Listen to the voices of these women:

He’s two different people. I feel like I’m living with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

He really doesn’t mean to hurt me. He just loses control.

Everyone else thinks he’s great. I don’t know what it is about me that sets him off.

He’s fine when he’s sober. But when he’s drunk, watch out. I feel like he’s never happy with anything I do.

He’s scared me a few times, but he never touches the children. He’s a great father.

He calls me disgusting names, and then an hour later he wants sex. I don’t get it.

He messes up my mind sometimes.

The thing is, he really understands me. Why does he do that?

THESE ARE THE WORDS of women who are describing their anxiety and inner conflict about their relationships. Each of these women knows that something is wrong—very wrong—but she can’t put her finger on what it is. Every time she thinks she’s got her partner figured out, that she finally

understands what is bothering him, something new happens, something changes. The pieces refuse to fit together.

Each of these women is trying to make sense out of the roller-coaster ride that her relationship has become. Consider Kristen’s account:

When I first met Maury, he was the man I had dreamed of. It seemed too good to be true. He was charming, funny, and smart, and best of all, he was crazy about me. I opened up to him about hard things I’d been through over the previous few years, and he was so much on my side about it all. And he was so game for doing things—whatever I wanted to do, he was up for it. The first year or so that we were together was great.

I can’t say exactly when things started to change. I think it was around the time we started living together. It started with him saying he needed more space. I felt confused, because before that it had always seemed like he was the one who wanted to be together every second.

Then he began to have more and more criticisms and complaints.

He would say that I talk on and on and that I’m self-centered. Maybe I am—it’s true that I talk a lot. But earlier it had seemed like he couldn’t hear enough about me. He started to say that I wasn’t doing anything with my life. I know he has big ambitions, and maybe he’s right that I should

be more that way, but I’m happy with what I have. And then it was my weight. It started to seem like all the time he was saying that I needed to work out more, that I wasn’t watching what I ate. That hurt the most, to tell you the truth. He seemed to want sex less and less often, and if I ever tried to be the one to initiate lovemaking, forget it.

We’re still together, but I have a feeling he’s going to leave me. I just can’t seem to live up to what he needs. I’m trying, but he doesn’t think so. And now when he’s really angry or frustrated, he says things that cut

me down. A few days ago he said, “You’re a lazy bitch, just looking for a man to live off of like your mother.” I don’t get that; I’ve contributed a lot. I haven’t worked the last two years since our baby was born, but I’m getting ready to go back to work soon. I don’t think he really meant it, but still…

He says I’ve changed a lot, but I’m not always so sure it’s me.

Sometimes for a few days he seems like the guy I fell in love with, and I get hopeful, but then he slips away again into being so unhappy with me. I set him off somehow, but I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

Kristen was troubled by several questions. What had happened to the man she had loved so much? Why was he always putting her down? What could she do to stop his explosions? Why did he think she was the one who had changed?

Other women tell stories that are quite distinct from Kristen’s, but they feel just as confused as she does. Here is what Barbara describes:

Fran is kind of quiet and shy. But he’s cute as a button, and I got a crush on him the day I met him. I had to really go after him; it was hard to

draw him out. We would go out and have great talks, and I couldn’t wait to see him again. But three weeks would go by, and he’d say he hadn’t been feeling well, or his sister was in town, or whatever. A couple of

times he forgot dates we had.

Well, he finally opened up. It turned out he’d been really hurt before.

He’d been cheated on a lot, and women had done some pretty mean things to him. He was afraid to get close again.

Little by little, he came around, but I was definitely the pursuer. I tried to show him that I wasn’t like other women he’d been with. I’m not flirtatious. I don’t show my body off to other men; I’m just not that style.

But Fran wouldn’t believe it. He would always say that I was making

eyes at a man at the next table, or that I was checking someone out who walked past us. I feel bad for him, he’s so insecure. His mother cheated

on his father when he was growing up, so I guess that’s made it even worse.

