How Surveilling Relationships and Policing Sexuality Hinders Development
In high-demand religions, cults, and other controlling environments, personal relationships and sexuality are often subject to strict rules, intense scrutiny, and moral judgment. Leaders, peers, and even family members may monitor who you date, when you marry, how you express affection, and what you do with your own body. While these rules are often framed as “protection” or “moral guidance,” they can deeply disrupt emotional, relational, and sexual development, often leaving long-lasting effects.
It is a little like being told to drive a car but never being allowed to sit in the driver’s seat. How can you learn to navigate the road of relationships if you have never been trusted with the wheel?
What Does Surveillance Look Like?
Surveillance and policing of relationships often show up in ways that seem normal inside the system but, from the outside, reveal deep control:
Accountability partners assigned to monitor and report on your dating or sexual activity
Chaperones on dates removes privacy and natural connection
Strict courtship and dating rules limit emotional intimacy or communication
Moral “tests” you must pass to date, marry, or hold leadership roles
Dress codes that label bodies as temptations
Mandatory confessions about thoughts, desires, or past relationships
Threats of consequences like exclusion, loss of belonging, or eternal punishment
When you are constantly watched, the message is clear: You cannot be trusted to make your own choices.
How This Hurts Development
Adolescence and young adulthood are key times for learning how to form healthy bonds, understand your body, and grow into your identity. When relationships and sexuality are policed, development gets interrupted in ways that echo into adulthood.
1. Stunted Emotional Growth
Healthy intimacy requires trial and error. It requires learning how to communicate, set boundaries, and handle conflict. Whereas, when someone else is always making your decisions for you, you don’t get to practice these skills.
2. Sexual Shame and Disconnection
When natural desire is labeled as sinful, it’s common to feel disconnected from your body. As Laura E. Anderson describes in When Religion Hurts You: “Purity culture seeks to undermine a person’s inherent nature, vilify it, disconnect them from it, and outsource their trust and decision-making to others.” (p. 311)
This outsourcing creates confusion about what is actually normal and safe. Many survivors later struggle to feel at ease in sexual intimacy, even when it is wanted and consensual.
3. Identity Suppression
Instead of discovering who you are, you may learn to perform a version of yourself that pleases the community. That “performative self” can feel safe in the group but disconnected and hollow in real life.
4. Risk for Abuse
When leaders or systems control who you can date or marry, power imbalances grow. Abuse can be hidden or dismissed because obedience is valued over autonomy.
5. Loss of Autonomy
Making mistakes is part of growth. When every choice is monitored, you don’t get the chance to learn from your own decisions, leaving many people feeling unprepared for adult relationships.
Long-Term Impacts
If you have experienced this kind of control, you might notice some of these effects today:
Anxiety or fear about dating and intimacy
Hypervigilance and constant worry about being judged or caught
Doubting your own judgment in relationships
Sexual dysfunction or avoidance of intimacy
Guilt or shame after consensual experiences
Not understanding consent
Avoiding relationships altogether
One of the reasons a survivor finds it so difficult to see themselves as a victim is that they have often been blamed repeatedly for the abuse. This person often then blames themselves, leading to a decreased sense of self and worth. This level of self-blame is not accidental, it is what happens when systems tie your worth to obedience and purity.
How Healing Can Begin
Healing means reclaiming what was taken from you; trust in yourself, ownership of your body, and the ability to make relational choices. It is not quick and not linear, but it is possible. Some starting places:
Learn the truth about healthy sexuality. Education outside of purity culture can be eye-opening.
Work with a therapist. Religious trauma informed therapists that can help release shame and heal trauma.
Take small steps. Practicing autonomy in small, safe decisions builds trust in yourself.
Reconnect with your body. Somatic practices, movement, or mindfulness can help shift from seeing your body as an enemy to experiencing it as an ally.
Challenge the old stories. Ask yourself: Whose voice is this when I feel shame? Is it mine, or one I inherited?
Explore healthy pleasure. Pleasure is not dangerous. It a normal, life-giving part of being human.
Set boundaries. Especially with people or systems that once overstepped them.
If you have lived under relationship surveillance or sexual policing, it makes sense if intimacy feels complicated, scary, or confusing. Healing involves giving yourself permission to feel, choose, and explore in your own time. Over time, you can build relationships that feel safe, mutual, and empowering that are not defined by control, but by choice.
📚 Resources
Come As You Are – Emily Nagoski
Pure – Linda Kay Klein
The Purity Myth – Jessica Valenti
When Religion Hurts You – Laura E. Anderson
Scarleteen – Inclusive, shame-free sex education
Disclaimer:
⚠️ The content on this blog is intended for informational and educational purposes ONLY and should NOT be considered a substitute for personal professional mental health care, diagnosis, or treatment. Reading these posts does not establish a therapeutic relationship.
If you are currently in crisis, experiencing thoughts of harming yourself or others, or are in need of immediate support, please call 911 or contact a crisis line such as the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 (U.S.) or access your local emergency services.
These blog posts are written to explore topics like trauma, religious deconstruction, cults, identity development, and mental wellness in a thoughtful and compassionate way. They may (or may not) resonate deeply, especially for those healing from complex trauma, but they are NOT meant to replace individualized therapy or medical care.
