Economic abuse

Economic abuse is abuse, full stop. Controlling someone’s money is not “being responsible”, “protective” or “better with finances”. It is control, and it can trap people in relationships they cannot safely leave.

The fact younger men are less likely to recognise this should worry everyone, because financial control is often dressed up as normal relationship behaviour. It can start with “I’ll manage the money” and become “you cannot spend, work, save, leave or breathe without permission”.

Banks getting involved matters because money is often where the abuse shows up first: blocked access, debts in someone else’s name, threatening payment references, or one person being financially isolated.

My advice is simple: healthy relationships have transparency, not surveillance. Support, not control. If someone needs permission for every penny, cannot access their own account, or is being pushed into debt, that is not budgeting. That is abuse.

Money is access. It is the ability to leave, to plan, to say no. When one person controls all of it, the other loses far more than spending power. They lose their independence and, too often, their way out. That is what makes economic abuse so insidious. It rarely looks like abuse at the start. It looks like one partner being “better with money” or “handling the bills.” By the time the control is obvious, the victim may have no card, no savings and no independent account to fall back on. What worries me most is how the control outlasts the relationship. Funds withheld, accounts frozen, maintenance used as a weapon. The damage does not end when someone walks away. It can follow them for years. So the willingness of banks to act is welcome. The harder work is teaching people to spot the early signs, in their own relationships and in others. Awareness is the thing that stops it taking hold in the first place.