His attitude always seems to be: “You owe me.”

He manages to twist everything around so that it’s my fault. I feel suffocated by him. He’s trying to run my life.

Everyone seems to think he’s the greatest guy in the world. I wish they could see the side of him that I have to live with.

He says he loves me so much. So why does he treat me like this?

Chronic mistreatment gets people to doubt themselves. Children of

abusive parents know that something is wrong, but they suspect the badness is inside of them. Employees of an abusive boss spend much of their time feeling that they are doing a lousy job, that they should be smarter and work harder. Boys who get bullied feel that they should be stronger or less afraid to fight.

When I work with an abused woman, my first goal is to help her to regain trust in herself; to get her to rely on her own perceptions, to listen to her own internal voices. You don’t really need an “expert” on abuse to explain your life to you; what you do need above all is some support and encouragement to hold on to your own truth. Your abusive partner wants to deny your experience. He wants to pluck your view of reality out of your head and replace it with his. When someone has invaded your identity in

this way enough times, you naturally start to lose your balance. But you can find your way back to center.

An abuser creates a host of misconceptions to get his partner to doubt herself and to make it possible for him to lead her down dead-end paths. Having dispelled those myths, we can now zero in on the roots of his steamrolling style. I believe you will recognize them.

The insights I share in the pages ahead have been taught to me primarily by the abused women themselves who are the experts on abuse. My other

teachers have been my abusive clients, who lead us toward clarity each time that they accidentally reveal their true thinking.

 

Reality #1:

He is controlling.

 

My client Glenn arrived angry and agitated for his group session one night. His words spilled out rapidly:

Harriet started yelling at me on Friday afternoon and told me she is going to move out soon. Then she left for the whole weekend and took my two-year-old son with her. She really hurt me. So I decided to hurt her too, and I wanted to go after something that was really important to her, to show her what it’s like. She had been working for a week on this college paper that she had put a lot of hours into and was going to hand in on Monday. She left it sitting right on top of her dresser, just asking for it. So I tore it up into little pieces. Then I ripped up a bunch of

pictures of the three of us, and I left it all in a nice pile on the bed for her to come home to. I think she learned something from that.

Glenn was remarkably honest with me about his thought process and his motives, probably because of how justified he felt. He believed in his right to control his partner’s actions; he expected his word to be the last word; and he did not accept defiance. He considered it his right to punish Harriet

—in the most severe way he could think of—if she took steps to recover

ownership of her life. He talked proudly of how he had “allowed” her

various freedoms while they were together, as if he were her parent, and defended his right to remove her privileges when he thought the time had come.

Control comes in many different forms. A few of my clients have been so extremely controlling they could have passed for military commanders. Russell, for example, went so far as to require his children to do calisthenics each morning before school. His wife was not allowed to speak to anyone without his permission, and he would order her back to her room to change clothes in the morning if he didn’t approve of her outfit. At dinnertime, he would sit back and comment like a restaurant reviewer on the strengths and weaknesses of what she had prepared and would periodically instruct her to go to the kitchen to get things for the children, as if she were a waitress.

Russell’s style was at one end of the spectrum of controlling behavior, however. Most of my clients stake out specific turf to control, like an explorer claiming land, rather than trying to run everything. One abuser may be fanatical about having to win every argument but leave his partner alone about what she wears. Another man may permit his partner to argue with him about the children, for example, but if she refuses to let him

change the TV station when he wants, watch out. (Dozens of my clients

have thrown or smashed remote controls; the television is tightly controlled by many abusers.) One abuser will have a curfew for his partner, while another will allow his partner to come and go as she pleases—as long as she makes his meals and does his laundry.

THE SPHERES OF CONTROL

An abusive man’s control generally falls into one or more of the following central spheres:

Arguments and Decision Making

An intimate relationship involves a steady flow of decisions to be made, conflicting needs to negotiate, tastes and desires to balance. Who is going to clean up the mess in the kitchen? How much time should we spend alone together and how much with other friends? Where do our other hobbies and

interests fit into our priorities? How will we process and resolve

annoyances or hurt feelings? What rules will we have for our children?

The mind-set that an abuser brings to these choices and tensions can make him impossible to get along with. Consider how challenging it is to negotiate or compromise with a man who operates on the following tenets (whether or not he ever says them aloud):

1. “An argument should only last as long as my patience does. Once

   I’ve had enough, the discussion is over and it’s time for you to shut up.”

2. “If the issue we’re struggling over is important to me, I should get what I want. If you don’t back off, you’re wronging me.”
3. “I know what is best for you and for our relationship. If you

   continue disagreeing with me after I’ve made it clear which path is the right one, you’re acting stupid.”

4. “If my control and authority seem to be slipping, I have the right to take steps to reestablish the rule of my will, including abuse if necessary.”

The last item on this list is the one that most distinguishes the abuser from other people: Perhaps any of us can slip into having feelings like the ones in numbers one through three, but the abuser gives himself permission

to take action on the basis of his beliefs. With him, the foregoing statements aren’t feelings; they are closely held convictions that he uses to guide his actions. That is why they lead to so much bullying behavior.

