Since he started going to therapy, he’s gotten more self- centered than ever.

I think this time he’s really sorry.

He’s usually very closed off to his feelings, so it gives me hope that he’s finally opening up a little.

Our couples counselor says we both have to be willing to change.

Do you think he can change? I’m not sure how long I should wait around to see whether he will or not.

MY FIFTEEN YEARS OF WORKING day in and day out with abusive men have left me certain of one thing: There are no shortcuts to change, no magical overnight transformations, no easy ways out. Change is difficult,

uncomfortable work. My job as a counselor is to dive into the elaborate tangle that makes up an abuser’s thinking and assist the man to untie the

knots. The project is not hopeless—if the man is willing to work hard—but it is complex and painstaking. For him, remaining abusive is in many ways easier than stepping out of his pattern. Yet there are some men who decide to dig down inside of themselves, root out the values that drive their

abusive behavior, and develop a truly new way of interacting with a female partner. The challenge for an abused woman is to learn how to tell whether her partner is serious about overcoming his abusiveness.

The first challenge with an abusive man is to motivate him to work on himself. Because he becomes attached to the many rewards that his controlling and intimidating behaviors bring him, he is highly reluctant to make significant changes in his way of operating in a relationship. This

reluctance cannot be overcome through gentle persuasion, pleading, or cajoling by the woman. I am sorry to say that I have never once seen such approaches succeed. The men who make significant progress in my program are the ones who know that their partners will definitely leave them unless they change, and the ones on probation who have a tough probation officer who demands that they really confront their abusiveness.

In other words, the initial impetus to change is always extrinsic rather than self-motivated. Even when a man does feel genuinely sorry for the ways his behavior has hurt his partner, I have never seen his remorse alone suffice to get him to become a serious client. After a few months of deep work in the program, some men do start to develop intrinsic reasons for change, such as starting to feel real empathy for their partners’ feelings, developing

awareness of how their behavior has been harming their children, or even sometimes realizing that they themselves enjoy life more when they aren’t

abusive, despite all the privileges of abuse they have to give up. But it takes a long time for an abusive man to get to that point.

As I discussed in the Introduction, the majority of abusive men do not make deep and lasting changes even in a high-quality abuser program.

However, if even a minority become nonabusive, or at least significantly less abusive, the job is worth doing. At least as important is that the program can help the abused woman develop clarity about her abuser’s

patterns and manipulations and can share insights with her. For example, an abusive man’s underlying attitudes tend to leap out of him in the heat of

debates and confrontations in his group, and the counselor can then assist the woman in identifying the thinking that is driving his behavior. Follow- up surveys by abuser programs have found that the support that the

counselors give to her tends to be the aspect of the program that the woman finds most valuable. (These surveys indicate that an abuser program that is not focused on supporting the abused woman and that does not consider serving her to be its primary responsibility is severely limiting what it can accomplish and may even be contributing to her difficulties.)

For an abusive man to make genuine progress he needs to go through a complex and critical set of steps. To give my clients a road map of the

process of change, I tell them the following story:

There once was a man whose neighbors had a large and beautiful maple tree growing behind their house. It gave shade in the hot summers, turned stunning colors of fire in the fall as it dropped its leaves, and stood against

the winter snow as a magnificent wooden sculpture. But the man hated his neighbors’ tree, because the shade that it cast into his yard made his grass grow poorly and stunted his vegetable garden, which was his passion. He pressured the neighbors repeatedly to either cut the tree down or prune it drastically, and their response was always the same: “You are free to cut

any branches that stick out over your property, but beyond that we are going to leave the tree alone, because it is beautiful and we love it. We are sorry about the shade it casts on your side, but that is what trees do.”

One summer the neighbors went away on vacation for a week, and the man decided to rid himself of his aggravation. He took a chainsaw and cut their tree to the ground, making careful cuts so that the tree would not fall on the neighbor’s house and destroy it but also directing it away from his own yard, so he wouldn’t have to clean it up. Then he walked home, fully satisfied if perhaps a little afraid. The next day he took his chainsaw, threw it in the dump, and prepared himself to deny having any idea who had brought the giant down, even though the truth would be obvious.

There was only one hole in his plan: He didn’t realize how popular his neighbors were, and he didn’t know how unbearable it would be to have the entire local population turn against him, to the point where no one would even look at him or talk to him. So the day finally came when the man realized his life would be wrecked for good unless he dealt with his

destructive and selfish act. What steps did he have to take in order to set things right?

THE STEPS TO ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY

1. He had to admit, and admit fully, that he cut down the tree. He dreaded looking at people and saying, “Yeah, it was me”—even though they already knew—but he had to do it. He had to stop claiming that the neighbors had cut the tree down themselves so that they could blame him and turn everyone against him. And when he did admit his act, he also had to acknowledge what an oldand impressive tree he had killed, rather than try to save face by insisting that it had been small and ugly.
2. He had to admit that he had cut it down on purpose, that hisactions were a choice. He couldn’t claim that he had been so drunk or enraged that he didn’t know what he was doing. He couldn’t say, “Well, I just meant to put a little cut into the trunk as a warning to them, but I accidentally cut too far and the tree fell down.” In short, he had to stop making excuses. Furthermore, he had to admit that he had goals that he tried to further through his destructive behavior; he needed to be honest about his motives.
3. He had to acknowledge that what he did was wrong. This meant that he had to stop blaming the neighbors and playing up how victimized he had been by the shade. He had to make a sincere, heartfelt apology.
4. He had to accept the neighbors’ right to be angry about what he did, which meant that he had to be willing to truly acknowledge the effects of his actions. He had to take in the anguish he had caused. He had to stop asserting that they were “making too big a deal over one stupid tree” and that “it happened a long time ago and they should be over it by now.” Although apologizing was important, he also had to accept that saying he was sorry was only the beginning and that it meant nothing unless he also looked seriously at thedamage he had done.
5. He had to accept the consequences of his actions. First, he had toprovide reasonable monetary damage for the value of the destroyed tree. He then needed to plead guilty to the criminal charges, so that the neighbors would not have to go through the ordeal of testifying against him. He had to stop seeking sympathy from people for the problems he himself had caused, along the lines of: “Poor me, I had to pay out all this money that I can’t afford because of their

   tree when the only reason I cut it down was because they were wrecking my yard with it.”

