I don’t understand what’s gone wrong. We used to be so close.

I don’t know if there’s something wrong with him or if it’s me.

He really cares for me. He wants to spend every second together.

My friends complain that they never see me anymore.

“THE GARDEN OF EDEN”—that’s what I call the beginning of a relationship with an abuser. For the first few weeks or months, or longer, the woman is walking on air. Remember Kristen and Maury, whom we met in Chapter 1? Maury was dazzling—entertaining, interesting, energetic—and Kristen was smitten. One of the things she liked most about him was how crazy he was about her. He pursued her avidly, seemed to like everything about her, and couldn’t get enough. She felt as though she had stepped into a top-40 love song, the kind where “Everything Is Perfect Now That I’ve Met You.” This pattern is common in abusive relationships; an abusive man is often unusually good at expressing an intensity of caring early in a relationship and can make you feel so special and chosen—as if you were the only person who could ever matter so much to him.

Not every abusive man falls head over heels so quickly the way Maury did. Fran, whom we also got to know in Chapter 1, was quiet and withdrawn early on, and Barbara was the pursuer. She was drawn powerfully to him because of his sweetness and sensitivity and for the

challenge of drawing him out. What a triumph it was when she finally got him to open up and then won him over! Sadness and mistrust were gnawing at his heart, she could see that, but she saw herself healing him, like a tender nurse. She was excited by her confident belief that she could bring out the person he was capable of being.

The idyllic opening is part of almost every abusive relationship. How else would an abuser ever have a partner? Women aren’t stupid. If you go

out to a restaurant on a giddy first date and over dessert the man calls you a “selfish bitch” and sends your water glass flying across the room, you don’t say: “Hey, are you free again next weekend?” There has to be a hook. Very few women hate themselves so thoroughly that they will get involved with a man who is rotten from the very start—although they may feel terrible about themselves later, once the abuser has had time to destroy their self-

image step by step.

THE POWER OF THOSE WONDERFUL EARLY MONTHS

The partners of my clients have described to me the many ways in which the glowing beginning of a relationship with an abusive man can serve to entrap a woman, including:

 

Like any love-struck person, she runs around telling her friends and family what a terrific guy he is. After talking him up so much, she feels embarrassed to reveal his mistreatment when it begins, so she keeps it to herself for a long time.

 

She assumes that his abusiveness comes from something that has gone wrong inside of him—what else is she to conclude, given

how wonderful he was at first?—so she pours herself into figuring out what happened.

 

She has a hard time letting go of her own dream, since she thought she had found a wonderful man.

 

She can’t help wondering if she did something wrong or has some great personal deficit that knocked down their castle in the sky, so she tries to find the key to the problem inside of herself.

 

Question 7:

When he is so good early on, is he planning to be

ABUSIVE LATER?

 

One of the questions about abuse that I am asked most frequently is: When an abusive man is being charming at the beginning of a relationship, is he already thinking ahead to abusing the woman? Does he have it all planned out? Is he deliberately hooking her emotionally so he can be cruel to her later? The answer is usually no. The abuser doesn’t picture himself yelling, degrading her, or hurling objects at her. As he falls in love, he

dreams of a happy future of conjugal bliss, just as the woman does.

So, if he isn’t laying plans to hurt her, what is going on in his mind?

First, he is gazing longingly at the image he holds of the future, where the woman meets all of his needs, is beautiful and sexy at all times of the day and night, has no needs of her own, and is in awe of his brilliance and charm. He desires a woman who will cater to him and never complain about anything he does or darken his day with frustrations or unhappiness about her own life.

The abusive man doesn’t expose these self-focused fantasies to his new partner. In fact, he is largely unaware of them himself. So she has no way of knowing that he is looking more for a personal caretaker than for a partner. In fact, abusers tend to use the language of mutuality during the dating period:

“We are going to be really good for each other.” “I want to be with you all the time.”

“I really want to be there for you.”

“You can stop working for now so that you can finish school, and we can live off of my income.”