I was eager to get married, because I thought then he’d feel secure that I was his, but he was very reluctant to commit. When we finally did tie the knot, he was more trusting for a while, but then the jealousy came back, and it’s never left. I’ve asked him off and on for years to go see a

therapist, but he gets really mad and says there’s nothing wrong with him.

A few days ago we went to a birthday party for a friend of his, and I had this great conversation with his friend’s brother. It was nothing but talking—I mean, the guy isn’t even cute. Well, suddenly Fran was saying that we had to go home because he had a bad headache. On the drive home, it turned out the real reason was jealousy. He started yelling at me, saying he was sick of me humiliating him in front of other people, “strutting your stuff,” and on and on. He was pounding his fist on the dashboard, and two or three times he shoved me up against the car door. Each time that I told him it wasn’t true he would go through the roof, so I stopped saying that. Our children were sitting in the backseat; it scared

the daylights out of them.

At my age, it’s hard to think about leaving him. Starting all over now seems so hard. I just wish he would get some help.

Barbara was struggling with issues different from Kristen’s. Why couldn’t Fran trust her, and why was he isolating her from other people? Why couldn’t he see that he had a problem, and get help? Was he going to hurt her badly some day? Would her life ever get better?

At first look, Maury and Fran sound nothing like each other: One is young, popular, energetic, and assertive; the other is socially awkward, passive, and easily hurt. Fran is physically violent sometimes, whereas Maury is not. But are they as different as they seem? Or do they both actually have the same set of issues under the surface, driving their

behavior? These are some of the questions for which we will find answers in the chapters ahead.

Consider one more account, from Laura:

Paul is a great guy. We dated for about six months, and now we’ve been living together for several more. We’re engaged. I feel so bad for him.

His ex-wife accused him of abusing her, and it’s a total lie. He made one mistake, which is that he cheated on her, and she is determined to get him back for that. She will stop at nothing. Now she is even saying that he was violent, claiming he slapped her a few times and broke her things. That’s ridiculous! I’ve been with him for over a year now, and I can tell you, he’s nothing like that. Paul has never even raised a hand to me. In fact, he’s tried to help me get my life together and has been really there for me. I was in a bad place when I met him, I was depressed and I was drinking too much, and I’m doing so much better

now, because of him. I hate that bitch for accusing him of those things. We’re going to work together on getting custody of his kids, because she’s out of control.

Laura wondered how Paul’s ex-wife could accuse such a delightful man of abuse. She was so angry about it that she didn’t notice several warning

signs about her own relationship with Paul.

If Kristen, Barbara, and Laura were to sit down together and compare notes, they might decide that their partners couldn’t be more different. The personalities of the three men seem miles apart, and their relationships

follow very separate paths. Yet Maury, Fran, and Paul actually have far

more in common than meets the eye. Their moodiness, their excuses, their outlook, are all bubbling from the same source. And all three are abusive men.

THE TRAGEDY OF ABUSE

Abuse of women in relationships touches an unimaginable number of lives. Even if we leave aside cases of purely verbal and mental abuse and just look at physical violence, the statistics are shocking: 2 to 4 million women are assaulted by their partners per year in the United States. The U.S. Surgeon General has declared that attacks by male partners are the number one cause of injury to women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four.

The American Medical Association reports that one woman out of three will be a victim of violence by a husband or boyfriend at some point in her life.

The emotional effects of partner violence are a factor in more than one- fourth of female suicide attempts and are a leading cause of substance abuse in adult women. Government statistics indicate that 1,500 to 2,000 women are murdered by partners and ex-partners per year, comprising more than one-third of all female homicide victims, and that these homicides almost

always follow a history of violence, threats, or stalking.

The abuse of women sends shock waves through the lives of children as well. Experts estimate that 5 million children per year witness an assault on their mothers, an experience that can leave them traumatized. Children exposed to violence at home show higher rates of school behavior and attention problems, aggression, substance abuse, depression, and many other measures of childhood distress. Abuse of women has been found to be a cause of roughly one-third of divorces among couples with children and one-half of divorces where custody is disputed.