6. He had to devote long-term and serious effort toward setting right what he had done. No amount of money can replace a mature tree; there’s no way to erase the effects of such a destructive act. Theman therefore had to make amends. He needed to buy as large and healthy a young tree as he could find in a nursery and to plant it carefully behind the neighbors’ house. What’s more, he had to water the tree, protect it from deer, watch it for diseases, and

   fertilize it as necessary for years. A young tree takes a long time to securely establish itself.

7. He had to lay aside demands for forgiveness. He had to recognize that even if he sincerely were to take all of the steps I have described, the neighbors might still be left with pain, hurt, and bitterness, and the man had no right to tell them how long their bad feelings should last, especially since he was the cause. People might be nicer to him now that he had stopped denying what he did, but they wouldn’t necessarily ever like him. The neighbors might never want to be his friends—and why should they be? If they did decide to be friendly with him at some point, he shouldsee their forgiveness as an act of kindness and not as his due for replacing the tree.
8. He had to treat the neighbors consistently well from that point forward. He couldn’t decide to stick it to them five years later by cutting down a rosebush, for example, and then say, “Okay, I messed up, but shouldn’t I get credit for the five years that I’ve been good? You can’t expect me to be perfect.” Asking someone not to cut down the neighbors’ flowers is not the same thing as expecting perfection.
9. He had to relinquish his negative view of his neighbors. He had to stop speaking badly about them to other people and accept that

most—perhaps even all—of what he disliked about them actually had to do with their responses to the damage he had done and their refusal to be bullied by him. He had been the creator of their hostility toward him.

As I go over each of these responsibilities with my clients, I ask them if they have any disagreements. They concur that each of the above steps is fair and necessary—as long as we are talking about trees and neighbors.

However, as soon as I start to go back through the story, reviewing how

each piece applies to a man who has abused his partner, my clients begin backpedaling. They are reluctant to do the serious work of change, feeling that it would be easier to throw a new blanket over the moldy mattress and carry on with life as usual.

How These Steps Apply to Abuse

The box below summarizes how the steps in the tree story apply to an abusive man’s process of change.

 

Steps to Change

1. Admit fully to his history of psychological, sexual, and physical abusiveness toward any current or past partners whom he has abused. Denial and minimizing need to stop, including discrediting your memory of what happened. He can’t change if he is continuing to cover up, to others or to himself, important parts of what he has done.

2. Acknowledge that the abuse was wrong, unconditionally. He needs to identify the

   justifications he has tended to use, including the

   various ways that he may have blamed you, and to talk in detail about why his behaviors were

   unacceptable without slipping back into defending them.

3. Acknowledge that his behavior was a choice, not a loss of control. For example, he needs to recognize

   that there is a moment during each incident at which he gives himself permission to become abusive and that he chooses how far to let himself go.

4. Recognize the effects his abuse has had on you and on your children, and show empathy for those. He

   needs to talk in detail about the short-and long-term impact that his abuse has had, including fear, loss of

   trust, anger, and loss of freedom and other rights. And he needs to do this without reverting to feeling sorry for himself or talking about how hard the

   experience has been for him.

5. Identify in detail his pattern of controlling behaviors and entitled attitudes. He needs to speak in detail about the day-to-day tactics of abuse he has used. Equally important, he must be able to identify his underlying beliefs and values that have driven those behaviors, such as considering himself entitled to constant attention, looking down on you as inferior, or believing that men aren’t responsible for their

   actions if “provoked” by a partner.

6. Develop respectful behaviors and attitudes to

   replace the abusive ones he is stopping. You can look for examples such as improving how well he listens to you during conflicts and at other times,

   carrying his weight of household responsibilities and child care, and supporting your independence. He

   has to demonstrate that he has come to accept the fact that you have rights and that they are equal to his.

7. Reevaluate his distorted image of you, replacing it with a more positive and empathic view. He has to recognize that he has had mental habits of focusing on and exaggerating his grievances against you and his perceptions of your weaknesses and to begin

   instead to compliment you and pay attention to your strengths and abilities.

8. Make amends for the damage he has done. He has to develop a sense that he has a debt to you and to your children as a result of his abusiveness. He can start to make up somewhat for his actions by being consistently kind and supportive, putting his own

   needs on the back burner for a couple of years, talking with people whom he has misled in regard to

   the abuse and admitting to them that he lied, paying for objects that he has damaged, and many other

   steps related to cleaning up the emotional and literal messes that his behaviors have caused. (At the same time, he needs to accept that he may never be able to fully compensate you.)

9. Accept the consequences of his actions. He should stop whining about, or blaming you for, problems that are the result of his abuse, such as your loss of desire to be sexual with him, the children’s tendency to prefer you, or the fact that he is on probation.

10. Commit to not repeating his abusive behaviors and honor that commitment. He should not place any

    conditions on his improvement, such as saying that he won’t call you names as long as you don’t raise your voice to him. If he does backslide, he cannot justify his abusive behaviors by saying, “But I’ve done great for five months; you can’t expect me to be perfect,” as if a good period earned him chips to spend on occasional abuse.

11. Accept the need to give up his privileges and do so. This means saying good-bye to double standards, to flirting with other women, to taking off with his

    friends all weekend while you look after the children, and to being allowed to express anger while you are not.

12. Accept that overcoming abusiveness is likely to be a lifelong process. He at no time can claim that his work is done by saying to you, “I’ve changed but you haven’t,” or complain that he is sick of hearing about his abuse and control and that “it’s time to get past all that.” He needs to come to terms with the fact that he will probably need to be working on his issues for good and that you may feel the effects of what he has done for many years.

13. Be willing to be accountable for his actions, both past and future. His attitude that he is above reproach has to be replaced by a willingness to accept feedback and criticism, to be honest about any backsliding, and to be answerable for what he does and how it affects you and your children.

 

Abusive men don’t make lasting changes if they skip any of the above steps, and some are easier than others. Most of my clients find it fairly easy to apologize, for example. In fact, an abuser may weave apologies into his pattern of abuse, so that when he says “I’m sorry,” it becomes another weapon in his hand. His unspoken rule may be that once he has apologized, no matter how cursorily or devoid of sincerity, his partner must be satisfied; she is not to make any further effort to show her feelings about his mistreatment, nor may she demand that he fix anything. If she tries to say anything more about the incident, he jumps right back into abuse mode, yelling such things as, “I already told you I was sorry! Now shut up about

it!”