Personal Freedom

An abusive man often considers it his right to control where his partner goes, with whom she associates, what she wears, and when she needs to be back home. He therefore feels that she should be grateful for any freedoms that he does choose to grant her, and will say something in a counseling session like, “She’s all bent out of shape because there’s one sleazy girl I don’t let her hang out with, when all the rest of the time I allow her to be

friends with anyone she wants.” He expects his partner to give him a medal for his generosity, not to criticize him for his oppressiveness. He sees

himself as a reasonably permissive parent—toward his adult partner—and he does not want to meet with a lot of resistance on the occasions when he believes that he needs to put his foot down.

Sometimes this control is exercised through wearing the woman down with constant low-level complaints, rather than through yelling or barking orders. The abuser may repeatedly make negative comments about one of his partner’s friends, for example, so that she gradually stops seeing her

acquaintance to save herself the hassle. In fact, she might even believe it was her own decision, not noticing how her abuser pressured her into it. Is the abusive man’s thinking distorted? Certainly. A man’s partner is not his child, and the freedoms he “grants” her are not credits to be spent

like chips when the urge to control her arises. But his rules make sense to him, and he will fight to hang on to them.

Parenting

If the couple has children, the abusive man typically considers himself the authority on parenting, even if he contributes little to the actual work of looking after them. He sees himself as a wise and benevolent head coach who watches passively from the sidelines during the easy times but steps in with the “correct” approach when his partner isn’t handling the children properly. His arrogance about the superiority of his parenting judgment may be matched only by how little he truly understands, or pays attention to, the children’s needs. No matter how good a mother his partner is, he thinks she needs to learn from him, not the other way around.

THE ABUSIVE MAN CLAIMS that his control is in his partner’s best interest. This justification was captured by my client Vinnie:

Olga and I were driving in a really bad neighborhood. We were arguing, and she got crazy the way she does and started trying to get out of the car. It was dark. This was the kind of place where anything could happen to her. I told her to stay in the car, that she wasn’t getting out in a place like this, but she kept trying to push the door open. I couldn’t get her to stop, so I finally had to slap her in the arm, and unfortunately she hit her head against the window. But at least that got her to settle down and stay in the car.

Does Vinnie really believe that he is abusing his partner for her own good? Yes and no. To some extent he does, because he has convinced

himself. But his real motivation is plain to see: Olga wants out of the car in order to escape Vinnie’s control, and he wants to make sure she can’t.

Unfortunately, an abuser can sometimes succeed at convincing people that his partner is so irrational and out of control, that her judgment is so poor, that she has to be saved from herself. Never believe a man’s claim that he has to harm his partner in order to protect her; only abusers think this way.

When a man starts my program, he often says, “I am here because I lose control of myself sometimes. I need to get a better grip.” I always correct him: “Your problem is not that you lose control of yourself, it’s that you take control of your partner. In order to change, you don’t need to gain control over yourself, you need to let go of control of her.” A large part of his abusiveness comes in the form of punishments used to retaliate against you for resisting his control. This is one of the single most important concepts to grasp about an abusive man.

 

Reality #2:

He feels entitled.

 

Entitlement is the abuser’s belief that he has a special status and that it

provides him with exclusive rights and privileges that do not apply to his partner. The attitudes that drive abuse can largely be summarized by this one word.

To understand entitlement, we first need to look at how rights should properly be conceived of in a couple or family.

 

 

The man’s rights and the woman’s rights are the same size. They have the right to have their opinions and desires respected, to have a 50 percent

say in decision making, to live free from verbal abuse and physical harm. Their children’s rights are somewhat smaller but substantial nonetheless; children can’t have an equal say in decisions because of their limited

knowledge and experience, but they do have the right to live free from

abuse and fear, to be treated with respect, and to have their voices heard on all issues that concern them. However, an abuser perceives the rights of the family like this:

 

 

Not only are the rights of his partner and children diminished—with some abusers those little circles disappear altogether—but his rights are greatly inflated. My fundamental task as a counselor is to get the abusive

man to expand his perception of his partner’s and children’s rights to their proper size and to shrink his view of his own rights down to where it belongs. The abusive man awards himself all kinds of “rights,” including:

Physical caretaking

 

Emotional caretaking

Sexual caretaking

 

Deference

 

Freedom from accountability

 

Physical caretaking is the focus of the more traditionally minded abuser. He expects his partner to make dinner for him the way he likes it, look after the children, clean the house, and perform an endlessly continuing list of additional tasks. He sees her essentially as an unpaid servant. He grouches, “I work my butt off all day, and when I come home I expect a little peace and quiet. Is that too much to ask for?” He seems to expect a soft chair, a newspaper, and a footstool. On the weekends he

expects everything in the home to be taken care of so that he can watch sports or tinker with his car, go golfing or bird watching, or sleep. If she

doesn’t fulfill her myriad household responsibilities to his satisfaction, he feels entitled to dole out harsh criticism.

Although this style of abuser may seem out of date, he is alive and well.

He did learn to use some prettier packaging for his regal expectations during the ’80s and ’90s, but the change is superficial. Fewer abusers look me in the eye nowadays and say, “I expect a warm, tasty dinner on the table when I come home,” but they may still explode if it isn’t there.

