“You Are Mine”: Exposing the Ownership Mindset Behind Abuse

At the root of abuse is ownership. Behind the charm, the threats and the control sits the belief ‘you are mine’. To an abuser, a partner is not a person with rights and autonomy but property to be used, shaped and controlled. When children are involved, this way of thinking extends to them too.

This perspective matters now more than ever. Rates of post-separation abuse remain high, and cases of femicide show us the lethal danger when an abuser’s sense of ownership is challenged.

Looking at abuse through the lens of ownership helps explain why survivors feel so trapped and why abusers react with such rage when their control is challenged.

The Roots of an Ownership Mindset

The idea that one person can own another has a long history. For centuries, wives were legally defined as the property of their husbands and children belonged to the father’s household. The laws have changed, but the attitudes remain. In abusive relationships, this shadow still shapes behaviour. While women can be abusive, coercive control is highly gendered and most often carried out by men against women.

Culture feeds into this as well. Jealousy is dressed up as passion, control as protection, and possessiveness as love. In films, TV, and music lyrics, everyday culture romanticises phrases like “you’re mine” or “I can’t live without you,” making ownership appear like devotion.

As Emma Katz, in her book Coercive Control in Children's and Mothers' Lives, points out, “societal messages tend to normalize boyfriends/husbands having a degree of ownership and possession over girlfriends/wives… This in turn makes it more likely that coercively controlling behavior from boyfriends/husbands will be excused or romanticized (Katz, 2022, p. 28).

When ownership is disguised as love, abusers feel justified and survivors can be left doubting themselves. A woman may be told she is lucky to be loved so fiercely, even as her freedom is being taken away.

Abusers rarely come out and say that someone is their property, but their behaviour makes it plain. Checking phones, cutting off friendships, or controlling money are not quirks of personality or signs of care. They are acts of possession.

Partners as Belongings, Not Equals

Once someone is treated as property, equality disappears. One person claims authority and the other is expected to submit.

This shows up in many ways:

• Demanding constant updates on where their partner is

• Refusing contact with friends or family without permission

• Monitoring social media or demanding passwords

• Treating a partner’s body as available on demand

To outsiders, this might look like jealousy, but at its core it is ownership and the belief ‘your life belongs to me’.

This is why abuse often gets worse as a relationship deepens. The abuser interprets commitment as acquisition, as though history together gives them the right to more control, more intrusion and harsher punishment when their partner resists. Rather than building respect over time, they tighten their grip. Possessiveness isn’t insecurity, it is part of the mindset of abuse itself.

The Language of Possession

The words abusers use often reveal what they believe.

• You are mine

• You belong to me

• If I cannot have you, no one will

• I made you who you are

These are not words of love. They are statements of ownership. What can sound harmless in everyday life becomes a declaration of entitlement when spoken in an abusive context.

Some abusers go even further and mark their partners physically. Evan Stark, in his book Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life, shares how “abusive men have forced women in my caseload to bear tattoos, bites, burns, and similar marks of ownership” (Stark, 2007).

He adds that the problem is so widespread that the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, together with the American Academy of Facial, Plastic, and Reconstructive Surgery, created a free programme to remove tattoos and other forms of ‘branding’ left on women and children by abusive partners.

Children as Property

Ownership does not stop with partners. Children too are often treated as possessions to be shaped, displayed or used.

For abusive parents, children may be:

• Extensions of the ego: expected to succeed in ways that make the parent look good

• Tools of control: drawn into loyalty tests or used to manipulate the other parent

• Objects of possession: claimed as “mine,” while the other parent’s bond is dismissed

This can mean strict rules that have nothing to do with the child’s wellbeing but everything to do with enforcing authority. Children may be paraded in public as evidence of success but neglected or frightened at home. Their individuality is erased because, in the abuser’s mind, they are property.

Separation often makes this worse. Men who showed little interest in parenting may suddenly demand equal custody, not because of care but because they refuse to lose what they see as theirs. Custody battles become another way to exert control.

The psychological impact on children is profound. They grow up confused, silenced, and burdened by divided loyalties.

The consequences can also be deadly. Children are sometimes harmed or even killed to punish the mother. Their lives are not seen as sacred but as extensions of the abuser’s property rights, disposable when control is lost.

When an Ownership Mindset Becomes Fatal

The most dangerous time for victims is often when they leave. Once the illusion of ownership is broken, the abuser’s fury can turn lethal.

Some stalk or monitor their ex-partner, threaten new partners, intimidate support networks or kidnap children. Separation is the moment when their claim of possession faces the greatest challenge, and some abusers will go to any lengths to reassert control.

Sexual violence may also occur at this point. Post-separation rape is a brutal message of the ownership belief ‘you are still mine, and I retain rights to your body until I say otherwise’. It is not about sexual desire but about punishing defiance.

In 2024, in Hertfordshire, England, Kyle Clifford, a former soldier, stormed the home of his ex-girlfriend Louise Hunt. He murdered her mother on the doorstep, tied Louise up and raped her, before killing her and her sister with a crossbow.

These tragedies are not isolated incidents. Post-separation killings follow a recognisable pattern linked to coercive control, where the abuser cannot accept the loss of ownership.

As Stark warns, “the ultimate expression of property rights is the right of disposal illustrated by the statement that frequently precedes femicide, If I can’t have you, no one will” (Stark, 2007).

Reclaiming Self and Naming the Truth

Living as someone else’s property leaves deep scars. Survivors often describe feeling hollowed out or invisible, their sense of self shrinking to almost nothing because every choice required permission. These effects do not vanish as soon as the relationship ends. Healing means slowly reclaiming ownership of your own life, step by step, often with the support of those who remind you that you are not an object but a person.

It may seem easier to call abuse jealousy or anger than to face the harder truth. But naming ownership clears the fog. It validates what survivors knew in their bones: the suffocating sense of being a possession and the constant fear of stepping out of line. It also challenges the myths that excuse controlling behaviour.

And this claim of ownership is not only a private issue. It is also a social one. Courts too often reduce children to bargaining chips. Culture still romanticises jealousy as proof of love. Each of these narratives strengthens the very beliefs that sustain abuse.

The truth must be spoken. Ownership is dehumanisation. No person is property. No child is a trophy. No relationship is a contract of possession.

Healing is not only about leaving the abuser’s grasp. It is about reclaiming the deeper truth that you belong to yourself.

References

Katz, E. (2022). Coercive control in children’s and mothers’ lives. Oxford University Press.

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

There is rarely any validation to be found when it comes to emotional abuse. I seek out daily reminders from those I’d never have to explain anything to. You’re one of those places for me.”

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