But even a genuine and sincere apology is only a starting point. Many of my clients make it through the first three steps: They admit to a substantial portion of their abuse; they agree that their actions resulted from choice rather than loss of control; and they apologize. Then they dig in their heels at that point. An abuser’s sense of entitlement is like a rude, arrogant voice screaming inside his head. It yells at him: “You’ve given up too much already; don’t budge another inch. They already talked you into saying your abuse is all your own fault when you know she’s at least half to blame

because of the shit that she does. She should be grateful to you for apologizing; that wasn’t easy to do. She’s lucky you’ve gone this far; a lot of guys would tell her to go screw, you know.” And the voice drags him back into the mud that he had finally taken a couple of baby steps out of.

Step number four, for example, demands that the abusive man accept his partner’s right to be angry. He actually has to take seriously the furious things that she says and think about them rather than using her emotional pitch as an excuse to stuff her opinions back down her throat as he has normally done. When I explain this step, my clients at first look at me as though I had an eye in the middle of my forehead. “I should do what??

When she is yelling at me, I’m supposed to just sit there and take it??” To which I reply, “More than that, actually. You should reflect on the points

she is making and respond to them in a thoughtful way.” And then we begin practicing exactly that in the group; I ask them for examples of their partners’ angry statements and then guide them through understanding why their partners are furious and accepting their right to feel that way.

The steps go on. Steps six and seven require that he make up for what he has done, that he actually has incurred a debt because of his abuse. Step eight says that he has to change his behavior in the future, not just say he’s sorry for the past, and he has to stop his abusiveness completely and for

good. In other words, he is truly going to have to deal with the attitudes that are driving his bullying and disrespect of his partner. Step eleven requires him to give up the privileges that his abusiveness has won him. As we go through each of these steps, some clients choose to struggle through, as hard as the process is, while others throw in the towel and resume their

abusive behaviors.

THE ABUSER’S OUTLOOK ON CHANGE

To guide my clients through the work of overcoming abusiveness, I have to keep in mind the fact that they bring their usual habits, attitudes, and

manipulations to the process of change itself. This is why a woman finds herself feeling like she is riding a roller coaster while her partner claims to have changed. Here are some of the attitudes that abusers commonly exhibit when their partners, or a court, or an abuse program begin demanding that they stop:

• “The change game is just like the rest of the routine.”

  Abusers can turn their manipulative skills to creating an appearance of change. This was the style we saw in Chapter 1 with Carl, who put on such a show of developing insights at his abuser group but whose treatment of Peggy was as verbally cruel as ever and was rapidly heading back toward physical violence. I couldn’t count the number of clients who come into

  groups of mine when they are separated from their partners and hoping for a reconciliation, or barred from the house with a restraining order and trying to get permission to return, who then vanish from the abuser program the

  moment they get what they want. A man may say to his partner, “I am learning so much from the abuse groups, and if you let me move back in I’ll work even harder at the program,” but as soon as his bags are unpacked, the excuses begin: The program is too expensive; he doesn’t need it anymore;

  he doesn’t feel comfortable being in a room with “real abusers” because he’s not like them, “you and I have just had a few little problems.”

• “I can stop abuse by learning nonabusive ways to control and manipulate my partner.”

  I hear this (mostly unconscious) attitude in the voice of the client who says to me: “I thought you were going to be giving me tools to help me manage my partner’s crazy behavior. But you aren’t helping me with that at all.” His expression crazy behavior is a code phrase for any way in which she stands up to him, expresses anger, or insists on maintaining a separate identity rather than just conforming to exactly what he wants her to be. A large

  percentage of men who join abuser programs quit within the first few weeks. They make various excuses at home, but the true reason is that they discover that the program expects them to start treating their partners with respect when they were hoping to just learn kinder, gentler approaches to running the show.

• “Change is a bargaining chip.”

  An abuser often tries to use the promise of change to cut deals, since he

  believes that his partner’s behaviors are just as wrong as his: “I’ll agree not to call you ‘bitch’ anymore if you don’t bug me to help clean up the children’s mess when I’m trying to watch the game. I won’t call you ‘slut’ or ‘whore’ if you give up talking to your male friends. I won’t push you up against the wall if you drop your side of an argument whenever you see that I’m really upset.” To him, these seem like fair deals, but in reality they

  require a woman to sacrifice her rights and freedom in return for not being abused—a coercive bargain that is in itself abusive.

• “I don’t mind changing some of what I do as long as I don’t have to give up the attitudes and behaviors that are most precious to me.”

At some point during the first few months that a man is in my program, I usually stumble upon the core of his privilege, like a rear bunker on his terrain. He may abandon a few of his forward positions, but this

fortification is where he surrounds himself with sandbags and settles in for protracted war. A client may agree to stop constantly interrupting his partner and dominating arguments, for example, but when I tell him that he needs to be doing his share of child care, even during football season, he

draws the line. If being a respectful partner requires actually rising off of his behind, he’d rather be abusive. Another client may consent to stop spending all of his family’s money on himself, but if I tell him that he also has to give up his chronic pattern of having affairs, he decides the losses have become too great, and he quits.

An abuser who does not relinquish his core entitlements will not remain nonabusive. This may be the single most-overlooked point regarding abusers and change. The progress that such a man appears to be making is an illusion. If he reserves the right to bully his partner to protect even one specific privilege, he is keeping the abuse option open. And if he keeps it open, he will gradually revert to using it more and more, until his prior range of controlling behaviors has been restored to its full glory.

Abusers attach themselves tightly to their privileges and come to find the prospect of having equal rights and responsibilities, living on the same

plane as their partners, almost unbearable. They resent women who require them to change and persuade themselves that they are victims of unfair treatment because they are losing their lopsided luxuries. But they can’t

change unless they are willing to relinquish that special status—one of the key pieces of work they have to do in an abuser program.