Interwoven with the abuser’s overvaluation of his own work is the devaluation of his partner’s labor. My clients grumble to me: “I don’t know what the hell she does all day. I come home and the house is a mess, the children haven’t been fed, and she’s talking on the telephone. She spends her time watching soap operas.” If she works outside the home—and few

families can get by on one income—then he insists that her job is easy compared to his. Of course, if he attempts to do what she does—for example, if he is the primary parent for a while because he’s unemployed and she’s working—he does an abrupt about-face: Suddenly he declares that parenting and housekeeping are monumental and admirable tasks, requiring hours a day of rest for him to recuperate.

Emotional caretaking can be even more important than homemaking

services to the modern abuser. Remember Ray, who swore at Mary Beth for “ignoring” him for two days while she looked for her missing son? His problem was that he believed that nothing—not even a missing child— should interfere with Mary Beth’s duty to meet his emotional needs. Just as common as the abuser who blows up because dinner is late is the one who explodes because his partner gets tired of listening to him talk endlessly about himself, or because she wants to spend a little time doing something alone that she enjoys, or because she didn’t drop everything to soothe him when he was feeling down, or because she failed to anticipate needs or

desires he hadn’t even expressed.

Abusive men often hide their high emotional demands by cloaking them as something else. My client Bert, for example, would be furious if his girlfriend Kirsten didn’t get off the phone as soon as he came in the door.

His excuse to tear into her would be “all the money she’s wasting on the

phone bill when she knows we can’t afford it,” but we noticed that the issue only arose when he wanted her attention. If she called England when he wasn’t around, or if he spent an hour on the phone to his parents every Saturday morning, the expense was no big deal.

When I have new clients, I go to the board and draw a compass with the needle pointing straight up to a big N. “You want your partner to be this

compass,” I say to them, “and you want to be North. No matter where the compass goes, it always points in the same direction. And no matter where she goes, or what she’s doing, or what’s on her mind, you expect her to

always be focused on you.” My clients sometimes protest to me, “But that’s what being in a relationship is about. We’re supposed to focus on each other.” But I notice that when he focuses on her, most of what he thinks about is what she can do for him, not the other way around. And when he doesn’t feel like focusing on her at all, he doesn’t bother.

An abuser can seem emotionally needy. You can get caught in a trap of catering to him, trying to fill a bottomless pit. But he’s not so much needy as entitled, so no matter how much you give him, it will never be enough.

He will just keep coming up with more demands because he believes his needs are your responsibility, until you feel drained down to nothing.

Sexual caretaking means that he considers it his partner’s duty to keep him sexually satisfied. He may not accept having his sexual advances rejected, yet turn her down whenever he feels like it. Even her pleasure

exists for his benefit: If she doesn’t reach orgasm, for example, he may resent her for it because he wants the pleasure of seeing himself as a great lover.

Not all abusive men have great interest in sex. Some are too busy with outside relationships or use substances that diminish their sex drive. A few are gay, using their female partners for window dressing. Some of my

clients can feel attracted to a woman only as part of a domination fantasy. This style of abuser loses interest in sex if his partner starts to assert herself as an equal human being deserving of respect, or he begins to coerce or assault her sexually. In short, he wants sex on his terms or not at all.

Deference refers to the abuser’s entitlement to have his tastes and opinions treated as edicts. Once he has made the pronouncement that a certain movie is shallow, or that Louise was trying to seduce Jay at the

picnic, or that Republicans don’t know how to manage the economy, his partner is supposed to accept his view unquestioningly. It is especially important to him that she not disagree with him in front of other people; if she does, he may later yell at her, “You made me look like a fool, you’re

always out to show me up,” and similar accusations. His unstated rule is that she is not to question his ideas.

Freedom from accountability means that the abusive man considers himself above criticism. If his partner attempts to raise her grievances, she is “nagging” or “provoking” him. He believes he should be permitted to

ignore the damage his behavior is causing, and he may become retaliatory if anyone tries to get him to look at it. I had the following exchange with a man who was new to my program:

NCROFT: Can you explain to me why you are joining this abuser group?

NK: Well, I slapped my girl a few weeks ago, and now she says I can’t come back in the house unless I get counseling.

NCROFT: What led up to your abuse? Were you arguing?

NK: Yes. And she accused me of having an affair! That really pissed me off!

NCROFT: Well, were you having an affair?

NK (Pause, a little startled by my question): Well, yeah…but she had no proof! She shouldn’t go saying things like that when she has no proof!

Hank reserved for himself the privilege of being critical of his partner, a privilege that he exercised a great deal. Complaints against him, including drawing any attention to how his behavior had hurt other people in the family, he was quick to stifle. In Hank’s case, the retaliation took the form of a physical assault.

The abusive man’s high entitlement leads him to have unfair and

unreasonable expectations, so that the relationship revolves around his demands. His attitude is: “You owe me.” For each ounce he gives, he wants a pound in return. He wants his partner to devote herself fully to catering to him, even if it means that her own needs—or her children’s—get neglected.

You can pour all your energy into keeping your partner content, but if he

has this mind-set, he’ll never be satisfied for long. And he will keep feeling that you are controlling him, because he doesn’t believe that you should set any limits on his conduct or insist that he meet his responsibilities.

