Ep 367: What You Need to Know About Coercive Control with Grace Stuart, Part 1

Why doesn't she just leave? 

It's a question survivors of domestic abuse hear again and again. But it places the focus in entirely the wrong place. 

Laura interviews Grace Stuart, survivor and host of Why She Stayed podcast, to examine how coercive control can develop gradually - and why it can be so difficult to recognise when you're living inside it. 

Grace was just 20 when she met her former partner, who was 14 years older. What initially felt intense and intoxicating became a complex spider's web of grooming, manipulation and control. 

Grace shares how apparent honesty and vulnerability built trust, while her boundaries were crossed incrementally and each violation explained away. Laura unpacks the pattern: the love bombing, age and power imbalance, gaslighting, isolation, sexual coercion and the gradual erosion of Grace's trust in her own instincts. 

They also explore how addiction became an explanation for behaviour that Grace did not yet have the language to identify as domestic abuse. 

Laura and Grace discuss: 

Grooming, love bombing and accelerated intimacy  

Age and power imbalances  

Boundary testing and incremental erosion  

Gaslighting and self-doubt  

Isolation and dependency