FOR ME TO BE ABLE TO help an abusive man change, I have to guide him past the points where he gets stuck. I explain to him that he is going to feel some guilt, for example, and that his sense of entitlement will make him want to backslide when the guilty feelings come up. I have to alert him when he

starts trying to cut deals to preserve aspects of his abusive behavior and when he reverts to blaming his partner or feeling sorry for himself. I have to help him become aware of his real motives for abusive behavior. Above all, I have to confront his lack of empathy for his partner and children, pressing him to get in touch with the feelings of those he has harmed; it is my job to take away the abusive man’s privilege of turning his eyes away from the

damage he has done. If the man is willing to persist through this long and difficult process, the potential for real change begins.

HOW TO ASSESS AN ABUSER’S CLAIMS OF CHANGE

 

Question 19:

How can i tell if he’s really changing?

 

No one is in a better position than the abused woman herself to distinguish genuine progress from window dressing. A woman may call me after her partner has been in my program for a few weeks, her voice edged with anxiety and hope, to ask: “So, how is he doing? Do you think the program is working?” She’s counting on the abuse expert to look deeply into her partner’s eyes and read his potential. But I can’t do it. I have to push the umpiring back to her.

You are the only one who can judge your partner’s change. There are men who join my group and become model clients, getting the right

answers and showing the appropriate emotions, yet when I talk to their

partners I find out that life at home is business as usual or maybe has gotten a little worse. And I work with other men who are cantankerous during meetings, but the report I receive from the front lines is that their treatment of their partners is noticeably improved. What the client shows me matters little.

There are two main principles to keep in mind when deciding how much potential an abuser has to become a kind, respectful partner in the long run:

1. He cannot change unless he deals deeply with his entitled and superior attitudes. No superficial changes that he may make offer any real hope for the future.
2. It makes no difference how nice he is being to you, since almost all abusers have nice periods. What matters is how respectful and

noncoercive he chooses to become.

Holding on to these fundamental points, you can use the following

guide to help you identify changes that show promise of being genuine. We

are looking for “yes” answers to these questions:

Has he learned to treat your opinions with respect, even when they differ strongly from his?

 

 

YES NO

Is he accepting your right to express anger to him, especially when it involves his history of mistreating you?

 

 

YES NO

Is he respecting your right to freedom and independence? Does that

include refraining from all interference with your friendships and giving up the demand to always know where you are and whom you are with?

 

 

YES NO

Has he stopped making excuses for his treatment of you, including not using your behavior as an excuse for his?

 

 

YES NO

Is he being respectful about sex, applying no pressure and engaging in no guilt trips?

 

 

YES NO

Has he stopped cheating or flirting with other women, or using other behaviors that keep you anxious that he will stray?

 

 

YES NO

Does he listen to your side in arguments without interrupting, and then make a serious effort to respond thoughtfully to your points, even if he doesn’t like them?

 

 

YES NO

Have you been free to raise your grievances, new or old, without retaliation from him?

YES           NO       

Has he stopped talking about his abuse as if it were an accident and begun to acknowledge that he used it to control you?

YES           NO       

Is he actually responding to your grievances and doing something about them (for example, changing the way he behaves toward your children)?

YES           NO       

Has he greatly reduced or eliminated his use of controlling behaviors (such as sarcasm, rolling his eyes, loud disgusted sighs, talking over you, using the voice of ultimate authority, and other demonstrations of disrespect or superiority) during conversations and arguments?

YES           NO       

When he does slip back into controlling behavior, does he take you

seriously when you complain about it and keep working on improving?

YES           NO       

Is he being consistent and responsible in his behavior, taking into account how his actions affect you without having to be constantly reminded?

YES           NO       

Is he acting noticeably less demanding, selfish, and self-centered?

YES           NO       

Is he being fair and responsible about money, including allowing you to keep your own assets in your own name?

YES           NO       

Has he stopped any behaviors that you find threatening or intimidating?

YES           NO       

Has he significantly expanded his contribution to household and child- rearing responsibilities and stopped taking your domestic work for granted or treating you like a servant?

YES           NO       

Has he begun supporting your strengths rather than striving to undermine them?

YES           NO       

Have you had any major angry arguments with him in which he has shown a new willingness to conduct himself nonabusively?

YES           NO       

“No” answers to any of the above questions are signs of work that your partner still needs to do. If he is committed to changing, he will take you seriously when you voice your continued concerns and he will acknowledge that he needs to continue working on his attitudes and habits. On the other hand, if he is impatient with or critical of you for not being satisfied with

the gestures of change he has already made, that is a sign that his overt abusive behaviors will be coming back before long. My experience with

abusive men is that small or even medium-level improvements generally slip away over time; the man who actually maintains his progress is usually the one who changes completely even though that process tends to take

considerable time. Thus, when you are attempting to preserve a relationship

with a man who has abused you, you need to some extent to hold him to an even higher standard than you would a nonabusive partner.

Sometimes when a woman reports to me that her abusive partner has been doing better, it turns out that he hasn’t been doing anything at all. He isn’t swearing at her or scaring her, but he also isn’t spending time with her, talking to her, or showing her any affection. He’s avoiding abusiveness simply by disconnecting from the relationship. As a partner of one of my

clients said to me: “It’s like he’s got two gears: angry and neutral.”

Distancing himself can be worse than avoidance; it can be a way to punish you for putting your foot down about the way he treats you. A certain number of my clients leave their partners once they realize that their abuse really isn’t going to be tolerated anymore. But the more typical approach is to remain physically present but to retool the machinery to churn out passive aggression instead of open hostility. He learns how to hurt her through what he doesn’t do instead of through what he does.

The previous questions can help you to distinguish between genuine change and an abusive man’s usual pattern of going through a “good” period. If your partner is truly on the road to renouncing abuse, you will notice a dramatic difference in him. Partners of my successful clients say

that they feel almost as though they were living with a different person and that now they sense a deeper change that involves a real shift in attitudes rather than just his usual use of superficial sweetness to smooth things over.

CLEAR SIGNS OF AN ABUSER WHO ISN’T CHANGING

Your partner can make several statements or behave in several ways that clearly indicate he isn’t making progress:

 

He says he can change only if you change too.

 

He says he can change only if you “help” him change, by giving him emotional support, reassurance, and forgiveness, and by spending a lot of time with him. This often means that he wants you to abandon any plans you had to take a break from seeing him.

