Recognizing this was not normal or acceptable was crucial to my journey toward freedom.
Technology Weaponized
In the digital age, abuse has evolved. Smartphones, GPS, and apps can become weapons, creating invisible prisons that extend the abuser’s reach. Tools meant for convenience are exploited to maintain power. The car app that should have been a useful tool for my own convenience had become his instrument for surveillance.
As technology integrates into our lives, abusers find insidious ways to weaponize it. My story is not unique. Countless victims have their privacy and autonomy stripped away through technological abuse.
Post-Separation Surveillance
Leaving the marriage did not end the surveillance and control. In fact, it escalated. He began reading my phone messages, opening my mail, poring over my private journal. He even hired a private investigator to track me and secretly recorded my calls. The glasses he started wearing had a hidden camera, allowing him to record me and our child without my consent.
Post-separation stalking is a terrifying and all-too-common experience for survivors of abuse. It reveals the abuser’s refusal to relinquish control, even after the relationship has ended. This behavior often escalates to threats, harassment, or physical harm. Stalking keeps survivors in a constant state of fear, undermining their ability to heal and move forward. Leaving an abusive relationship is rarely the end of the abuse.
A Painful Lesson
My experience taught me that abusive control can take many insidious forms. It hides behind masks of love, concern, and convenience. Abusers weaponize trust, using intimacy to gain access to private information, then wield it to tighten their hold.
Real love doesn’t demand surveillance. Real care doesn’t manifest as control. Healthy relationships are built on trust, respect, and autonomy. If your partner justifies monitoring your every move as “being concerned,” recognize it as a red flag.
In sharing my story, my aim is to expose the hidden abuses technology enables and shine a light on the realities of post-separation abuse – the insidious continuation of control even after we escape. If my words resonate with your experience, know you’re not alone. Healing is possible. Freedom is worth fighting for.
Featured image: Digital surveillance. Source: aboutmomentsimages / Adobe Stock.
By anonymous survivor