As alarming as this picture is, we also know that physical assaults are just the beginning of the abuse that women may be subjected to. There are millions more women who have never been beaten but who live with repeated verbal assaults, humiliation, sexual coercion, and other forms of psychological abuse, often accompanied by economic exploitation. The

scars from mental cruelty can be as deep and long-lasting as wounds from punches or slaps but are often not as obvious. In fact, even among women who have experienced violence from a partner, half or more report that the man’s emotional abuse is what is causing them the greatest harm.

The differences between the verbally abusive man and the physical batterer are not as great as many people believe. The behavior of either style of abuser grows from the same roots and is driven by the same thinking. Men in either category follow similar processes of change in

overcoming their abusiveness—if they do change, which unfortunately is not common. And the categories tend to blur. Physically assaultive men are also verbally abusive to their partners. Mentally cruel and manipulative men tend to gradually drift into using physical intimidation as well. In this book you will meet abusers on a spectrum, ranging from those who never use

violence to those who are terrifying. The extent of their common ground may startle you.

One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment in

relationships is that most abusive men simply don’t seem like abusers. They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor,

especially in the early period of a relationship. An abuser’s friends may think the world of him. He may have a successful work life and have no

problems with drugs or alcohol. He may simply not fit anyone’s image of a cruel or intimidating person. So when a woman feels her relationship spinning out of control, it is unlikely to occur to her that her partner is an abuser.

The symptoms of abuse are there, and the woman usually sees them: the escalating frequency of put-downs. Early generosity turning more and more to selfishness. Verbal explosions when he is irritated or when he doesn’t get his way. Her grievances constantly turned around on her, so that everything is her own fault. His growing attitude that he knows what is good for her better than she does. And, in many relationships, a mounting sense of fear or intimidation. But the woman also sees that her partner is a human being who can be caring and affectionate at times, and she loves him. She wants to figure out why he gets so upset, so that she can help him break his pattern of ups and downs. She gets drawn into the complexities of his inner world, trying to uncover clues, moving pieces around in an attempt to solve an

elaborate puzzle.

The abuser’s mood changes are especially perplexing. He can be a different person from day to day, or even from hour to hour. At times he is

aggressive and intimidating, his tone harsh, insults spewing from his mouth, ridicule dripping from him like oil from a drum. When he’s in this mode, nothing she says seems to have any impact on him, except to make him even angrier. Her side of the argument counts for nothing in his eyes, and everything is her fault. He twists her words around so that she always ends up on the defensive. As so many partners of my clients have said to me, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.”

At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him. When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child, difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the tender person she now sees.

Sooner or later, though, the shadow comes back over him, as if it had a life of its own. Weeks of peace may go by, but eventually she finds herself

under assault once again. Then her head spins with the arduous effort of untangling the many threads of his character, until she begins to wonder whether she is the one whose head isn’t quite right.

To make matters worse, everyone she talks to has a different opinion about the nature of his problem and what she should do about it. Her clergyperson may tell her, “Love heals all difficulties. Give him your heart fully, and he will find the spirit of God.” Her therapist speaks a different language, saying, “He triggers strong reactions in you because he reminds you of your father, and you set things off in him because of his relationship with his mother. You each need to work on not pushing each other’s

buttons.” A recovering alcoholic friend tells her, “He’s a rage addict. He controls you because he is terrified of his own fears. You need to get him

into a twelve-step program.” Her brother may say to her, “He’s a good guy. I know he loses his temper with you sometimes—he does have a short fuse

—but you’re no prize yourself with that mouth of yours. You two need to work it out, for the good of the children.” And then, to crown her increasing confusion, she may hear from her mother, or her child’s schoolteacher, or her best friend: “He’s mean and crazy, and he’ll never change. All he wants is to hurt you. Leave him now before he does something even worse.”

All of these people are trying to help, and they are all talking about the same abuser. But he looks different from each angle of view.