“I’ll help you study for that medical assistant exam, so that you can get that promotion.”

He may truly believe his own promises, because he wants to see himself as a generous and thoughtful partner, one who does not use or disrespect women. Later, when he begins to control the woman and take advantage of her, he will find ways to convince himself that it’s not happening or that it is her fault. Abuse is not his goal, but control is, and he finds himself using

abuse to gain the control he feels he has a right to.

On the other hand, a certain number of my clients are consciously

manipulative from the outset. A man of this style smiles knowingly at me, assuming that every man uses the same ploys, and says, “Of course you

have to charm the ladies and listen to them blabber on and on, they like that. You talk the nice talk a little, you take them dancing. You know how it is.” But even this man is generally not calculating to abuse the woman later. He creates the kind of relationship he wants through charm and dishonesty and expects to continue in that mode for good. Manipulation feels clean and satisfying to this style of abuser, while degrading language and physical intimidation do not. When he does start to tear her down or frighten her later, he will blame it on her, probably thinking of her as a “bitch” for not allowing him to lie and manipulate his way through life. And he doesn’t consider manipulation abusive.

AN ABUSER IS NEITHER A MONSTER NOR A VICTIM

We arrive now at two of the most important concepts regarding abusive men. First:

AN ABUSER IS A HUMAN BEING, NOT AN EVIL MONSTER, BUT HE HAS A

PROFOUNDLY COMPLEX AND DESTRUCTIVE PROBLEM THAT SHOULD NOT BE UNDERESTIMATED.

The common view of abusive men as evil, calculating brutes can make it difficult for a woman to recognize her partner’s problem. She tends to think: My partner really cares about me and has a good side to him. He has

feelings; he’s not a sadist. He couldn’t be an abuser. She doesn’t realize that he can have all these positive qualities and still have an abuse problem.

At the other end of the spectrum we find an equally common—and equally misleading—view of abusers: the abuser as a man whose gentle humanity is just barely hidden under his abusive surface and who can be transformed by love, compassion, and insight. One morning he will wake up to realize how hurtful he has been and will renounce his cruelty, particularly if he has the love of a good woman. This outlook is portrayed and supported in popular songs, movies, romantic novels, and soap operas. The painful reality is that bringing about change in abusers is difficult. An abusive man has to bury his compassion in a deep hole in order to escape

the profound inherent aversion that human beings have to seeing others suffer. He has to adhere tightly to his excuses and rationalizations, develop a disturbing ability to insulate himself from the pain he is causing, and learn to enjoy power and control over his female partners. It is unrealistic to expect such a complex structure, one that takes fifteen or twenty years to form, to vanish like steam. Yet women are often pressured by friends, family, or professionals to “give him a chance to change” and “have a little faith in people.”

The second critical understanding is:

AN ABUSER’S BEHAVIOR IS PRIMARILY CONSCIOUS—HE ACTS DELIBERATELY RATHER THAN BY ACCIDENT OR BY LOSING CONTROL OF HIMSELF—BUT THE

UNDERLYING THINKING THAT DRIVES HIS BEHAVIOR IS LARGELY NOT CONSCIOUS.

An abuser learns manipulative and controlling behavior from several sources, including key male role models, peers, and pervasive cultural messages (see Chapter 13). By the time he reaches adulthood, he has

integrated manipulative behavior to such a deep level that he acts largely on automatic. He knows what he is doing but not necessarily why. Consider

the following call I received from Kelsea, the partner of a client:

Lance wanted me to go skiing with him this weekend, but I really didn’t feel like it because I’d had an exhausting week and wanted to spend

time with my friends. When I said no, he dove into criticizing me. He said the reason why I’ve never become a good skier is that I won’t stick

with it, that I’m not willing to give things a chance and work at them, that I’m lazy and that’s why I never get good at anything, and so forth. It felt awful…But, you know, I think in a way he’s right—maybe I should be more disciplined about learning to ski.