Many men feel specifically entitled to use violence. A recent study of college males studying psychology, published in 1997, found that 10

percent believed that it was acceptable to hit a female partner for refusing to have sex, and 20 percent believed that it was acceptable to do so if the man suspected her of cheating. Studies have found similar statistics regarding young men’s belief that they have the right to force a female to have sex if they have spent a substantial amount of money on the evening’s entertainment or if the woman started wanting sex but then changed her mind. These studies point to the importance of focusing on changing the entitled attitudes of abusers, rather than attempting to find something wrong in their individual psychology.

THE ABUSER’S OUTLOOK ON THE WOMAN’S ANGER

The abusive man’s problem with anger is almost the opposite of what is commonly believed. The reality is:

YOUR ABUSIVE PARTNER DOESN’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HIS ANGER; HE HAS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR ANGER.

One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your

voice shouldn’t rise and your blood shouldn’t boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone. When your anger does jump out of you—as will happen to any abused woman from time to time—he is likely to try to jam it back down your throat as quickly as he can. Then he uses your anger against you to prove what an irrational person you are. Abuse can make you feel straitjacketed. You may develop physical or emotional reactions to swallowing your anger, such as depression, nightmares, emotional numbing, or eating and sleeping problems, which your partner may use as an excuse to belittle you further or make you feel crazy.

Why does your partner react so strongly to your anger? One reason may be that he considers himself above reproach, as I discussed above. The second is that on some level he senses—though not necessarily consciously

—that there is power in your anger. If you have space to feel and express your rage, you will be better able to hold on to your identity and to resist his

suffocation of you. He tries to take your anger away in order to snuff out your capacity to resist his will. Finally, he perceives your anger as a

challenge to his authority, to which he responds by overpowering you with anger that is greater than your own. In this way he ensures that he retains

the exclusive right to be the one who shows anger.

THE ABUSER’S OWN ANGER

Once you grasp the nature of entitlement, the following concept about the abusive man becomes clear:

HE ISN’T ABUSIVE BECAUSE HE IS ANGRY; HE’S ANGRY BECAUSE HE’S

ABUSIVE.

The abuser’s unfair and unrealistic expectations ensure that his partner can never follow all of his rules or meet all of his demands. The result is that he is frequently angry or enraged. This dynamic was illustrated on a recent talk show by a young man who was discussing his abuse of his present wife. He said that his definition of a good relationship was: “Never arguing and saying you love each other every day.” He told the audience that his wife “deserved” his mistreatment because she wasn’t living up to

this unrealistic image. It wouldn’t do any good to send this young man, or any other abuser, to an anger-management program, because his

entitlements would just keep producing more anger. His attitudes are what need to change.

 

Reality #3:

He twists things into their opposites.

 

Emile, a physically violent client with whom I worked, gave me the following account of his worst assault on his wife: “One day Tanya went way overboard with her mouth, and I got so pissed off that I grabbed her by the neck and put her up against the wall.” With his voice filled with

indignation, he said, “Then she tried to knee me in the balls! How would you like it if a woman did that to you?? Of course I lashed out. And when I swung my hand down, my fingernails made a long cut across her face.

What the hell did she expect?”

 

Question 4:

WHY DOES HE SAY THAT I AM THE ONE ABUSING HIM?

 

The abuser’s highly entitled perceptual system causes him to mentally reverse aggression and self-defense. When Tanya attempted to defend herself against Emile’s life-threatening attack, he defined her actions as

violence toward him. When he then injured her further, he claimed he was defending himself against her abuse. The lens of entitlement the abuser

holds over his eye stands everything on its head, like the reflection in a spoon.

Another client, Wendell, described an incident in which he stomped out of the house and slammed the door. “My wife Aysha nags at me for hours. I can only take so much of her complaining and telling me I’m no good.

Yesterday she went on for a half hour, and I finally called her a bitch and took off.” I asked him what Aysha was upset about, and he said he didn’t know. “When she goes on like that I just tune her out.” A few days later I spoke with Aysha about the incident, and she told me that she had indeed been yelling at Wendell for five or ten minutes. However, he had failed to tell me that he had launched a verbal assault when she first woke up that morning and had continued berating her all day: “He totally dominates arguments; he repeats himself like a broken record; and I’m lucky if I can

get a word in. And his language is awful—he must have called me a ‘bitch’ ten times that day.” She finally reached her limit and began standing up for herself forcefully, and that was when he stormed out for the evening.

Why does Wendell think that Aysha is the one who has been doing all the yelling and complaining? Because in his mind she’s supposed to be listening, not talking. If she expresses herself at all, that’s too much.

When I challenge my clients to stop bullying their partners, they twist my words around just as they do their partners’. They accuse me of having

said things that have little connection to my actual words. An abuser says, “You’re saying I should lie down and let her walk all over me” because I told him that intimidating his partner is unacceptable no matter how angry he is. He says, “So you’re telling us that our partners can do anything they want to us, and we aren’t allowed to lift a finger to defend ourselves”

because his partner told him that she was sick of his friends trashing the house and that he should “clean up his goddamned mess,” and I told him

that was no excuse to call her a disgusting name. He says, “Your approach is that whatever she does is okay, because she’s a woman, but because I’m the man, there’s much stricter rules for me” because I pointed out his

double standards and insisted that he should live by the same rules he applies to her.

