In this article, I talk about what sexual coercion can look like in dating, casual sexual relationships, intimate partner relationships, and online connections, including the more subtle and confusing forms. I also explore how sexual coercive control can sit within the broader picture of intimate partner violence, how it can show up online, and how trauma-informed specialist counselling and sex therapy can support healing. This article provides general information from a therapeutic perspective only and should not be taken as legal advice (World Health Organization [WHO], 2019).

Sexual coercive control is what happens when patterns of pressure, manipulation, or deception target a person’s sexual self: their body, desire, boundaries, and sense of sexual choice. It is not always overtly violent. Often it looks like pressure, guilt, monitoring, bargaining, or “wearing down” that slowly shifts sex from something freely chosen into something that feels owed, tolerated, or survived (The Hotline, 2021; UMSU, n.d.).

This article focuses specifically on sexual coercion and sexual coercive control. If you are looking for a broader overview of coercive relationships, including non-sexual forms of control a companion article on coercive relationships and recovery may also be useful.

What is Sexual Coercion?

• Verbal pressure, guilt, or emotional manipulation to get sex.
• Threats to end contact, withdraw affection, ghost, cheat, or become hostile if sex does not happen.
• Repeated nagging, arguments, sulking, or persistence until someone “gives in”.
• Using alcohol, drugs, or deception in ways that reduce someone’s ability to refuse.
• Pushing to have unsafe sex.
• Ignoring or pushing past non-verbal signs of discomfort, freeze, ambivalence, or shutdown.
• Treating previous flirting, sexting, nudity, or past sex as if it creates ongoing consent.

How Sexual Coercion Can Show Up

Sexual coercion exists on a spectrum. Some tactics are overt, while others are subtle and easy to explain away. Common experiences include pressure and persistence, guilt and obligation, emotional blackmail, sulking or punishment, sexual shaming, and pushing past stated or implied boundaries (The Hotline, 2021; DomesticShelters.org, 2021; UMSU, n.d.).

This can look like repeatedly asking for sex until it feels easier to say yes than keep saying no. It can look like being told that “this is just what adults do,” that a person has “needs,” or that refusing sex means being unfair, cold, dramatic, or misleading (DomesticShelters.org, 2021; The Hotline, 2021).

Some people experience sexual coercion through punishment and withdrawal, such as sulking, silent treatment, anger, passive aggression, or sudden coldness when sex does not happen. Others experience it through shaming, being called prudish, broken, unlovable, repressed, or “not normal” when they ask to slow down, set limits, or say no (DomesticShelters.org, 2021).

Over time, these dynamics can lead to sex feeling less like choice and more like compliance, appeasement, or survival. Some people describe sex as something to “get over with,” “manage,” or do to avoid conflict, rather than something they actively want (DomesticShelters.org, 2021; The Hotline, 2021).

Sexual coercion can happen in any kind of connection, including dating, situationships, hook-ups, friends-with-benefits arrangements, longer-term relationships, and queer and gender-diverse relationships. Research also notes that coercive control occurs in LGBTQIA+ relationships, although those experiences have often been under-recognised in mainstream frameworks (Hilton et al., 2024). And as a practitioner working in this space, they are often present in the LGBTQIA+ community.

Subtle Signs

Sexual coercion can be particularly hard to recognise when there is attraction, chemistry, affection, history, or care in other parts of the connection. A person may sometimes want sex, but at other times feel unable to safely or comfortably say no. They may also find themselves offering sex pre-emptively to avoid conflict, anger, sulking, pressure, or accusations.

Other subtle signs include agreeing to sex while feeling numb, shut down, disconnected from the body, or emotionally absent; feeling anxious about raising contraception, STI testing, or boundaries; or feeling as though sex is “owed” because of money, gifts, drinks, dinner, effort, attention, or relationship expectations (The Hotline, 2021; UMSU, n.d.).