Where was Lance’s stream of put-downs coming from? Was he really concerned that Kelsea was letting herself down? No. A man doesn’t tear down his partner’s self-esteem out of a desire to help her. The real issue concerned what Lance wanted for himself: He wanted Kelsea to keep him company for the weekend because he didn’t feel like going skiing alone. He resented her choice to make her friendships central in her life—a common

theme with abusive men—and believed that it was her duty to be by his side and focus on him. He was hammering her with whatever put-downs he could think of in order to bully her into going (and was having some

success in getting her to doubt herself). When some members of his abuser group challenged him about his behaviors at his next session, his real

motives and attitudes became apparent; much of my work as a counselor

involves helping abusive men to become conscious of, and face up to, their real reasons for choosing to behave as they do.

EARLY WARNING SIGNS

When women hear how charming abusers can be—or when they experience it directly—they feel at a loss. They ask, “Does this mean there is no way to avoid an abusive relationship? How can I tell whether I should worry about my new partner?” Fortunately, most abusers put out warning signals before their abuse goes into full gear. The signs to watch for should be part of every girl’s education before she starts dating.

 

Question 8:

How can I tell if a man I’m seeing will become

ABUSIVE?

 

The following warning flags mean that abuse could be down the road, and perhaps not far:

• He speaks disrespectfully about his former partners.

  A certain amount of anger and resentment toward an ex-partner is normal, but beware of the man who is very focused on his bitterness or who tells you about it inappropriately early on in your dating. Be especially cautious of the man who talks about women from his past in degrading or condescending ways or who characterizes himself as a victim of abuse by women. Be alert if he says that his previous wife or girlfriend falsely accused him of being abusive; the great majority of reports of abuse are accurate. When you hear that another woman considers him abusive,

  always find a way to get her side of the story. Even if you end up not believing her, you will at least know the behaviors to watch out for in him, just in case. Be cautious also of the man who admits to abusing a former partner but claims that the circumstances were exceptional, blames it on her, or blames it on alcohol or immaturity.

  Be cautious of the man who says that you are nothing like the other women he has been involved with, that you are the first partner to treat him well, or that earlier women in his life have not understood him. You will be tempted to work doubly hard to prove that you aren’t like those other women, and one foot will already be in the trap. It won’t be long before he is telling you that you are “just like the rest of them.” His perceptual system ensures that no woman can be a good woman while she is involved with him.

  A few men have the opposite approach, which is to glorify and elevate their former partners so that you feel like you can never quite compete. If he starts to lament the fact that you aren’t as sexy, athletic, domestic, or successful as the women who went before you, I can assure you that you won’t measure up any better later, no matter how hard you try. He wants to feel one up on you so that he can have the upper hand.

  Notice whether he seems to accept any responsibility for what went wrong in his previous relationships. If everything was always the women’s fault, you will soon be to blame for all difficulties in this new relationship.

• He is disrespectful toward you.

  Disrespect is the soil in which abuse grows. If a man puts you down or

  sneers at your opinions, if he is rude to you in front of other people, if he is cutting or sarcastic, he is communicating a lack of respect. If these kinds of behaviors are a recurring problem, or if he defends them when you complain about how they affect you, control and abuse are likely to be in

  the offing. Disrespect also can take the form of idealizing you and putting you on a pedestal as a perfect woman or goddess, perhaps treating you like a piece of fine china. The man who worships you in this way is not seeing you; he is seeing his fantasy, and when you fail to live up to that image he may turn nasty. So there may not be much difference between the man who talks down to you and the one who elevates you; both are displaying a

  failure to respect you as a real human being and bode ill.

• He does favors for you that you don’t want or puts on such a show of generosity that it makes you uncomfortable.

  These can be signs of a man who is attempting to create a sense of indebtedness. My client Alan, for example, spent much of his first two

  years with Tory helping her brother fix his car, helping her sister paint her new apartment, and transporting her father to medical appointments. When Tory’s family started to become upset about how Alan was treating her, Alan was able to convince her that her relatives had taken advantage of him and were now turning against him unfairly. He said, “Now that they don’t need my help anymore they want to get me out of the way so they can have you to themselves.” Alan succeeded in getting Tory to feel sorry for him, thereby driving a wedge between her and her family that endured for years until she saw through Alan’s manipulation.

