There’s no shortage of documentaries, podcasts and docuseries about cults these days, and audiences can’t seem to get enough.
While it’s easy to watch these stories from a distance and assume you’d never “fall for” something like that, the truth is that anyone can be drawn into a high-control situation ― and the forces that pull people into cults aren’t unique to cults at all.
They can also take hold in toxic romantic relationships.
“Cult dynamics can exist in religious groups, businesses, politics and online spaces, and they can also be found in abusive families and toxic romantic relationships,” Ashlen Hilliard, a cult intervention specialist and founder of People Leave Cults, told HuffPost. “The underlying mechanism is coercive control: a pattern of behavior used to control someone and strip away their autonomy.”
That doesn’t mean every rocky relationship fits this description.
“I would make a distinction between a relationship that is simply unhealthy or unhappy and one that involves coercive control,” said Rachel Bernstein, author of “Cult Therapy” and a licensed marriage and family therapist. “Not every bad relationship is cult-like. The parallels become much stronger when one person is gradually gaining control over the other person’s choices, relationships, perceptions or sense of self.”
When that does happen, survivors of both experiences often describe remarkably similar patterns.
“That’s why survivors have so much in common, even when they’re leaving very different experiences,” Hilliard said.
So how exactly does it play out, and why is there so much overlap? Below, experts break down the similarities between cults and toxic relationships.
Both start by meeting a real need in a fairly harmless way.
“One of the most powerful aspects of this process is that it usually doesn’t begin by seeming controlling at all,” Bernstein said. “People generally don’t knowingly sign up to surrender their autonomy. They enter because something being offered feels meaningful, loving, hopeful, stabilizing or exciting. The control often develops incrementally.”
Hilliard described this as an entry point ― discovering new ideas or beliefs that fill a genuine gap in someone’s life.
“In a relationship, this may sound like, ‘I think I found someone I can trust, who loves me, and who can take care of me,’” she said. “In a multi-level marketing group, it may sound like, ‘I think I can be financially stable and secure on my own terms while raising my kids.’ In a New Age group, it may sound like, ‘I think I have a clear path to enlightenment so I can find inner peace and have less anxiety.’”
She emphasized that anyone can find these kinds of ideas appealing at first. But ultimately, a cult or toxic partner may exploit those underlying wishes and needs to serve their own interests.
There’s love bombing.
“Love bombing is the intense concentration of attention, affection, praise, validation or promises of belonging that creates a rapid sense of connection,” Bernstein said. “In a romantic relationship it might feel like, ‘I’ve finally found the person who really sees me.’ In a high-control group it might feel like, ‘I’ve finally found my people.’”
There’s an intense high to this experience ― all the texts, grand gestures and proclamations like, “I’ve never met someone like you” or “I don’t connect with a lot of people, but there’s something about you.”
“You feel as if you’ve won a prize, but also that you are the prize,” said psychiatrist Dr. Sue Varma. “Finally, someone sees these rare, special qualities in you. You get to see yourself the way you’ve always wanted to, through someone else’s eyes. That feeling can make it easy to overlook controlling behavior.”
When a person or group makes you feel special or chosen, you may start to tie your sense of value to their attention and opinion.
“Joining a cult is like falling in love,” Hilliard said. “You fall in love with the ideas, the community or the person. You may be love-bombed by members of the group or by a partner, and at this point there may be no red flags. It works because it meets real human needs for connection, acceptance and security, and it builds trust quickly.”
Part of what makes love bombing effective is speed. Sabrina Romanoff, a clinical psychologist and relationship expert, explained that healthy relationships typically develop gradually, with both people “slowly opting in for deeper connection” as they get to know each other.
“On the other hand, love bombing is about rapid, overwhelming, excessive displays of interest, gifts, time spent ― to the point where you feel rushed into the relationship,” she said. “You may not have time to rationally think things through, or rationalize some red flags they exhibit because you’re speeding by them at 100 mph.”
“Love bombing helps to dilute those red flags, as the gifts, attention and words of affirmation all can serve as distractions from a toxic partner or cult dynamic,” Romanoff added. “It’s not that those indications of danger aren’t present, but they are much harder to detect when it feels like their friendship or membership in the group is a fire sale and you must act fast.”
That said, an enthusiastic new partner isn’t automatically cause for concern.
“Genuine affection and enthusiasm aren’t inherently love bombing,” Bernstein said. “What makes it concerning is what happens next, particularly when that intense connection becomes a means of creating dependency or gaining control.”
There’s a promise of certainty.
Beyond the initial rush, Hilliard said, there’s often something else that keeps people committed.
“As things progress, there is often a promise of certainty that keeps you on the path,” she said. “In a cult, that may be certainty about the afterlife or your life’s purpose. In a relationship, it may be certainty that this person is ‘the one’ and that you’ll never be alone again.”
“All of this can initially create safety, trust and community, whether in a group or a new relationship,” Hilliard added.
You become isolated from friends and family.
“Isolation is especially powerful because our ability to reality-check depends partly on having access to other people who truly care about us and want what’s best for us, and have other perspectives or can see right through the charismatic charlatan controlling us,” Bernstein said.