The abusive man has another reason to exaggerate and ridicule his partner’s statements (and mine): He wants to avoid having to think seriously about what she is saying and struggle to digest it. He feels entitled to swat her down like a fly instead.

 

Reality #4:

He disrespects his partner and considers himself

superior to her.

 

Sheldon’s relationship with Kelly was over. He was required to enter my program because he had violated a restraining order but denied that he had ever been violent or frightening to Kelly. Now he was attempting to get custody of their three-year-old daughter, Ashley. He claimed that Kelly had never looked after Ashley from the time of her birth and had “never bonded with her.” He added, “I don’t consider her Ashley’s mother. She’s just a vessel, just a channel that Ashley came through to get into this world.”

Sheldon had reduced Kelly to an inanimate object in his mind, a baby- producing machine. When he spoke of her, he twisted his face up in disgusted expressions of contempt. At the same time, he never sounded upset; he considered Kelly too far beneath him to raise his ire. He had the same attitude you might have if an annoying but harmless little dog were

nipping at your heels. His tone of condescension indicated how certain he was of his superiority to Kelly.

As memorable as Sheldon’s smug derision was, it was only a few

notches worse than the common thinking of many abusive men. The abuser tends to see his partner as less intelligent, less competent, less logical, and even less sensitive than he is. He will tell me, for example, that she isn’t the compassionate person he is. He often has difficulty conceiving of her as a human being. This tendency in abusers is known as objectification or depersonalization. Most abusers verbally attack their partners in degrading, revolting ways. They reach for the words that they know are most disturbing to women, such as bitch, whore, and cunt, often preceded by the word fat. These words assault her humanity, reducing her to an animal, a nonliving object, or a degraded sexual body part. The partners of my clients tell me that these disgusting words carry a force and an ugliness that feel

like violence. Through these carefully chosen epithets—and my clients

sometimes admit that they use the most degrading words they can think of

—abusers make their partners feel both debased and unsafe.

Objectification is a critical reason why an abuser tends to get worse

over time. As his conscience adapts to one level of cruelty—or violence— he builds to the next. By depersonalizing his partner, the abuser protects himself from the natural human emotions of guilt and empathy, so that he can sleep at night with a clear conscience. He distances himself so far from her humanity that her feelings no longer count, or simply cease to exist.

These walls tend to grow over time, so that after a few years in a relationship my clients can reach a point where they feel no more guilt over degrading or threatening their partners than you or I would feel after angrily kicking a stone in the driveway.

Abuse and respect are diametric opposites: You do not respect someone whom you abuse, and you do not abuse someone whom you respect.

 

Reality #5:

 

He confuses love and abuse. Here are comments my clients commonly make to me:

“The reason I abuse her is because I have such strong feelings for her. You hurt the ones you love the most.”

“No one can get me as upset as she can.”

“Yeah, I told her she’d better not ever try to leave me. You have no idea how much I love this girl!”

I was sick of watching her ruining her life. I care too much to sit back and do nothing about it.”

An abusive man often tries to convince his partner that his mistreatment of her is proof of how deeply he cares, but the reality is that abuse is the

opposite of love. The more a man abuses you, the more he is demonstrating that he cares only about himself. He may feel a powerful desire to receive your love and caretaking, but he only wants to give love when it’s convenient.

So is he lying when he says he loves you? No, usually not. Most of my clients do feel a powerful sensation inside that they call love. For many of them it is the only kind of feeling toward a female partner that they have ever had, so they have no way of knowing that it isn’t love. When an

abusive man feels the powerful stirring inside that other people call love, he is probably largely feeling:

The desire to have you devote your life to keeping him happy with no outside interference

 

The desire to have sexual access

 

The desire to impress others by having you be his partner

The desire to possess and control you

 

These desires are important aspects of what romantic love means to him. He may well be capable of feeling genuine love for you, but first he will have to dramatically reorient his outlook in order to separate abusive and

possessive desires from true caring, and become able to really see you.

The confusion of love with abuse is what allows abusers who kill their partners to make the absurd claim that they were driven by the depths of their loving feelings. The news media regrettably often accept the aggressors’ view of these acts, describing them as “crimes of passion.” But what could more thoroughly prove that a man did not love his partner? If a mother were to kill one of her children, would we ever accept the claim that she did it because she was overwhelmed by how much she cared? Not for an instant. Nor should we. Genuine love means respecting the humanity of the other person, wanting what is best for him or her, and supporting the other person’s self-esteem and independence. This kind of love is

incompatible with abuse and coercion.

 

Reality #6:

He is manipulative.

 

Let’s examine the following interactions between an abusive man named David and his partner Joanne:

 

David is yelling at Joanne, pointing his finger and turning red in

the face. Joanne tells him he’s too angry and she doesn’t like it. He yells even louder, saying, “I’m not angry, I’m just trying to get my point across and you’re not listening! Don’t tell me what I’m feeling, I hate that! You’re not inside me!”