The woman knows from living with the abusive man that there are no simple answers. Friends say: “He’s mean.” But she knows many ways in which he has been good to her. Friends say: “He treats you that way

because he can get away with it. I would never let someone treat me that way.” But she knows that the times when she puts her foot down the most firmly, he responds by becoming his angriest and most intimidating. When she stands up to him, he makes her pay for it—sooner or later. Friends say: “Leave him.” But she knows it won’t be that easy. He will promise to change. He’ll get friends and relatives to feel sorry for him and pressure her to give him another chance. He’ll get severely depressed, causing her to worry whether he’ll be all right. And, depending on what style of abuser he is, she may know that he will become dangerous when she tries to leave him. She may even be concerned that he will try to take her children away from her, as some abusers do.

How is an abused woman to make a sensible picture out of this

confusion? How can she gain enough insight into the causes of his problem

to know what path to choose? The questions she faces are urgent ones.

FIVE PUZZLES

Professionals who specialize in working with abusive and controlling men have had to face these same perplexing issues at work. I was a codirector of the first counseling program in the United States—and perhaps in the world

—for abusive men. When I began leading groups for abusers fifteen years ago, they were as much of a mystery to me as they are to the women they live with. My colleagues and I had to put a picture together from the same strange clues faced by Kristen, Barbara, and Laura. Several themes kept confronting us over and over again in our clients’ stories, including:

HIS VERSION OF THE ABUSE IS WORLDS APART FROM HERS.

A man named Dale in his mid-thirties gave the following account when he entered my group for abusive men:

My wife Maureen and I have been together for eleven years. The first ten years we had a good marriage, and there was no problem with abuse or violence or anything. She was a great girl. Then about a year ago she started hanging around with this bitch she met named Eleanor who really has it in for me. Some people just can’t stand to see anyone else happy. This girl was single and was obviously jealous that Maureen was in a good marriage, so she set out to wreck it. Nobody can get along with Eleanor, so of course she has no relationships that last. I just had

the bad luck that she ran into my wife.

So this bitch started planting a lot of bad stuff about me in Maureen’s head and turning her against me. She tells Maureen that I don’t care about her, that I’m sleeping with other girls, all kinds of lies. And she’s getting what she wants, because now Maureen and I have started having some wicked fights. This past year we haven’t gotten along at all. I tell Maureen I don’t want her hanging around with that girl, but she doesn’t listen to me. She sneaks around and sees her behind my back. And, look, I’m not here to hide anything. I’ll tell you straight out, it’s true that two or

three times this year I finally couldn’t take all the accusations and yelling anymore, and I’ve hauled off and slapped her. I need help, I’m not denying it. I have to learn to deal with the stress better; I don’t want her to get me arrested. And maybe I can still figure out how to persuade Maureen not to throw a great thing away, because at the rate we’re going we’ll be broken up in six months.

I always interview the partner of each of my clients as soon as possible after he enrolls in the program. I reached Maureen by phone several days later, and heard her account:

Dale was great when I first met him, but by the time we got married something was already wrong. He had gone from thinking I was perfect to constantly criticizing me, and he would get in such bad moods over

the littlest things. I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to get him to feel better. Only a couple of months after the wedding he shoved me for the first time, and after that some explosion would happen about two or

three times a year. Usually he would break something or raise a fist, but a few times he shoved me or slapped me. Some years he didn’t do it at all, and I would think it was all over, but then it would happen again—it sort of came in waves. And he was always, always, putting me down and telling me what to do. I couldn’t do anything right.

Anyhow, about a year ago I made a new friend, Eleanor. She started telling me that what Dale was doing was abuse, even though he had never punched me or injured me, and that I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. At first I thought she was exaggerating, because I’ve known women that got it so much worse than me. And Dale can be really sweet and

supportive when you least expect it. We’ve had a lot of good times, believe it or not. Anyhow, Eleanor kind of opened my eyes up. So I

started standing up to Dale about how he talks to me, and told him I was thinking of moving out for a while. And what’s happened is that he’s

gone nuts. I swear, something has happened to him. He’s backhanded me twice in the last eight months, and another time he threw me over a chair and my back went out. So I finally moved out. For now I’m not planning to get back with him, but I guess it depends partly on what he does in the abuser program.