  A man named Robert combined these first two warning signs: He told Lana that his ex-wife had falsely accused him of violence in order to keep him from seeing his boys. He said, “If a woman tells the family court that she wants the father’s visits to be supervised, they give it to her automatically.” Lana’s heart naturally went out to him. But two things happened that made her uneasy. First, Robert called after a snowstorm and offered to shovel her driveway. She said, “Oh, please don’t,” because she wasn’t sure how serious she felt about him and didn’t want to lead him on. When she got off the train from work that afternoon, she found her driveway completely cleared. Second, Lana happened by coincidence to

  have a female friend who was divorcing an abuser, and she learned from her

  friend that the family court required extensive evidence of violence in order to consider imposing supervised visitation on the father. She found herself wondering what Robert’s ex-wife might have to say.

• He is controlling.

  At first it can be exciting to be with a man who takes charge. Here’s a typical story from the partner of one of my clients:

  Our first few dates were exciting and fun. I remember him arriving at my house with our evening all planned out. He’d say, “We’re going to the Parker House for a drink, then we’re having a Chinese dinner, and then I’ve got tickets for a comedy club.” It would all have to go according to plan. At first I loved the way he would design what he wanted to do with me. But then I started to notice that he rarely

  considered what I might want to do. We kept going out to things that he enjoys, like hockey games. I enjoy the hockey games, too, but it’s not my top interest. And after a few months, he started to get annoyed if I wasn’t in the mood to do what he wanted.

  Control usually begins in subtle ways, far from anything you would call abuse. He drops comments about your clothes or your looks (too sexy or not sexy enough); is a little negative about your family or one of your good friends; starts to pressure you to spend more time with him or to quit your job or to get a better job that pays more; starts to give too much advice about how you should manage your own life and shows a hint of impatience when you resist his recommendations; or begins to act bothered that you don’t share all of his opinions about politics, personal relationships, music, or other tastes.

• He is possessive.

  Jealous behavior is one of the surest signs that abuse is down the road.

  Possessiveness masquerades as love. A man may say: “I’m sorry I got so bent out of shape about you talking to your ex-boyfriend, but I’ve never been so crazy about a woman before. I just can’t stand thinking of you with another man.” He may call five times a day keeping track of what you are doing all the time or insist on spending every evening with you. His

  feelings for you probably are powerful, but that’s not why he wants constant contact; he is keeping tabs on you, essentially establishing that you are his domain. Depending on what kind of friends he has, he also may be trying to impress them with how well he has you under his thumb. All of

  these behaviors are about ownership, not love.

  Jealous feelings are not the same as behaviors. A man with some

  insecurities may naturally feel anxious about your associations with other men, especially ex-partners, and might want some reassurance. But if he

  indicates that he expects you to give up your freedom to accommodate his jealousy, control is creeping up. Your social life shouldn’t have to change because of his insecurities.

  A man’s jealousy can be flattering. It feels great that he is wildly in love with you, that he wants you so badly. But a man can be crazy about you without being jealous. Possessiveness shows that he doesn’t love you as an independent human being but rather as a guarded treasure. After a while, you will feel suffocated by his constant vigilance.

• Nothing is ever his fault.

  He blames something or someone for anything that goes wrong. As time goes by, the target of his blame increasingly becomes you. This style of man also tends to make promises that he doesn’t keep, coming up with a steady stream of excuses for disappointing you or behaving irresponsibly, and perhaps taking serious economic advantage of you in the process.

• He is self-centered.

  In the first few months of a relationship, the abuser’s self-centeredness is not always apparent, but there are symptoms you can watch for. Notice whether he does a lot more than his share of the talking, listens poorly when you speak, and chronically shifts the topic of conversation back to himself. Self-centeredness is a personality characteristic that is highly resistant to change, as it has deep roots in either profound entitlement (in abusers) or to severe early emotional injuries (in nonabusers), or both (in narcissistic abusers).