 

 

He criticizes you for not realizing how much he has changed. He criticizes you for not trusting that his change will last.

He criticizes you for considering him capable of behaving abusively even though he in fact has done so in the past (or has threatened to) as if you should know that he “would never do something like that,” even though he has.

 

He reminds you about the bad things he would have done in the past but isn’t doing anymore, which amounts to a subtle threat.

 

He tells you that you are taking too long to make up your mind, that he can’t “wait forever,” as a way to pressure you not to take

 

the time you need to collect yourself and to assess how much he’s really willing to change.

He says, “I’m changing, I’m changing,” but you don’t feel it.

 

BE STRAIGHT WITH YOURSELF

To use good judgment and make wise decisions about the prospects for change in your abusive partner, you need to be honest with yourself.

Because you love him, or you have children with him, or leaving him would be difficult for other reasons, you may be sorely tempted to get overly hopeful about small concessions that he finally makes. If he doesn’t budge for five years, or twenty years, and then he finally moves an inch, your exhaustion can make you think, Hey! An inch! That’s progress! You may wish to overlook all the glaring signs indicating that his basic attitudes and strategies remain intact. Beware of his deception and your own self- deception. I have heard such heart-rending sadness in the voices of many

dozens of abused women who have said to me: “I wish I could somehow recover all those years I wasted waiting around for him to deal with his

issues.” Save yourself that sadness if you can, by insisting on nothing less than complete respect.

THE ABUSER IN COUPLES THERAPY

Attempting to address abuse through couples therapy is like wrenching a nut the wrong way; it just gets even harder to undo than it was before.

Couples therapy is designed to tackle issues that are mutual. It can be

effective for overcoming barriers to communication, for untangling the childhood issues that each partner brings to a relationship, or for building intimacy. But you can’t accomplish any of these goals in the context of abuse. There can be no positive communication when one person doesn’t respect the other and strives to avoid equality. You can’t take the leaps of vulnerability involved in working through early emotional injuries while you are feeling emotionally unsafe—because you are emotionally unsafe. And if you succeed in achieving greater intimacy with your abusive partner, you will soon get hurt even worse than before because greater closeness

means greater vulnerability for you.

Couples counseling sends both the abuser and the abused woman the wrong message. The abuser learns that his partner is “pushing his buttons” and “touching him off” and that she needs to adjust her behavior to avoid getting him so upset. This is precisely what he has been claiming all along. Change in abusers comes only from the reverse process, from completely stepping out of the notion that his partner plays any role in causing his

abuse of her. An abuser also has to stop focusing on his feelings and his partner’s behavior, and look instead at her feelings and his behavior.

Couples counseling allows him to stay stuck in the former. In fact, to some therapists, feelings are all that matters, and reality is more or less irrelevant. In this context, a therapist may turn to you and say, “But he feels abused by you, too.” Unfortunately, the more an abusive man is convinced that his

grievances are more or less equal to yours, the less the chance that he will ever overcome his attitudes.

The message to you from couples counseling is: “You can make your abusive partner behave better toward you by changing how you behave

toward him.” Such a message is, frankly, fraudulent. Abuse is not caused by bad relationship dynamics. You can’t manage your partner’s abusiveness by changing your behavior, but he wants you to think that you can. He says, or leads you to believe, that “if you stop doing the things that upset me, and

take better care of my needs, I will become a nonabusive partner.” It never materializes. And even if it worked, even if you could stop his abusiveness by catering to his every whim, is that a healthy way to live? If the way you behave in the relationship is a response to the threat of abuse, are you a voluntary participant? If you have issues you would like to work on with a couples counselor, wait until your partner has been completely abuse-free

for two years. Then you might be able to work on some of the problems that truly are mutual ones.

A professional book I recently read offers a powerful example of how couples therapy works with an abuser. The therapist made an agreement with the couple that the man would avoid his scary behaviors and in return

the woman would stop making her friends such an important part of her life “because her friendships were causing so much tension in the marriage.”

The therapist had, in effect, assisted the man in using the threat of violence to get his way, cutting his partner off from social connections and sources of support that were important to her. What the therapist portrayed as a voluntary agreement was actually coercion, although the authors of the book showed no signs of realizing this.

Couples counseling can end up being a big setback for the abused woman. The more she insists that her partner’s cruelty or intimidation needs to be addressed, the more she may find the therapist looking down at her, saying, “It seems like you are determined to put all the blame on him and

are refusing to look at your part in this.” The therapist thereby inadvertently echoes the abuser’s attitude, and the woman is forced to deal with yet another context in which she has to defend herself, which is the last thing

she needs. I have been involved in many cases where the therapist and the abuser ended up as a sort of tag team, and the abused woman limped away from yet another psychological assault. Most therapists in such

circumstances are well intentioned but fail to understand the dynamics of abuse and allow the abuser to shape their perceptions.

The therapist’s reassuring presence in the room can give you the

courage to open up to your partner in ways that you wouldn’t normally feel safe to do. But this isn’t necessarily positive; an abuser can retaliate for a woman’s frank statements during couples sessions. Later, when he is screaming at you, “You humiliated me in front of the therapist, you made me look like the bad guy, you told things that were too private!” and delivering a nonstop diatribe, you may regret your decision to open up.

Irene, an abused woman who tells her own story in public and has appeared on several panels with me, shares the following account: She had been in couples counseling for about six months with her husband, Quentin, when one day the therapist decided it was time to get the ball rolling. He said, “These session have gradually stopped going anywhere, and I think I know why. Irene, you’re not opening up very much, and I think you need to

take more emotional risks.” Irene felt that the therapist was right; she had

been exposing very little week to week. So she decided to take the plunge.

She told the therapist about Quentin’s abuse of her, which included

considerable physical violence and the downward emotional spiral she had been in as a result. Quentin appeared moved and shaken, his eyes reddening as if he might cry at any moment. “I have really been in denial about my

violence,” he told the therapist, “and I haven’t been facing how badly it has been affecting Irene.” The therapist felt that a crucial barrier to progress had been overcome. “Now,” he declared, “I think your couples work can begin to yield results for you.”