Notice the striking contrasts. Dale describes the first ten years of his marriage as abuse-free, while Maureen remembers put-downs and even physical assaults during those years. Maureen says that Eleanor helps and supports her, while Dale sees her as corrupting Maureen and turning her against him. Dale says that they are still together, while Maureen reports

that they have already broken up. Each one thinks the other has developed a problem. How can their perceptions clash so strongly? In the chapters ahead, we will explore the thinking of abusive men to answer the question of why Dale’s view contains such serious distortions.

HE GETS INSANELY JEALOUS, BUT IN OTHER WAYS HE SEEMS ENTIRELY

RATIONAL.

In a group session one day, a young client named Marshall was recounting a confrontation with his partner that had occurred in the previous week:

My wife and I had plans to meet in the lobby of the building where she works to go out for lunch. I was waiting around near the elevators, and when she finally came out I saw that she’d been alone on the elevator with this good-looking guy. He had a look on his face, and she did too, I can’t really describe it, but I could tell something was up. I said, “What was that all about?,” and she pretended like she didn’t know what I was talking about. That really pissed me off, and I guess I kind of blew up at her. I may have gotten a little louder than I should have. I was mad, though, and I was saying, “You were making it with that guy on the elevator, weren’t you? Don’t lie to me, you slut, I’m not a fool.” But she kept on playing dumb, saying she doesn’t even know him, which is a crock.

Marshall was extremely jealous, but I had worked with him long enough to know that he wasn’t crazy. He was lucid and logical in group, had a stable work history and normal friendships, and showed no signs of living in a world of fantasy or hallucination. He simply did not have

symptoms of the type of serious mental illness that could convince a man that his wife could have sex in an elevator, fully clothed and standing up,

between floors of a busy office building. Marshall had to know that his accusation wasn’t true. And when I confronted him, he admitted it.

Given that even very jealous abusers turn out to have a reasonable grasp on reality, why do they make these insane-seeming accusations? Is there something about acting crazy that they enjoy? What does this behavior accomplish for them? (I answer these questions in Chapter 3, where we consider the issue of possessiveness.)

HE SUCCEEDS IN GETTING PEOPLE TO TAKE HIS SIDE AGAINST HER.

Martin, a man in his late twenties, joined my abuser group while also seeing an individual therapist. He told me the first day that he was confused about whether he had a problem or not, but that his long-time girlfriend Ginny was preparing to break up with him because she considered him abusive. He went on to describe incidents of insulting or ignoring Ginny and of deliberately causing her emotional pain “to show her how it feels when she hurts me.” He also admitted to times of humiliating her in front of other people, being flirtatious with women when he was mad at her, and ruining a couple of recent important events in her life by causing big scenes. He justified all of these behaviors because of ways he felt hurt by her.

As a routine part of my assessment of Martin, I contacted his private therapist to compare impressions. The therapist turned out to have strong opinions about the case:

ERAPIST: I think it’s a big mistake for Martin to be attending your abuser program. He has very low self-esteem; he believes anything bad that

anyone says about him. If you tell him he’s abusive, that will just tear him down further. His partner slams him with the word abusive all the time, for reasons of her own. Ginny’s got huge control issues, and she has obsessive- compulsive disorder. She needs treatment. I think having Martin in your program just gets her what she wants.

NCROFT: So you have been doing couples counseling with them?

ERAPIST: No, I see him individually.

NCROFT: How many times have you met with her?

ERAPIST: She hasn’t been in at all.

NCROFT: You must have had quite extensive phone contact with her, then.

ERAPIST: No, I haven’t spoken to her.

NCROFT: You haven’t spoken to her? You have assigned Ginny a clinical diagnosis based only on Martin’s descriptions of her?

ERAPIST: Yes, but you need to understand, we’re talking about an unusually insightful man. Martin has told me many details, and he is perceptive and sensitive.

NCROFT: But he admits to serious psychological abuse of Ginny, although he doesn’t call it that. An abusive man is not a reliable source of information about his partner.