• He abuses drugs or alcohol.

  Be especially careful if he pressures you to participate in substance use with him. Although substances do not cause partner abuse, they often go hand in

  hand. He may try to hook you into believing that you can help him get clean and sober; substance abusers are often “just about” to quit.

• He pressures you for sex.

  This warning sign is always important, but even more so for teenagers and young adult men. Not respecting your wishes or feelings regarding sex

  speaks of exploitativeness, which in turn goes with abuse. It also is a sign of seeing women as sex objects rather than human beings. If he says you need to have sex with him to prove that you truly love and care for him, give him his walking papers.

• He gets serious too quickly about the relationship.

  Because so many men are commitment-phobic, a woman can feel relieved to find a partner who isn’t afraid to talk about marriage and family. But watch out if he jumps too soon into planning your future together without taking enough time to get to know you and grow close, because it can mean that he’s trying to wrap you up tightly into a package that he can own. Take steps to slow things down a little. If he won’t respect your wishes in this regard, there is probably trouble ahead.

• He intimidates you when he’s angry.

  Intimidation, even if it appears unintentional, is a sign that emotional abuse is on the way—or has already begun—and is a warning flag that physical

  violence may eventually follow. Any of the following behaviors should put you on alert:

   

  He gets too close to you when he’s angry, puts a finger in your face, pokes you, pushes you, blocks your way, or restrains you.

   

  He tells you that he is “just trying to make you listen.”

   

  He raises a fist, towers over you, shouts you down, or behaves in any other way that makes you flinch or feel afraid.

   

  He makes vaguely threatening comments, such as, “You don’t want to see me mad” or “You don’t know who you’re messing with.”

   

  He drives recklessly or speeds up when he’s angry.

  He punches walls or kicks doors. 

  He throws things around, even if they don’t hit you. 

  The more deeply involved you become with an intimidating man, the more difficult it will be to get out of the relationship. Unfortunately, many women believe just the opposite: They think, Well, he does scare me a little

  sometimes, but I’ll wait and see if it gets worse, and I’ll leave him if it does. But getting away from someone who has become frightening is much more complicated than most people realize, and it gets harder with each day that passes. Don’t wait around to see.

  He has double standards.

  Beware of the man who has a different set of rules for his behavior than for yours. Double standards are an important aspect of life with an abuser, as we will see in Chapter 6.

• He has negative attitudes toward women.

  A man may claim early in a relationship that he views you in a light different from that in which he sees women in general, but the distinction won’t last. If you are a woman, why be involved with someone who sees women as inferior, stupid, conniving, or only good for sex? He isn’t going to forget for long that you’re a woman.

  Stereotyped beliefs about women’s sex roles also contribute to the risk of abuse. His conviction that women should take care of the home, or that a man’s career is more important than a woman’s, can become a serious problem, because he may punish you when you start refusing to live in his box. Women sometimes find it challenging to meet men who don’t have

  restrictive beliefs about women’s roles, particularly within certain cultural or national groups, but the effort to meet such men is an important one.

• He treats you differently around other people.

  Adult abusers tend to put on a show of treating their partners like gold when anyone is watching, reserving most of their abuse for times when no one

  else will see. In teenage abusers the opposite is often true. He may be rude and cold with her in front of other people to impress his friends with how

  “in control” and “cool” he is but be somewhat nicer when they are alone together.

• He appears to be attracted to vulnerability.

One way that this warning sign manifests itself is in cases of men who are attracted to women (or girls) who are much younger than they are. Why, for example, does a twenty-two-year-old man pursue a sixteen-year-old

adolescent? Because he is stimulated and challenged by her? Obviously not.

