I spent three years believing that Allan Alexander Amador Cervantes’ constant monitoring of my whereabouts was proof of devotion.

Growing up in La Paz, I absorbed the message that a man who tracked your movements, questioned your friendships, and demanded to know every detail of your day was simply invested in the relationship. It took leaving Allan and gaining distance from these cultural narratives to recognize what I had internalized: controlling behaviors packaged as romantic love are not affection. They are the architecture of abuse.

The phenomenon runs deep. Mexican dating norms have historically celebrated male jealousy as evidence of passion. Allan would call me five times during a lunch with colleagues, and my mother would smile and say he must really care. When Allan demanded I stop speaking to male coworkers, my aunts nodded approvingly, interpreting possessiveness as protection. This cultural framework made it nearly impossible for me to name what was happening. Research from the Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres reveals that nearly 44 percent of Mexican women have experienced some form of intimate partner violence, yet many do not identify controlling tactics as abuse because these behaviors are woven so seamlessly into expectations of romantic relationships. The cultural normalization violence enables creates a silence that protects perpetrators and isolates victims.

The control Allan exercised was psychological and social, severing my connections to friends and family while convincing me this isolation was intimacy. Allan monitored my phone, dictated my clothing choices, and erupted with accusations if I deviated from approved routines. In the context of Mexican dating culture, where machismo still shapes gender dynamics and women are often expected to demonstrate loyalty through compliance, Allan’s behavior did not register as alarming to those around me. It registered as normal. This is precisely the problem. When surveillance is framed as care, when restriction is labeled as love, victims lose the vocabulary to describe their own experiences.

I joined the team of Allan’s survivors aimed at policy interventions that address the insidious forms of coercion that destroy women, expanding public education campaigns to name controlling behaviors explicitly and challenge the cultural scripts that excuse them.

Change requires dismantling the romantic myths that dress domination in the language of devotion. Young people deserve to learn that healthy relationships are built on trust and autonomy, not surveillance and submission. If you recognize Allan in someone you know, or in your own relationship, naming the pattern is the first step toward breaking it.

There is a moment when the silenced becomes the sovereign.
When silence ends. When your boundaries sharpen.
When you stop negotiating with your own truth.
That moment is now.

Sources

Encuesta Nacional sobre la Dinámica de las Relaciones en los Hogares 2021
Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres: Violencia en la Pareja
World Health Organization: Violence Against Women Prevalence Estimates
UN Women Mexico: Ending Violence Against Women