What Martin was getting from individual therapy, unfortunately, was an official seal of approval for his denial, and for his view that Ginny was mentally ill. How had he shaped his therapist’s view of his partner to get her to adopt this stance? How can abusers be so adept at recruiting team

members in this way, including sometimes ones with considerable status or influence, and why do they want to? (These questions are the focus of Chapter 11, “Abusive Men and Their Allies.”)

DURING SOME INCIDENTS HE SEEMS TO LOSE CONTROL, BUT CERTAIN OTHER CONTROLLING BEHAVIORS OF HIS APPEAR VERY CALCULATED.

Several years ago, a young man named Mark came to one of my abuser groups. When a client joins the program, I set behavioral goals with him as

soon as possible. I often begin by asking, “What are the top three or four complaints your partner has about you?” Mark’s response was:

One of the things Eileen gets on me about the most is that she says I ignore her. She says I make her a low priority and always want to do

other things instead of be with her, so she feels like she’s nothing. I like to have time to myself a lot, or to relax and watch television. I guess I kind of tune her out.

Based on Mark’s account, I wrote near the top of his Behavior Plan:

“Spend more time with Eileen. Make her a higher priority.”

Eileen was very difficult to reach by phone, but three weeks later she finally called me, with a surprising story to tell:

A few weeks before Mark started your program, I told him that I needed a total break from the relationship. I just couldn’t take it anymore, the yelling and the selfishness. He won’t even let me sleep. So I didn’t even want to talk to him for a while; I had to have time away to get myself together. I reassured him that the relationship wasn’t over, and we’d work on getting back together in a couple of months, after a breather.

Then, a couple of weeks later, he called me and said that he had enrolled in an abuser program. He said that his counselor wants him to spend more time with me and had written it on his sheet, and that the program told him that being with me was part of how he needed to work on his issues. I wasn’t ready for that yet at all, but I also didn’t want to

interfere with his program. So I started seeing him again. I want whatever is going to work best to help him change. I could have used a little more

time apart, to tell you the truth, but if that’s what your program recommends…

Mark had succeeded in twisting the abuser program to suit his own purposes. I explained to Eileen what had happened and apologized for the way my program had added to the many difficulties she already had with him. The high degree of manipulativeness that Mark used is not uncommon among abusive men, unfortunately. How can abusers be capable of such

calculation yet at other times appear to be so out of control? What’s the

connection? The answers can be found in Chapter 2, where we examine the excuses that abusive men use to justify their behavior.

SOMETIMES HE SEEMS TO BE REALLY CHANGING, BUT IT TENDS TO VANISH.

Carl was a twenty-six-year-old man who had been arrested repeatedly for domestic assaults and had finally served a few months in jail. He said to me in a group session:

Going to jail was the last straw. I finally got it that I have to stop blaming my problems on everybody else and take a look at myself instead. People in jail said the same thing to me: If you don’t want to be back in here, get real with yourself. I have a bad temper, and kind of a mean streak to tell you the truth, and I have to deal with it. I don’t want to be back inside for anything.

At the end of each counseling session, Carl would make comments such as, “I can see that I’ve really got to work on my attitude” and “I learned a lot tonight about how excuses keep me from changing.” One night he looked at me and said, “I’m really glad I met you, because I think if I wasn’t hearing the things you are saying, I would be headed straight back to being locked up. You’re helping me get my head on straight.”

I reached Carl’s girlfriend, Peggy, by telephone and began to ask her about the history of Carl’s problem with abusiveness. She sounded noticeably distracted and uncomfortable. I suspected strongly that Carl was listening to the conversation, so I made an excuse to wrap it up soon.

However, when Carl was at my group the next week, I left my co-leader in charge of the session and slipped out to give Peggy another call, to see if

she would feel freer to talk. This time she gave me an earful:

Carl comes home from your program in a rage every week. I’m afraid to be around the house on Wednesday nights, which is when he has his group session. He says the program is total bullshit, and that he wouldn’t have to be sitting there getting insulted by you people if I

hadn’t called the police on him, and he says that I know the fight that night was my fault anyhow. He says he especially hates that guy Lundy. A few nights ago I told him to stop blaming it on me that he has to go to counseling, and he slammed me up against the doorjamb and told me if I didn’t shut up he’d choke me. I should call the police, but he’d get sent away for two years this time because he’s on parole, and I’m afraid that would be enough to get him to kill me when he got out.

