It has also challenged me to question my own behaviour and that of others around encouraging friends into relationships.

And that’s how things are very often argued in court, because if you can argue for crime of passion you will probably reduce your charge from murder to manslaughter. The problem also goes across races, cultures, socio-economic groups, sexualities and personality types. It can be an insight to these relationships and provides a responsibility to educate and recognise coercive control.And if I think you’re the type, my radar will be more finely tuned to other behaviours I have to look out for.

I genuinely feel better-informed and safer having read this book, because now I know what to look for and know that saying you’re ‘crazy’ is never the right answer. Learning to look for concerning behaviours and identify each of the 8 stages was both reassuring and concerning in equal measure.Such abusers - nearly always men - generally reveal themselves early on in the relationship, but in the flush of new "love", the signs go unrecognized, the warnings unheeded. Stage 4 is the trigger and this is perhaps where it becomes personal, a head of state decides they have an entitlement to something (lebensraum? The behaviour of Ellie's mother and baby Teddie's mother were exactly the same, and equally incomprehensible, until you read this book.

You would be hard pushed to find someone that has not been impacted by Domestic Violence even in some small way.

I found this book to be extremely validating for victims of coercive control/domestic abuse (both seen and unseen). Things would've got a lot worse if not for the closeness of my family and the fact that he was unable to stay here for more than six months. But we know we’ve got an adversarial system so we need to be able to circumvent some of the problems it raises. By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Monckton-Smith rebuts the long assumed "crime of passion" myth that underpins the loss of control doctrine (a partial defence to murder in the UK and some other common law jurisdictions) with a well-argued thesis that murder arises through a series of stages in a "dangerous relationship" that ends in murder.