 

One day Joanne tells David that his outbursts are getting to her and she needs to take some time off from their relationship. David says, “What you are saying is that you don’t love me anymore. I’m not

sure you ever loved me. You don’t understand how strong my

feelings are for you,” and he looks close to tears. The conversation shifts to Joanne reassuring David that she isn’t abandoning him, and her complaints about his behavior get lost in the shuffle.

 

On another occasion, Joanne brings up the fact that she would like to go back to school. David responds negatively, saying, “We can’t afford it,” and refuses to look after the children while she’s at class.

Joanne proposes a number of strategies for dealing with both money and child care, all of which David finds something wrong with. Joanne finally decides it’s impossible to continue her education, but David then insists that he wasn’t trying to talk her out of it. She winds up feeling that the decision not to go back to school is her own.

Few abusive men rely entirely on verbal abuse or intimidation to control their partners. Being a nonstop bully is too much work, and it makes the man look bad. If he is abusive all the time, his partner starts to recognize that she’s being abused, and the man may feel too guilty about his behavior. The abuser therefore tends to switch frequently to manipulating his partner to get what he wants. He may also sometimes use these tactics just to get her upset or confused.

There are some signs of manipulation by abusers that you can watch

for:

 

Changing his moods abruptly and frequently, so that you find it difficult to tell who he is or how he feels, keeping you constantly off balance. His feelings toward you are especially changeable.

 

Denying the obvious about what he is doing or feeling. He’ll speak to you with his voice trembling with anger, or he’ll blame a difficulty on you, or he’ll sulk for two hours, and then deny it to your face. You know what he did—and so does he—but he refuses to admit it, which can drive you crazy with frustration. Then he may call you irrational for getting so upset by his denial.

 

Convincing you that what he wants you to do is what is best for you. This way the abuser can make his selfishness look like generosity, which is a neat trick. A long time may pass before you realize what his real motives were.

 

Getting you to feel sorry for him, so that you will be reluctant to push forward with your complaints about what he does.

 

Getting you to blame yourself, or blame other people, for what he does.

Using confusion tactics in arguments, subtly or overtly changing the subject, insisting that you are thinking or feeling things that you aren’t, twisting your words, and many other tactics that serve

 

as glue to pour into your brain. You may leave arguments with him feeling like you are losing your mind.

Lying or misleading you about his actions, his desires, or his

 

reasons for doing certain things, in order to guide you into doing what he wants you to do. One of the most frequent complaints I get from abused women is that their partners lie repeatedly, a form of psychological abuse that in itself can be highly destructive over time.

Getting you and the people you care about turned against each

 

other by betraying confidences, being rude to your friends, telling people lies about what you supposedly said about them, charming your friends and then telling them bad things about you, and many other divisive tactics.

In some ways manipulation is worse than overt abuse, especially when the two are mixed together. When a woman gets called “bitch,” or gets

shoved or slapped, she at least knows what her partner did to her. But after a manipulative interaction she may have little idea what went wrong; she just knows that she feels terrible, or crazy, and that somehow it seems to be her own fault.

 

Reality #7:

He strives to have a good public image.

 

If you are involved with an abusive man, you may spend a lot of your time trying to figure out what is wrong with you, rather than what is wrong with him. If he gets along well with other people and impresses them with his generosity, sense of humor, and friendliness, you may wind up wondering, “What is it about me that sets him off? Other people seem to think he’s

great.”

 

Question 5:

How come everyone else thinks he’s wonderful?

 

Most abusive men put on a charming face for their communities, creating a sharp split between their public image and their private treatment of women and children. He may be:

Enraged at home but calm and smiling outside

 

Selfish and self-centered with you but generous and supportive with others

 

Domineering at home but willing to negotiate and compromise outside

 

Highly negative about females while on his own turf but a vocal supporter of equality when anyone else is listening

 

Assaultive toward his partner or children but nonviolent and nonthreatening with everyone else

 

Entitled at home but critical of other men who disrespect or assault women

 

The pain of this contrast can eat away at a woman. In the morning her partner cuts her to the quick by calling her a “brainless fat cow,” but a few hours later she sees him laughing with the people next door and helping them fix their car. Later the neighbor says to her, “Your partner is so nice. You’re lucky to be with him—a lot of men wouldn’t do what he does.” She responds with a mumbled “Yeah,” feeling confused and tongue-tied. Back at home, she asks herself over and over again, “Why me?”

DO ABUSIVE MEN HAVE SPLIT PERSONALITIES?

Not really. They are drawn to power and control, and part of how they get it is by looking good in public. The abusive man’s charm makes his partner

reluctant to reach out for support or assistance because she feels that people will find her revelations hard to believe or will blame her. If friends overhear him say something abusive, or police arrest him for an assault, his previous people-pleasing lays the groundwork to get him off the hook. The observers think, He’s such a nice guy, he’s just not the type to be abusive.

She must have really hurt him.

The abuser’s nice-guy front helps him feel good about himself. My

clients say to me, “I get along fine with everyone but her. You should ask around about what I’m like; you’ll see. I’m a calm, reasonable person.