On the drive home from the session, Quentin kept one hand on the steering wheel. In the other hand he clutched a large handful of Irene’s hair as he repeatedly slammed her head into the dashboard, screaming, “I told you to never fucking talk to anyone about that, you bitch! You promised me! You’re a fucking liar!” and similar insults in a nonstop rant. After hearing Irene’s account, I was careful to never again underestimate the risk to an abused woman of conjoint therapy.

If couples counseling is the only type of help your partner is willing to get—because he wants to make sure that he can blame the problem on you

—you may think, Well, it’s better than not getting any counseling at all. And maybe the therapist will see the things he does and convince him to get help. But even if the therapist were to confront him, which is uncommon,

he would just say: “You turned the therapist against me”—the same way he handles any other challenges.

Some couples therapists have said to me: “Before I work with a couple whose relationship has involved abuse, I insist on clear agreements that

there won’t be any abuse while they are in therapy with me and no

paybacks for anything that gets said in a session.” Such agreements are meaningless, unfortunately, because abusers feel no obligation to honor them; virtually every abuser I’ve ever worked with feels entitled to break his word if he has “good enough reason,” which includes any time that he is really upset by his partner. Increasingly, therapists across the United States and Canada are refusing to engage in couples or family sessions with an abuser, which is the responsible course of action.

THE ABUSIVE MAN IN INDIVIDUAL THERAPY

The more psychotherapy a client of mine has participated in, the more

impossible I usually find it is to work with him. The highly “therapized” abuser tends to be slick, condescending, and manipulative. He uses the psychological concepts he has learned to dissect his partner’s flaws and

dismiss her perceptions of abuse. He takes responsibility for nothing that he does; he moves in a world where there are only unfortunate dynamics, miscommunications, symbolic acts. He expects to be rewarded for his emotional openness, handled gingerly because of his “vulnerability,” colluded with in skirting the damage he has done, and congratulated for his insight. Many years ago, a violent abuser in my program shared the following with us: “From working in therapy on my issues about anger toward my mother, I realized that when I punched my wife, it wasn’t really her I was hitting. It was my mother!” He sat back, ready for us to express our approval of his self-awareness. My colleague peered through his glasses at the man, unimpressed by this revelation. “No,” he said, “you were hitting your wife.”

I have yet to meet an abuser who has made any meaningful and lasting changes in his behavior toward female partners through therapy, regardless of how much “insight”—most of it false—that he may have gained. The fact is that if an abuser finds a particularly skilled therapist and if the therapy is especially successful, when he is finished he will be a happy, well-adjusted abuser—good news for him, perhaps, but not such good news for his partner. Psychotherapy can be very valuable for the issues it is devised to address, but partner abuse is not one of them; an abusive man

needs to be in a specialized program, as we will see.

THE ABUSER PROGRAM

Bringing about change in an abuser generally requires four elements:(1) consequences, (2) education, (3) confrontation, and (4) accountability.

Consequences, the first item on the list, are manifested primarily through

the abuser’s experience of losing his relationship (at least temporarily if not permanently), or through the legal system if he has committed any abuse- related crimes, such as threats or assaults. He may also experience

consequences in the form of ciriticism or disapproval from other people in his life.

The abuser program has responsibility for items two and three, providing the abusive man with education about abuse and confronting him with his attitudes and excuses. A high-quality abuser program is entirely different from therapy. The critical distinctions include:

Therapy focuses on the man’s feelings and gives him empathy and support, no matter how unreasonable the attitudes that are giving

 

rise to those feelings. An abuser program, on the other hand, focuses on his thinking. The feelings that the abuser program

discusses are primarily his partner’s and his children’s, not his.

Therapy involves few rules, or none, governing what the man is allowed to do during the period he is in therapy. The abuser program requires the man to refrain from all physical violence and threats and to work seriously on reducing his verbal aggression and other forms of psychological abuse, or he can’t stay in the program.

 

An abusive man’s therapist usually will not speak to the abused woman, whereas the counselor of a high-quality abuser program always does.

 

Therapy typically will not address any of the central causes of abusiveness, including entitlement, coercive control, disrespect, superiority, selfishness, or victim blaming. An abuser program is expected to cover all of these issues and in fact to make them its primary focus.

 

An abuser program is expected to provide the man with education about abuse, to counsel him on how to apply those concepts to his own life, and to confront his abusive attitudes and excuses. It is

 

rare for therapy to do any of these things.

At the same time, an abuser program possesses no more magic than

anyone else. The man who makes major life changes as a result of attending an abuser program is the one who chooses to work the program, not the one who sits back and waits for the program to “help” him, expecting service as he usually does. The successful client neither fights his counselors every step of the way, telling them what ignorant idiots they are, nor kisses up to

them unctuously while claiming that the program has caused him to see the light. Rather, he comes weekly with a seriousness of purpose, practices what he is told, and tries to face up to the damage he has done.

I regret to say that a majority of abusers choose not to do the work. It isn’t that they can’t change (any abuser who doesn’t have a major mental

illness can change) but that they decide they don’t wish to. They run a sort of cost-benefit analysis in their heads and decide that the rewards of remaining in control of their partners outweigh the costs. They decide that to consider seriously the perspective their counselors are presenting to them is just too uncomfortable and difficult and offends their arrogant sense of certainty about everything—at least, about everything having to do with

relationships and the particular women they are with.

Later in this chapter I offer some suggestions on how you can increase

the likelihood that your partner will be among those who do overcome their abusiveness. Bear in mind, though, that the ultimate choice is his; the saying “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink”

applies particularly well here.

HOW DO I KNOW IF HIS ABUSER PROGRAM IS A GOOD ONE?

The first test of the quality of an abuser program is whether the main goal of the staff members appears to be helping you or helping him. In a

responsible program the abused woman is considered the primary client. The only “assistance” they should be offering to the man is to educate and challenge him about his abusive attitudes and behaviors. He, on the other hand, may have numerous other goals—to get back together with you, to get more visitation with the children or reduce his child support payments,

to escape criminal charges—but the program has no business assisting him with any of these; the last thing an abused woman needs is more people helping her abuser to work against her.

Those in charge of an abuser program should do the following:

 

Contact you quickly after your partner enters the program. In this call, they should ask you to give a history of his abusive behavior and of any substance abuse, and tell you where to go for abused women’s services.