They are at completely different developmental points in life with a

dramatic imbalance in their levels of knowledge and experience. He is attracted to power and seeks a partner who will look up to him with awe and allow him to lead her. Of course, he usually tells her the opposite, insisting that he wants to be with her because of how unusually mature and sophisticated she is for her age. He may even compliment her on her sexual prowess and say how much power she has over him, setting up the young victim so that she won’t recognize what is happening to her. Even without a chronological age difference, some abusive men are drawn to women who have less life experience, knowledge, or self-confidence, and who will look up to the man as a teacher or mentor.

I have had quite a number of clients over the years who are attracted to women who are vulnerable because of recent traumatic experiences in their lives, including many who have started relationships by helping a woman break away from an abusive partner and then start to control or abuse her themselves. Some abusive men seek out a woman who comes from a troubled or abusive childhood, who has health problems, or who has suffered a recent severe loss, and present themselves as rescuers. Be alert for the man who seems to be attracted to power imbalances.

At the same time, I have observed that there are plenty of abusive men who are not particularly attracted to vulnerability or neediness in women and who are more drawn to tougher or more successful women. This style of abuser appears to feel that he has caught a bigger fish if he can reel in an accomplished, self-confident woman to dominate.

 

The Warning Signs of Abuse

He speaks disrespectfully about his former partners.

He is disrespectful toward you.

He does favors for you that you don’t want or puts on such a show of generosity that it makes you

uncomfortable.

 

 

He is controlling. He is possessive.

Nothing is ever his fault.

He is self-centered.

He abuses drugs or alcohol. He pressures you for sex.

He gets serious too quickly about the relationship.

He intimidates you when he’s angry.

He has double standards.

He has negative attitudes toward women.

He treats you differently around other people. He appears to be attracted to vulnerability.

 

No single one of the warning signs above is a sure sign of an abusive man, with the exception of physical intimidation. Many nonabusive men may exhibit a number of these behaviors to a limited degree. What, then, should a woman do to protect herself from having a relationship turn

abusive?

Although there is no foolproof solution, the best plan is:

1. Make it clear to him as soon as possible which behaviors or attitudes are unacceptable to you and that you cannot be in a relationship with him if they continue.
2. If it happens again, stop seeing him for a substantial period of time. Don’t keep seeing him with the warning that this time you “really mean it,” because he will probably interpret that to mean that you don’t.
3. If it happens a third time, or if he switches to other behaviors that are warning flags, chances are great that he has an abuse problem. If you give him too many chances, you are likely to regret it later. For further suggestions, see “Leaving an Abuser as a Way to

Promote Change” in Chapter 14.

Finally, be aware that as an abuser begins his slide into abuse, he

believes that you are the one who is changing. His perceptions work this way because he feels so justified in his actions that he can’t imagine the problem might be with him. All he notices is that you don’t seem to be living up to his image of the perfect, all-giving, deferential woman.

WHEN IS IT ABUSE?

Since abuse can sneak up on a woman, beginning with subtle control or disrespect that gains intensity over time, some burning questions emerge: How do I know when my partner is being abusive? Is there a distinct line that I can keep my eye on, so that I know when he has crossed it? How much is too much? Since nobody’s perfect, how do I know the difference between a bad day when he’s just being a jerk and a pattern that adds up to something more serious?

It’s true that almost everyone does yell at one point or another in a relationship, and most people, male or female, call their partners a name from time to time, interrupt, or act selfish or insensitive. These behaviors

are hurtful and worthy of criticism, but they aren’t all abuse, and they don’t all have the same psychological effects that abuse does. At the same time, all of these behaviors are abusive when they are part of a pattern of abuse.

Being yelled at by a respectful partner feels bad, but it doesn’t cause the same chilled, ugly atmosphere that an abuser’s yells do.

The term abuse is about power; it means that a person is taking advantage of a power imbalance to exploit or control someone else.

Wherever power imbalances exist, such as between men and women, or

adults and children, or between rich and poor, some people will take

advantage of those circumstances for their own purposes. (As I discuss in Chapter 13, partner abuse has been found not to exist in societies where males and females have equal power.) Thus the defining point of abuse is

when the man starts to exercise power over the woman in a way that causes harm to her and creates a privileged status for him.

