Am I controlling now, or are they?

Look at what each of you does, not at how familiar it feels. If you’re the one checking their location, scrolling their messages or quizzing them about an evening out, that’s behavior you can stop, whatever your marriage taught you. If they’re the one demanding your passwords, your whereabouts or your time, that’s control, and it isn’t your history talking.

Sometimes it’s a bit of both. That’s the hardest version, and the one where an outside view helps most.

Why would I be the one doing it?

Meet Marisol. She’s 43, a pharmacist, divorced two years after a 16-year marriage. She co-parents her 12-year-old son on an every-other-weekend-plus-Wednesdays schedule. Her ex read her texts and wanted to know where she was at all times. She spent years being watched.

Now she’s seven months into seeing Jonah, 45, and she’s the one watching. She asked him to share his location “just so I can relax.” When he didn’t text from a work dinner, she sent three messages and checked who he’d started following. Last Sunday he said, gently, “You keep tabs on me a lot.” She went cold, then home, then to her phone to type the question.

It’s not unusual. In a study of women rebuilding their lives after an abusive relationship, Paulina Flasch and colleagues found that “negotiating boundaries and control” was one of the things survivors worked through in new relationships, along with learning to trust themselves and others.1 Hypervigilance shows up often, too. In a study of 229 women recruited soon after a police-reported incident of partner violence, 17 percent fit a profile of low overall symptoms but high hypervigilance, and another 11 percent had intermediate symptoms with high hypervigilance.2 That group wasn’t divorced adults dating again, but the alertness may sound familiar.

That vigilance was earned. It just doesn’t get to run someone else’s phone.

How do I tell vigilance from control?

Try a two-column note. On the left, write what you actually did this week. On the right, write what you were afraid of when you did it.

• What I did: Asked for his location. Sent three texts during his dinner. Checked his follows.
• What I was afraid of: That I’d miss it again. That I’d be the last to know.

The right column belongs to the marriage. The left column belongs to now, and it’s the one the other person lives with.

Vigilance stays inside you: noticing, wondering, feeling uneasy. Control reaches into the other person’s life: tracking, demanding, limiting who they see, or making them pay for not answering. If your vigilance has started reaching, that’s the signal.

Checking doesn’t always deliver what it promises, either. In a University of British Columbia study, 102 people described a time they went through someone’s phone, or someone went through theirs. Many of the snoopers said they did it out of jealousy or a wish to “control relationships with others.”3 Of the 46 who reported what happened next, 21 said the relationship ended.3

What if it’s them?

Now the other direction. Say the new person asks for your location “to feel close,” wants to read your co-parent thread, sulks when you see your friends on your free week, or gets angry when you don’t answer fast enough. Those are patterns of control: monitoring, isolation and punishment. They aren’t normal friction, and they aren’t explained by your divorce, even if they feel eerily like it.

Don’t try to settle it by confronting them, and don’t assume couples counseling will fix it. The National Domestic Violence Hotline doesn’t encourage counseling together with an abusive partner, because abuse isn’t a relationship problem and things said in sessions can be used against you later.4 An advocate at the hotline below can listen, help you sort what’s happening and help you make a safety plan.

If your ex is still controlling things through the parenting schedule or the courts, that’s a separate, real problem. A family lawyer is the right person for that, and the hotline can help with the safety side.

What if I’ve realized it’s me?

Then you’ve already done the hardest part, which is seeing it. Here’s a respectful path forward, without excuses and without self-punishment:

• Name the behavior, not the backstory. “I’ve been checking your location” is the sentence. The marriage explains it. It doesn’t excuse it.
• Stop the monitoring now. Turn off the location request. Stop reading follows. Stop the rapid-fire texts.
• Take responsibility out loud. Apologize once, plainly, and say what you’re changing. Don’t ask them to reassure you in the same breath.
• Get licensed help. A therapist who understands what the marriage left behind can help you handle the fear without handing it to someone else.
• Know the hotline is for you too. The National Domestic Violence Hotline also hears from people worried about their own behavior, treats them with respect, and can help them find intervention programs.5

What can I do this week?

• Pick your answer above and try its next step once.
• Write the two-column note for three moments this week.
• Stop one checking habit for seven days, and notice what the fear does without it.
• Talk to someone outside it. A friend who knew you during the marriage, a licensed therapist, or an advocate at the hotline on this page.
• If you feel afraid of them, start with the hotline, not a conversation with them.

Marisol turned off the location request on Monday. On Wednesday, after her son’s handoff, she told Jonah: “I’ve been keeping tabs, and that’s mine to fix, not yours.” He said thank you. She has her first therapy appointment on the twelfth.

What the research can’t tell you

• The survivor studies were small or specific: one was a qualitative study of women in recovery, the other sampled women soon after a police-reported incident.12 Neither studied divorced people dating in general.
• The phone-snooping study relied on recalled incidents from 102 people, and only 46 described the outcome.3
• No research can read intent, yours or theirs. It can only help you look at behavior, and decide who to talk to.