Peggy then went on to describe the history of beatings she had suffered at Carl’s hands before he went to jail: the black eyes, the smashed furniture, the time he had held a knife to her throat. He invariably had blamed each attack on her, no matter how brutal his abuse or how serious her injuries.

After speaking with Peggy, I returned to the group session, where Carl went through his usual routine of self-exploration and guilt. I of course said nothing; if he knew Peggy had told me the truth, she would be in extraordinary danger. Soon after this, I reported to his probation officer that he was not appropriate for our program, without giving the real reason.

Carl created the appearance of learning a great deal at each session, and his comments suggested serious reflection on the issues, including the

effects of his abuse on his partner. What was happening each week inside his mind before he got home? How can an abuser gain such insight into his feelings and still behave so destructively? And how does real change

happen? (We’ll return to these questions in Chapter 14, “The Process of Change.”)

THESE ARE JUST a very few of the many confounding questions that face

anyone—the partner of an abusive man, a friend, or a professional—who is looking for effective ways to respond to abusive behavior. I came to realize, through my experience with over two thousand abusers, that the abusive man wants to be a mystery. To get away with his behavior and to avoid having to face his problem, he needs to convince everyone around him— and himself—that his behavior makes no sense. He needs his partner to

focus on everything except the real causes of his behavior. To see the abuser as he really is, it is necessary to strip away layer after layer of confusion, mixed messages, and deception. Like anyone with a serious problem,

abusers work hard to keep their true selves hidden.

Part of how the abuser escapes confronting himself is by convincing you that you are the cause of his behavior, or that you at least share the blame. But abuse is not a product of bad relationship dynamics, and you cannot make things better by changing your own behavior or by attempting to manage your partner better. Abuse is a problem that lies entirely within

the abuser.

Through years of direct work with abusers and their partners, I found that the realities behind the enigmatic abuser gradually came out into the bright light forming a picture that increasingly made sense to me. The pages ahead will take you through the pieces that I watched fall into place one by one, including:

Why abusers are charming early in relationships but don’t stay that way

 

What the early warning signs are that can tip you off that you may be involved with an abusive or controlling man

 

Why his moods change at the drop of a hat

 

What goes on inside his mind and how his thinking causes his behavior

 

What role alcohol and drugs play—and don’t play—in partner abuse

 

Why leaving an abusive man doesn’t always solve the problem

 

How to tell whether an abuser is really changing—and what to do if he isn’t

 

How friends, relatives, and other community members can help to stop abuse

 

Why many abusive men seem to be mentally ill—and why they usually aren’t

 

We will explore answers to these questions on three levels. The first level is the abuser’s thinking—his attitudes and beliefs—in daily interactions. The second is his learning process, through which his thinking began to develop early in his life. And the third involves the rewards he

reaps from controlling his partner, which encourage him to use abusive behavior over and over again. As we clear away the abusive man’s smoke screen with these understandings, you will find that abusiveness turns out to be far less mysterious than it appears at first.

Inside the abuser’s mind, there is a world of beliefs, perceptions, and

responses that fits together in a surprisingly logical way. His behavior does make sense. Underneath the facade of irrationality and explosiveness, there is a human being with a comprehensible—and solvable—problem. But he doesn’t want you to figure him out.

The abuser creates confusion because he has to. He can’t control and

intimidate you, he can’t recruit people around him to take his side, he can’t keep escaping the consequences of his actions, unless he can throw

everyone off the track. When the world catches on to the abuser, his power begins to melt away. So we are going to travel behind the abuser’s mask to the heart of his problem. This journey is critical to the health and healing of abused women and their children, for once you grasp how your partner’s mind works, you can begin reclaiming control of your own life. Unmasking the abuser also does him a favor, because he will not confront—and

overcome—his highly destructive problem as long as he can remain hidden.

The better we understand abusers, the more we can create homes and relationships that are havens of love and safety, as they should be. Peace really does begin at home.