 

Question 9:

Is the way he is treating me abuse?

 

The lines where subtler kinds of mistreatment end and abuse begins include the following actions:

• He retaliates against you for complaining about his behavior.

  Let’s say your partner calls you a bitch one day. You are angry, and you let him know that you deeply dislike that word and don’t ever want to be called that again. However, he responds to your grievance by making a point of calling you a bitch more often. Maybe he even gets a certain look in his eye now when he does it because he knows it gets under your skin. Similarly, you may say to your partner in an argument, “Stop yelling at me, I hate being yelled at,” so he raises his voice louder and blames it on you. These

  are signs of abuse.

  Another way he can retaliate against you for resisting his control is to switch into the role of victim. Suppose that you complain about being silenced by his constant interruptions during arguments. He then gets a huffy, hostile tone in his voice as if your objection were unfair to him and

  says sarcastically, “All right, I’ll just listen and you talk,” and acts as if you are oppressing him by calling him on his behavior. This is an effort to make you feel guilty for resisting his control and is the beginning of abuse.

  And some men ridicule the woman when she complains of mistreatment, openly laughing at her or mimicking her. These behaviors remove all doubt about whether he is abusive.

  Retaliation may not always be as clear and immediate as it is in these examples. But you can tell when your partner’s behavior is designed to

  punish you for standing up to him, even if it doesn’t come out until a couple of days later. He doesn’t believe that you have the right to defy him, and he tries to hurt you so that next time you won’t.

• He tells you that your objections to his mistreatment are your own problem.

  When a woman attempts to set limits on controlling or insensitive behavior, an abuser wants her to doubt her perceptions, so he says things such as:

  “You’re too sensitive; every little thing bothers you. It shouldn’t be any big deal.”

  “Not everyone is all nicey-nice when they’re angry like you want them to be.”

  “Don’t start talking to me like I’m abusive just because your ex- boyfriend (or your parents) abused you. You think everyone is abusing you.”

  “You’re just angry because you aren’t getting your way, so you’re saying I’m mistreating you.”

  Through comments like these, the abuser can try to persuade you that:

  (1) you have unreasonable expectations for his behavior, and you should be willing to live with the things he does; (2) you are actually reacting to something else in your life, not to what he did; and (3) you are using your grievances as a power move against him. All of these tactics are forms of

  discrediting your complaints of mistreatment, which is abusive. His discrediting maneuvers reveal a core attitude, which he never explicitly states and may not even be aware of consciously himself: “You have no

  right to object to how I treat you.” And you can’t be in a fair and healthy relationship if you can’t raise grievances.

• He gives apologies that sound insincere or angry, and he demands that you accept them.

  The following exchange illustrates how this dynamic plays out:

  AIRE: I still feel like you don’t understand why I was upset by what you did. You haven’t even apologized.

  NNY (Angry and loud): All right, all right! I’m sorry, I’M SORRY!! AIRE (Shaking her head): You don’t get it.

  NNY: What the fuck do you want from me?? I apologized already! What, you won’t be satisfied until you have your pound of flesh??

  AIRE: Your apology doesn’t mean anything to me when you obviously aren’t sorry.

  NNY: What do you mean I’m not sorry?? Don’t tell me what I’m feeling, Little Ms. Analyst! You’re not inside my head.

  This interaction only serves to make Claire feel worse, of course, as Danny adds insults and crazy-making denial to whatever she was already upset about. Danny feels that Claire should be grateful for his apology, even though his tone communicated the opposite of his words; he in fact feels entitled to forgiveness, and he demands it. (He also considers it his

  prerogative to insist that she accept his version of reality, no matter how much it collides with everything she sees and hears; in this sense, he apparently sees her mind as part of what he has the right to control.)

• He blames you for the impact of his behavior.