Warn you that only a minority of abusers make lasting changes and that a few actually get worse from participating in an abuser program.

 

Tell you the rules he has to follow to be in the program.

 

Describe to you the topics that will be covered in his group

 

meetings and give you as much detail about those sessions as you request.

Give you any information you request about his attendance and the attitudes he expresses in the program, and about any specific

 

statements he makes in group that you would like to know. They should not be promising him any confidentiality with respect to you.

Devote most sessions at the program to discussing the core attitudinal and behavioral issues of abuse (as covered in Chapter 3).

 

Furthermore, you should be given a copy of any written reports generated by the program about the abuser, such as court reports. These reports should include:

A full description of all the abuse that your partner has admitted to while in the program, including psychological abuse, sexual coercion, or violence

 

Any steps toward change that he has failed to make (see the box earlier in this chapter)

 

There are various signs you can watch for that indicate an abuser program is ineffective:

 

Counselors fail to contact you or to tell you the limitations of what counseling is likely to accomplish.

 

They tell you that they think he is really changing and that he is doing very well in the program. (They should know that what you

see is what matters, not what they see; lots of abusers put on a good show at the abuser program.)

They try to involve you in couples counseling, suggest that you drop your restraining order, encourage you to communicate with your partner, or advocate for his interests in any way.

 

They relay messages to you from him.

 

Their group meetings seem to spend too much time teaching him to identify his feelings, to apply conflict-resolution skills, to

 

manage his anger better, or to deal with other issues that do not affect his underlying beliefs.

Their written reports are vague, do not address the steps to change (see the box earlier in this chapter), or give an overly rosy image of his prospects for change without describing the steps he still has left to take.

 

I know how hard it is for a woman to get her partner to attend an abuser program. After she’s finally succeeded in that campaign, I wish I could tell her that a cure is sure to follow, but it isn’t. A large proportion of abusers would rather stay stuck in their old ruts. I consider myself an excellent counselor for abusive men; I am patient with them, approaching them as an educator rather than as a harsh critic. At the same time, I can detect manipulation; I know what their issues are, and I don’t allow them to fool me. I have worked with colleagues whom I believe to be even more skilled than I, and from whom I have learned volumes. But even the very best

counselors give the same report: It is more common for abusers to stay the same or get worse than it is for them to make the kinds of changes that bring qualitative improvements in the lives of their partners and children. A responsible abuser program encourages clients who are doing serious work but always mixes caution with its optimism.

If your partner or ex-partner joins an abuser program, I recommend that you examine the program’s literature carefully, ask lots of questions, and

advocate for yourself to make sure the program does the kind of work with the man that you know needs to be done. At the same time, keep your own life moving forward, focusing on your own healing process, not on the man’s process of change. Waiting around for him to get serious about

developing respect for you could be a long stall in your own growth and development. Don’t sell yourself short.

CREATING A CONTEXT FOR CHANGE

An abuser doesn’t change because he feels guilty or gets sober or finds God. He doesn’t change after seeing the fear in his children’s eyes or feeling them drift away from him. It doesn’t suddenly dawn on him that his partner deserves better treatment. Because of his self-focus, combined with the many rewards he gets from controlling you, an abuser changes only when he feels he has to, so the most important element in creating a context for change in an abuser is placing him in a situation where he has no other choice. Otherwise, it is highly unlikely that he will ever change his abusive behavior.

Once an abuser has made substantial improvements, his motivation to sustain those changes sometimes does become more internal. But the initial impetus is always external. Either his partner demands change and threatens to leave him or a court demands change and threatens to jail him. I have never seen a client make a serious effort to confront his abusiveness unless somebody required him to do the work. The abuser who truly enters counseling voluntarily, with no one holding anything over his head, quits within a few sessions, unless he finds a counselor he can manipulate.

 

Question 20:

HOW CAN I hELP MY ABUSIVE PARTNER CHANGE?

 

Creating a context for change also involves these elements:

1. Establishing consequences for him for continued abusiveness. You may be able to use the legal system to impose sanctions if your partner’s style of abuse is physically violent or threatening, orinvolves sexual assaults. Leaving him is another good consequence for him, perhaps even better than legal intervention, depending on

   who he is and how well the police and courts work where you live.

   To get an abuser to change, you have to either prepare to leave him

   —if you can do so safely—or use the police and courts, or both.

2. Making clear to him what your expectations are for his treatment of you, including specifically what you are willing to live with and what you are not.
3. Focusing on your own healing and strength, so that he senses that he if he doesn’t change, you are ready to move on.

You cannot, I am sorry to say, get an abuser to work on himself by pleading, soothing, gently leading, getting friends to persuade him, or using any other nonconfrontational method. I have watched hundreds of women attempt such an approach without success. The way you can help him

change is to demand that he do so, and settle for nothing less.

It is also impossible to persuade an abusive man to change by convincing him that he would benefit, because he perceives the benefits of controlling his partner as vastly outweighing the losses. This is part of why so many men initially take steps to change their abusive behavior but then return to their old ways. There is another reason why appealing to his self- interest doesn’t work: The abusive man’s belief that his own needs should come ahead of his partner’s is at the core of his problem. Therefore when anyone, including therapists, tells an abusive man that he should change

because that’s what’s best for him, they are inadvertently feeding his selfish focus on himself: You can’t simultaneously contribute to a problem and

solve it. Those abusive men who make lasting changes are the ones who do so because they realize how badly they are hurting their partners and children—in other words, because they learn to care about what is good for others in the family and develop empathy, instead of caring only about themselves.

LEAVING AN ABUSER AS A WAY TO PROMOTE CHANGE

Breaking up with an abusive man, or even deciding to take some time apart, needs to be done with caution, as I discussed in “Leaving an Abuser Safely” in Chapter 9. But if you feel you can leave, doing so may help provide the

impetus your partner needs to look at his behavior. If you are separating with the hope that you might get back together in the future, consider the following suggestions:

 

Be very clear about what kind of contact you want to have with your partner during the separation, if any. It is generally best to have none at all. If you keep talking to him or seeing him from time to time, you will find it much harder to keep your own thinking clear, because you will tend to miss him even more

intensely, feel sorry for him, and get drawn in by his promises and his charm. Occasional contact is bad for him, too, not just for you; it feeds his denial of his problem, encouraging him to assume that he can use his usual manipulations to avoid dealing with himself. If you feel that you do want to permit some contact, consider the specifics. Can he call you, or do you want to be the only one to

initiate contact? Can he send letters? If you are going to see each other in person, where, when, and how often?