Cults and toxic partners might take subtle or explicit steps to encourage their target to cut ties with people or otherwise shrink their support network.
A cult may discourage contact with ‘outsiders’ or family members who question the group. A controlling partner may criticize your friends, create conflict whenever you see family or monitor who you talk to.
- Ashlen Hilliard, a cult intervention specialist and founder of People Leave Cults
“If friends and family are increasingly portrayed as negative, unenlightened, jealous, dangerous or incapable of understanding the relationship, and as people who are standing in the way of our happiness or enlightenment, the person gradually loses the outside reference points that might otherwise help them recognize what’s really happening to them,” Bernstein noted.
The tactics look strikingly similar in both contexts.
“Slowly, the group or partner becomes the center of your world,” Hilliard said. “A cult may discourage contact with ‘outsiders’ or family members who question the group. A controlling partner may criticize your friends, create conflict whenever you see family or monitor who you talk to. The fewer outside perspectives you have, the harder it becomes to reality-check what’s happening.”
The goal is to make your world smaller so that you have fewer people to turn to for advice, comfort or the unvarnished truth.
“You become more dependent on the person or group, and leaving starts to feel harder because you have fewer places to go,” Varma said. “There may be no one close enough to question what’s happening or offer a safe harbor.”
They take control of your everyday life.
That social isolation is often just the first step.
“Friends and family are our reality checks, so separating someone from those relationships gives the controlling person or group more influence,” said Damona Hoffman, a dating coach and author of “F the Fairy Tale: Rewrite the Dating Myths and Live Your Own Love Story.” “And coercive control often happens first through controlling who you can contact and then moves on to controlling money, activities and ultimately a victim’s mind.”
Lois Liberman, a matrimonial and family law partner at Blank Rome, pointed to behaviors like “monitoring their whereabouts, directing who they can spend time with, how they should spend their time, limiting their access to finances and even directing what they can and cannot wear” ― all of which can take place in both coercively controlling relationships and cults.
The end point of this process is often full dependence.
“By destroying the target’s confidence, financial resources and external connections, the controller creates total reliance,” Liberman said. “The victim comes to believe they cannot survive, make decisions or find safety without the partner or leader.”
You start walking on eggshells.
“In both a high-control group and a coercively controlling relationship, the person may slowly learn that keeping the leader or partner happy is the safest way to maintain stability,” Bernstein said. “They may begin monitoring themselves. What can I say? What will upset them? What version of myself is acceptable to them? Over time, their world becomes smaller while the controlling person’s influence becomes larger.”
Pushing back rarely goes over well.
“In both settings, dissent is punished,” Liberman said. “Questioning the rules, expressing doubts or asking critical questions is treated as a severe betrayal, loyalty violation or a personal attack.”
“You may feel you have to keep proving your loyalty,” Varma said. “Your self-worth starts to depend on being accepted by this person or group.”
You stop trusting yourself.
“The biggest parallel is the erosion of self-trust,” Hoffman said. “You start questioning your own instincts. Am I overreacting? Did that really happen? Maybe they’re right. Over time, you can lose touch with the version of yourself you were before the relationship.”
Gaslighting plays a major role in this.
“Abusers and cult leaders manipulate information, deny events happened and rewrite facts,” Liberman said. “Over time, they use the victim’s own mind against them, making them doubt their memory, perception and sanity.”
People in these situations may start to trust their partner or leader’s version of reality over their own.
“Once you’re in it, it’s very hard to maintain a strong sense of reality, opposition to what they want or to hold your frame of mind,” Romanoff said. “When everything you need or feel becomes inconvenient and threatens attachment to the cult or toxic partner, you begin to automatically suppress your needs to preserve attachment, to the point where you don’t even know who you are anymore, as survival mode becomes the default.”
A trauma bond makes it hard to leave.
Over time, this mistreatment and external control can even start to feel meaningful.
“Personal sacrifice, or ‘suffering for the cause,’ starts to feel like a positive sign rather than a warning sign,” Hilliard said. “In a relationship, this can look like believing that enduring mistreatment proves your love or commitment.”
Thus, the controlling partner or cult can become both the source of pain and distress and also the means of relief from it.
“When your greatest source of safety becomes your greatest source of threat, a trauma bond forms between the leader and member, or between the two partners,” Hilliard said.
Liberman unpacked why that makes leaving so difficult.
“The cycle of tension, abuse and sudden relief or reaffirmation creates a powerful biochemical and psychological bond,” she said. “Leaving feels terrifying and nearly impossible because the brain treats the source of the danger as the only source of safety.”
Perhaps the cruelest irony, Bernstein said, is how these dynamics are often sold.
“Sometimes the thing that imprisons you deceptively is the promise of freedom,” she said. “People who are trying to control you will often tell you that, through them, you will be free from worry, free from pain, free from the people standing in your way, free from the world that is corrupt, all while they are stripping you of your actual freedom without your knowledge or consent.”
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-866-331-9474 or text “loveis” to 22522 for the National Dating Abuse Helpline.