Many people do not immediately think of these experiences as sexual violence because they technically said yes, because there was no physical force, or because they were trying to avoid worse consequences. Naming what is happening does not require a person to adopt any particular identity or label. Sometimes it is simply a way of noticing that sex has stopped feeling like a genuine choice within body and mind (DomesticShelters.org, 2021).

Online Coercion in Dating and Casual Sexual Connections

Sexual pressure and coercion can also happen in dating, casual sexual relationships, hook-ups, app-based connections, and entirely online interactions. It does not have to happen inside a long-term or committed relationship to have a coercive impact. Australian research on dating apps and websites found high levels of online and in-person dating app facilitated sexual violence among users, with repeat victimisation also common (Wolbers et al., 2022).

This may involve catfishing, where someone uses a fake identity or lies about key parts of who they are in order to build trust, attraction, intimacy, or sexual connection. That deception can then be used to influence sexual decisions, obtain sexual images, secure in-person sexual access, or create a sense of emotional obligation that undermines informed consent (CNN, 2024; Cross et al., 2018; Henry et al., 2023).

For some people, this might involve grooming over days, weeks, or months and then discovering the person was not who they claimed to be. For others, it may involve pressure to sext, send nude images, keep chatting sexually, meet in person, or go further sexually than they wanted because the other person has built trust quickly, created emotional intensity, or made refusal feel difficult. Research on image-based sexual abuse describes how intimate images can then be used to control, threaten, intimidate, degrade, or shame (Henry et al., 2023).

This can also happen in more casual dynamics that are never framed as a “relationship” at all. Someone might pressure for nudes after only a short exchange, guilt a person for “leading them on,” become angry when sexual expectations are not met, or use charm, flattery, repeated messaging, or sexual escalation to wear down boundaries. In these contexts, coercion can be easier to minimise because the connection may seem informal, brief, or “just online,” even when the impact is significant (Wolbers et al., 2022).

People who have been catfished or sexually manipulated online often describe a double shock: realising that consent may have been shaped by deception, and realising the connection itself was built on falsehood. Research on romance fraud suggests that these dynamics often rely on grooming, manipulation, and emotional dependency rather than simple “naivety” on the part of the person targeted (Cross et al., 2018; BBC, 2023; Buchanan & Whitty, 2014).

Sexual Coercion and Coercive Control

Sexual coercion in intimate relationships often does not happen in isolation. It can sit within a broader pattern of coercive control that affects other areas of life, including social contact, communication, movement, finances, and bodily autonomy (AIHW, 2024; Stark, 2007).

That broader pattern can include gaslighting, blame-shifting, intimidation, surveillance, threats, or technology-facilitated abuse. When sexual coercion is part of a larger system of control, it can become even harder to recognise because fear, confusion, dependency, and erosion of choice are already present in the relationship (AIHW, 2024; Henry et al., 2023).

Body and Sexuality

Sexual coercion does not only affect feelings about a partner or a dating connection. It can also change how a person feels in their body and in their own sexuality. Some people notice numbness, shutdown, pain, tension, or a sense of leaving the body during sex. Others notice changes in desire, difficulty feeling present, or arousal responses that feel confusing or distressing. These responses can be protective adaptations to experiences where sex has been shaped by pressure, fear, obligation, or survival rather than mutuality and safety.

Research also suggests that coercive control is associated with higher rates of trauma-related mental health difficulties, including post-traumatic stress and depression (Ford et al., 2024). In a sexology-informed therapeutic space, these patterns can be explored gently as understandable responses to lived experience, rather than as something broken or shameful.

When it Feels Complicated

For many people, sexual coercion feels difficult to name because the connection also contains care, attachment, dependency, sexual chemistry, shared history, or genuine moments of tenderness. It can feel even more complicated when other factors are present, such as mental illness, trauma, attachment difficulties, disability, or cultural and religious messages about duty, obligation, and sex.