 

Once you make up your mind about the above questions, be explicit with your partner about your wishes for contact and let him know that you expect your wishes to be respected. Tell him that if he is serious about changing, the first way he can

demonstrate that to you is by giving you the space you are asking for.

 

Stay away from him for as long as you can stand it. Get support during this period from friends, relatives, your religious community, or anyone else you can trust to help you stay strong. Attend counseling or a support group at a program for abused women if there is one in your area, even if your partner has never been violent. Give yourself as much time as possible to heal emotionally and to clear your mind.

The separation needs to be long enough to make him really uncomfortable—enough to motivate him to change. Part of what creates discomfort for him is the dawning realization that maybe

you really could live without him. A separation that is too short, on the other hand, will serve in his mind as proof that you can’t stand to be on your own, so he will think he can get away with anything.

Try to prepare yourself for the possibility that he will start to date someone else during your separation. This is a common move, used to test your strength and get you to lose your resolve and start seeing him again. His new relationship is not very likely to last, so just try to sweat it out.

 

If you decide to get back together with him, be clear with yourself and with him about what the rules are for his behavior. The first

time he violates one of those rules—and it is likely that he will—it is of critical importance to take another period of separation. Your partner does not believe that you will go through with setting limits on his conduct. You need to prove him wrong. He may test you the first day you move back in together, or he may wait two years. But the day will probably come, so have your response ready.

 

The next separation should be longer than the first in order to give your partner a clear message and to motivate him to change. If during the first break you spoke to him occasionally, this time permit no contact at all for a few months. As always, focus on making yourself stronger. Pursue new friendships, get exercise, do artwork, or engage in whatever activity you love the most and that helps you feel that your life is moving forward. If you are drinking too much or have developed other problems, seek out the help you need and deserve. The more space you get from abuse, the less willing you will be to endure it and the harder it will be for your (ex-)partner to con you.

Have you ever noticed that people sometimes quit a job soon after returning from a vacation? We all have a higher tolerance for frustrating or unhealthy situations in our lives when they are constant, but when we get a little time away and then come back, that taste of freedom changes our perspective. What had been a dull ache turns into a sharp pain and becomes unbearable. The

same can happen to an abused woman. If you give yourself a long enough taste of life without being cut down all the time, you may reach a point where you find yourself thinking, Go back to that?

For what? Maybe I’ll never stop loving him, but at least I can love him from a distance where he can’t hurt me.

If he doesn’t get serious about stopping his mistreatment of you, you will come to a day when you feel ready to end the relationship for good. This may seem inconceivable to you now, however, so just keep moving forward with your life. Focus on yourself as much as possible, pursuing your own goals and filling your life with the activities you enjoy and find satisfying. Trying too hard to get your partner to change is a dead-end street. To do so keeps you wrapped up in the dynamics of abuse, because an abuser wants you to be preoccupied with him. Only permit him to occupy your

 

thoughts for a portion of the day and then reserve the lion’s share of your mental space for yourself.

The only time an abusive man will deal with his issues enough to become someone you can live with is when you prove to him, and to

yourself, that you are capable of living without him. And once you succeed in doing so, you may very well decide that living without him is what you would rather do. Keep an open mind, and make sure you are not clipping your own wings on top of the clipping that he has given them. Sometimes I work with a woman who is among the fortunate ones whose partners do

make deep changes, but she finds that his change has ceased to matter,

because she has simply outgrown him. The fundamental principle, then, is to do what is best for you.

WHICH ABUSERS ARE MOST LIKELY TO CHANGE?

Prediction is difficult. I have had clients who were stellar participants in group and whose partners reported good progress in the early months, but who dive-bombed later on, rushing back to their worst behaviors as if reuniting with dear old friends. On the other hand, I have worked with men who were ornery during group meetings, who were slow and stubborn about taking in the concepts, yet who months later stood out for having

done some of the most serious work on themselves of anyone in the program.

I have noticed some recurring themes among those abusers whose changes go the deepest and last the longest, however:

His close friends and relatives recognize that he is abusive and tell him that he needs to deal with it. They support the abused woman instead of supporting him. I have a much more difficult time with the abuser whose friends and family back up his excuses and

 

encourage his disrespect for the woman.

He is lower than others on the scale of self-centeredness. He tends to show signs early on of having more empathy than other clients do for the pain he has caused his partner, and his empathy seems more genuine and less theatrical. The highly self-referential, arrogant abuser, on the other hand, believes that he is above criticism and considers his own opinions and insights to be the last

 

word on the planet. So who is going to be able to persuade him that he has been cruel and selfish?

His partner gets the most unreserved, unequivocal support from her friends and relatives, her religious community, and from the legal system if she needs it. The more consistently she receives the

 

message that the abuse is in no way her fault and that her community intends to stand behind her 100 percent, the stronger and safer she feels to settle for nothing less than fully respectful treatment from her partner or ex-partner.

He joins a high-quality abuser program and stays for a long time— about two years.

 

But, even in cases where all of these conditions are met, his progress still depends on whether or not he decides to carefully and seriously take each of the steps to change.

 

Key Points to Remember

 

 

You can’t make or even help an abusive man change. All you can do is create the context for change, and the rest is up to him.

 

You are the best judge of whether or not he is truly developing respect for you and for your rights. Don’t put anyone else’s

opinions ahead of your own.

 

Change in an abusive man is not vague; it is highly specific. Use the information in this chapter to measure for yourself whether he is getting down to the real work of change or whether he is trying to fly by with the usual nods and winks.

 

An abusive man won’t change by “working on his anger,” unless he also does the more difficult work of changing his entitled attitudes.

 

Make your own recovery, and that of your children, your top priority.

 

Abusiveness is like poison ivy, with its extensive and entrenched root system. You can’t eradicate it by lopping off the superficial signs. It has to come out by the roots, which are the man’s attitudes and beliefs regarding partner relationships