People can see that she’s the one who goes off.” Meanwhile, he uses the difficulties that she is having in her relationships with people—many of which may be caused by him—as further proof that she is the one with the problem.

One of the most important challenges facing a counselor of abusive men is to resist being drawn in by the men’s charming persona. As they sit chatting and joking in their group meeting, cruelty and selfishness seem faraway. I find myself wondering the same thing the neighbors do: Could

this guy really get that mean? And even after he admits to what he does, it’s still hard to believe. This contrast is a key reason why abusers can get away with what they do.

Among my clients I have had: numerous doctors, including two surgeons; many successful businesspeople, including owners and directors of large companies; about a dozen college professors; several lawyers; a prominent—and very mellow-sounding—radio personality; clergypeople; and two well-known professional athletes. One of my violent clients had spent every Thanksgiving for the past ten years volunteering at his local soup kitchen. Another was a publicly visible staff member of a major international human rights organization. The cruelty and destructiveness that these men were capable of would have stunned their communities had they known.

Although these men usually keep their abusive side well hidden outside of the home, there is one situation in which it slips out: when someone

confronts them about their abusiveness and sticks up for the abused woman, which happens to be my job. Suddenly, the attitudes and tactics they normally reserve for home come pouring out. The vast majority of women who say that they are being abused are telling the truth. I know this to be

true because the abusers let their guard down with me, belying their denial.

 

Reality #8:

He feels justified.

 

Several years ago, I had a client who began his first group session by declaring: “I am here because I’m a batterer.” I was impressed with his ownership of his problem. However, the next week he softened his words to, “I’m here because I’m abusive,” and the third week he stated, “I’m in the program because my wife thinks I’m abusive.” Within a few more

weeks he had quit coming, having comfortably wrapped himself back up in his justifications.

Abusers externalize responsibility for their actions, believing that their partners make them behave in abusive ways. Each of my clients predictably uses some variation of the following lines:

“She knows how to push my buttons.”

“She wanted me to go off, and she knows how to make it happen.” “She pushed me too far.”

“There’s only so much a man can take.”

“You expect me to just let her walk all over me. What would you do?”

Many clients express guilt or remorse when they first begin attending counseling, but as soon as I start to press them to look at their histories of abusive behavior, they switch back to defending their actions. They don’t

mind glibly saying, “I know what I did was wrong,” but when I ask them to describe their verbal or physical assaults in detail, they leap back to justifying.

Abusive men are masters of excuse making. In this respect they are like substance abusers, who believe that everyone and everything except them is responsible for their actions. When they aren’t blaming their partners, they blame stress, alcohol, their childhood, their children, their bosses, or their

insecurities. More important, they feel entitled to make these excuses; when I point out that other men under the same pressures choose not to be abusive, they tend to become irate or contemptuous.

Does this mean that abusers are psychopaths who lack any conscience that could cause them to feel guilt or responsibility? Generally not, although I have had a small number (perhaps 5 percent of my clients) who are. Most abusers do have a conscience about their behavior outside of the family.

They may be willing to be answerable for their actions at work, at the club, or on the street. At home, however, their sense of entitlement takes over.

The abusive man commonly believes he can blame his partner for

anything that goes wrong, not just his abusiveness. Did he just suffer a

disappointment? She caused it. Is he embarrassed by a mistake he made? She should have prevented it. Is one of the children in a difficult period?

She’s a bad mother. Everything is someone else’s fault, and “someone else” is usually her.

 

Reality #9:

Abusers deny and minimize their abuse.

 

One of my areas of specialization is court-related work involving abusers who are physically violent or who abuse their children. I frequently encounter court personnel who say: “Well, she accuses him of abusing her, but he denies it.” They then drop the matter, as if the man’s denial closes the case. They also tell me: “He says she does the same things to him, so I

guess they abuse each other.” This kind of denial and cross-accusation tells us nothing about whether the woman is telling the truth. If the man is abusive, of course he is going to deny it, partly to protect himself and partly because his perceptions are distorted. If he were ready to accept

responsibility for his actions in relationships, he wouldn’t be abusive. Breaking through denial and minimization is one of the main tasks facing an abuse counselor. Most of the men in my groups admit to some abusive behavior—although they don’t see it as abusive, of course—but they

acknowledge only a small portion of what they have actually done, as I learn when I interview the abused partners.

When an abuser denies an incident immediately after it happens, he can set his partner’s head spinning. Picture a woman who arises in the morning with her stomach still tied in a knot from an ugly blowout the night before. Her partner makes a face at her in the kitchen and says, “Why are you so grumpy today?”

She replies, “Why the hell do you think? You called me ‘loser’ right in front of the children, and then you yanked my towel off so they would laugh at me. Am I supposed to come down the stairs whistling a happy

tune?”

“What are you talking about?” he gasps. “You’re a fucking drama junkie. I was clear across the room from you when your towel fell off.

You’re going to blame that on me? You’re nuts.” And he walks off shaking his head.

A woman can feel that she is losing her mind—or develop actual

psychiatric symptoms—if the obvious realities of her life, including abuse, are denied repeatedly by her partner. The certainty and authority in his voice, with his eyes twisted up to show how baffled he is, leave her questioning herself. “Did that really happen? Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I do overreact to innocent things.” The more serious the incidents he denies, the more her grip on reality can start to slip. And if outsiders start to notice her instability, the abuser can use their observations to persuade them that her

revelations of abuse by him are fantasies.