These realities can genuinely affect insight, emotional regulation, and the way someone relates. At the same time, they do not erase the impact of sexual coercion, and they do not excuse patterns of fear, pressure, or ongoing distress. It is possible for a person to be struggling with their own mental health or history and still be responsible for addressing behaviour that leaves another person feeling unsafe, controlled, or harmed.

Naming what has been happening can sometimes be a first step in seeing the pattern more clearly and recognising which parts of it may need care, attention, or change. For some people, that may mean seeking support to heal from what they have lived through. For others, it may mean getting help to understand and stop behaviours that are causing fear, harm, or loss of safety for a partner, date, or sexual connection.

How Trauma-Informed Sex Therapy Can Help

Sexual coercion affects more than what happens during sex. It can shape the way a person understands consent, safety, intimacy, desire, arousal, shame, and bodily autonomy. Trauma-informed specialist counselling and sex therapy can support people to make sense of confusing or minimised experiences, rebuild a sense of choice, and explore intimacy at a pace that feels safer and more self-directed.

This kind of work can include understanding trauma responses such as freeze, fawn, shutdown, or dissociation, as well as reconnecting with sexuality in a way that feels more embodied, consensual, and aligned. For those who are worried about their own behaviour, specialist support can also offer a space to understand patterns, take responsibility, and learn safer, more respectful ways of relating.

A person does not need to have all the language worked out before seeking support. It is enough to notice that sex no longer feels safe, free, mutual, or genuinely chosen.

You’re Welcome Here

If something in this article has felt familiar, and sex has started to feel more like pressure, obligation, shutdown, or survival than choice, that experience matters. It is valid to want sex and intimacy to feel safer, gentler, freer, and more aligned with who you are.

If you are in Adelaide, elsewhere in South Australia, or accessing support through virtual/telehealth from another part of Australia, trauma-informed specialist counselling and sexology can offer a space to slowly make sense of what has been happening around sex, consent, coercion, and intimacy. Healing does not require certainty or the perfect words. It can begin with simply noticing that something has not felt right for a while.

Book your first session here.

References

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AIHW. (2024, July 18). *Coercive control*. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. [https://www.aihw.gov.au/family-domestic-and-sexual-violence/understanding-fdsv/coercive-control]

BBC. (2023, November 29). *Kent romance scam victim advocates for greater support*. [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-67571328]

Buchanan, T., & Whitty, M. T. (2014). The online dating romance scam: Causes and consequences of victimhood. *Psychology, Crime & Law, 20*(3), 261–283. [https://research.monash.edu/en/publications/the-online-dating-romance-scam-causes-and-consequences-of-victimh/]

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Ford, J. D., Haselgruber, A., Knefel, M., & Cloitre, M. (2024). The trauma and mental health impacts of coercive control: A systematic review and meta-analysis. *Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25*(1), 630–647. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380231162972

Henry, N., Gavey, N., & Johnson, K. (2023). Image-based sexual abuse as a means of coercive control: Victim-survivor experiences. *Violence Against Women, 29*(13–14), 2623–2646. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778012221114918

Hilton, N. Z., Ham, E., Radatz, D. L., Smith, C. M., Snow, N., Wintermute, J., Jennings-Fitz-Gerald, E., Lee, J., & Patterson, S. (2024). Coercive control in 2SLGBTQQIA+ relationships: A scoping review. *Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25*(5), 3713–3728. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380241257957

Lifeline. (n.d.). *1800RESPECT*. [https://www.lifeline.org.au/get-help/national-services/1800respect](https://www.lifeline.org.au/get-help/national-services/1800respect)

Stark, E. (2007). *Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life*. Oxford University Press.

The Hotline. (2021, November 23). *A closer look at sexual coercion*. National Domestic Violence Hotline. [https://www.thehotline.org/resources/a-closer-look-at-sexual-coercion/]

UMSU. (n.d.). *Identifying violence*. University of Melbourne Student Union. [https://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/support/survivors/ignore-no-more/identifying-violence/]

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