The partners of this style of abuser ask me: “After an incident, it seems like he really believes the abuse didn’t happen. Is he consciously lying?”

The answer in most cases is yes. Most abusers do not have severe memory problems. He probably remembers exactly what he did, especially when only a short time has passed. He denies his actions to close off discussion because he doesn’t want to answer for what he did, and perhaps he even

wants you to feel frustrated and crazy. However, a small percentage of

abusers—perhaps one in twelve—may have psychological conditions such as narcissistic or borderline personality disorder, in which they literally block any bad behavior from consciousness. One of the clues that your partner may have such a disturbance is if you notice him doing similar

things to other people. If his denial and mind messing are restricted to you, or to situations that are related to you, he is probably simply abusive.

Denial and minimization are part of most destructive behavior patterns, whether they be alcohol abuse, gambling, or child abuse. Partner abuse is

no exception.

 

Reality #10:

Abusers are possessive.

 

New clients in my program sometimes look bewildered, as if I were giving a seminar on edible plants and they had wandered into the wrong room.

They can hardly wait to speak, rising out of their seats to sputter at me: “But these are our wives and girlfriends you are talking about. Do you really mean to say that someone else can dictate what we do in our

relationships?” They smile as they speak or shake their heads lightly, as if they feel compassion for my dull wits. They assume I somehow have failed to realize that these women are theirs.

The sense of ownership is one reason why abuse tends to get worse as relationships get more serious. The more history and commitment that

develop in the couple, the more the abuser comes to think of his partner as a prized object. Possessiveness is at the core of the abuser’s mind-set, the spring from which all the other streams spout; on some level he feels that he owns you and therefore has the right to treat you as he sees fit.

 

Question 6:

Why is he so insanely jealous?

 

For many abusers, possessiveness takes the form of sexual jealousy. This style of man monitors his partner’s associations carefully, expects her to

account for her whereabouts at all times, and periodically rips into her with jealous accusations, as Fran did in Chapter 1. Ironically, the most accusatory abusers are among the ones most likely to be cheating themselves; possessiveness and entitlement make the abuser feel that it is

acceptable for him to have affairs, but not her.

An equally important reason for the extreme jealousy exhibited by so many abusive men is the desire to isolate their partners. In Chapter 1 we met Marshall, who did not believe his own hysterical accusations of infidelity against his wife. So what was driving his behavior? An abusive man who isolates his partner does so primarily for two reasons:

1. He wants her life to be focused entirely on his needs. He feels that other social contacts will allow her less time for him, and he doesn’t accept that she has that right.
2. He doesn’t want her to develop sources of strength that could contribute to her independence. Although it is often largely

unconscious, abusive men are aware on some level that a woman’s social contacts can bring her strength and support that could ultimately enable her to escape his control (as we saw with Dale and Maureen in Chapter 1). An abusive man commonly attempts to keep his partner completely dependent on him to increase his power.

Because of this mind-set, an abusive man tends to perceive any

relationships that his partner develops, whether with males or females, as threats to him. You may try to manage this problem by giving him lots of reassurance that you still love him and are not going to cheat on him. But you will find that his efforts to isolate you don’t lessen, because his fears

that you might sleep with another man are actually only a small part of why he is trying to isolate you.

At the same time, jealous accusations and isolation are only one form that ownership can take. There are abusive men who do not try to control their partners’ associations, but their underlying attitude of “You’re mine to do with as I see fit” reveals itself in other ways. If your partner’s sister

criticizes him for bullying you, he may tell her: “What I do with my girl is none of your business.” If you have children, he may start to treat all family members as his belongings. His anger may escalate dangerously when you attempt to break away from him. Keep the word ownership in mind, and you may begin to notice that many of your partner’s behaviors are rooted in believing that you belong to him.

ABUSIVE MEN COME in every personality type, arise from good childhoods and bad ones, are macho men or gentle, “liberated” men. No psychological test can distinguish an abusive man from a respectful one. Abusiveness is not a product of a man’s emotional injuries or of deficits in his skills. In reality, abuse springs from a man’s early cultural training, his key male role models, and his peer influences. In other words, abuse is a problem of values, not of psychology. When someone challenges an abuser’s attitudes and beliefs, he tends to reveal the contemptuous and insulting personality that normally stays hidden, reserved for private attacks on his partner. An abuser tries to keep everybody—his partner, his therapist, his friends and relatives—focused on how he feels, so that they won’t focus on how he thinks, perhaps because on some level he is aware that if you grasp the true nature of his problem, you will begin to escape his domination.

 

Key points to remember

 

 

Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control.

 

Abuse and respect are opposites. Abusers cannot change unless they overcome their core of disrespect toward their partners.

 

Abusers are far more conscious of what they are doing than they appear to be. However, even their less-conscious behaviors are driven by their core attitudes.

 

Abusers are unwilling to be nonabusive, not unable. They do not want to give up power and control.

 

You are not crazy. Trust your perceptions of how your abusive partner treats you and thinks about you.