  Abuse counselors say of the abusive client: “When he looks at himself in the morning and sees his dirty face, he sets about washing the mirror.” In

  other words, he becomes upset and accusatory when his partner exhibits the predictable effects of chronic mistreatment, and then he adds insult to injury by ridiculing her for feeling hurt by him. He even uses her emotional

  injuries as excuses to mistreat her further. If his verbal assaults cause her to lose interest in having sex with him, for example, he snarls accusingly,

  “You must be getting it somewhere else.” If she is increasingly mistrustful of him because of his mistreatment of her, he says that her lack of trust is

  causing her to perceive him as abusive, reversing cause and effect in a mind-twisting way. If she is depressed or weepy one morning because he

  tore her apart verbally the night before, he says, “If you’re going to be such a drag today, why don’t you just go back to bed so I won’t have to look at you?”

  If your partner criticizes or puts you down for being badly affected by his mistreatment, that’s abuse. Similarly, it’s abuse when he uses the effects of his cruelty as an excuse, like a client I had who drove his partner away with his verbal assaults and then told her that her emotional distancing was causing his abuse, thus reversing cause and effect. He is kicking you when you’re already down, and he knows it. Seek help for yourself quickly, as

  this kind of psychological assault can cause your emotional state to rapidly decline.

• It’s never the right time, or the right way, to bring things up.

  In any relationship, it makes sense to use some sensitivity in deciding when and how to tackle a difficult relationship issue. There are ways to word a

  grievance that avoid making it sound like a personal attack, and if you mix in some appreciation you increase the chance that your partner will hear you. But with an abuser, no way to bring up a complaint is the right way.

  You can wait until the calmest, most relaxed evening, prepare your partner with plenty of verbal stroking, express your grievance in mild language, but he still won’t be willing to take it in.

  Initial defensiveness or hostility toward a grievance is common even in nonabusive people. Sometimes you have to leave an argument and come back to it in a couple of hours, or the next day, and then you find your partner more prepared to take in what is bothering you. With an abuser, however, the passage of time doesn’t help. He doesn’t spend the intervening period digesting your comments and struggling to face what he did, the way a nonabusive person might. In fact he does the opposite, appearing to mentally build up his case against your complaint as if he were preparing to go before a judge.

• He undermines your progress in life.

  Interference with your freedom or independence is abuse. If he causes you to lose a job or to drop out of a school program; discourages you from pursuing your dreams; causes damage to your relationships with friends or

  relatives; takes advantage of you financially and damages your economic

  progress or security; or tells you that you are incompetent at something you enjoy, such as writing, artwork, or business, as a way to get you to give it up, he is trying to undermine your independence.

• He denies what he did.

  Some behaviors in a relationship can be matters of judgment; what one person calls a raised voice another might call yelling, and there is room for reasonable people to disagree. But other actions, such as calling someone a name or pounding a fist on the table, either happened or they didn’t. So

  while a nonabusive partner might argue with you about how you are interpreting his behavior, the abuser denies his actions altogether.

• He justifies his hurtful or frightening acts or says that you “made him do it.”

  When you tell your partner that his yelling frightens you, for example, and he responds that he has every right to yell “because you’re not listening to me,” that’s abuse. The abuser uses your behavior as an excuse for his own. He therefore refuses to commit unconditionally to stop using a degrading or intimidating behavior. Instead, he insists on setting up a quid pro quo,

  where he says he’ll stop some form of abuse if you agree to give up something that bothers him, which often will be something that you have every right to do.

• He touches you in anger or puts you in fear in other ways.

  Physical aggression by a man toward his partner is abuse, even if it happens only once. If he raises a fist; punches a hole in the wall; throws things at you; blocks your way; restrains you; grabs, pushes, or pokes you; or

  threatens to hurt you, that’s physical abuse. He is creating fear and using your need for physical freedom and safety as a way to control you. Call a hot line as soon as possible if any of these things happens to you.

  Sometimes a partner can frighten you inadvertently because he is

  unaware of how his actions affect you. For example, he might come from a family or culture where people yell loudly and wave their arms around during arguments, while those from your background are quiet and polite. The nonabusive man in these circumstances will be very concerned when

  you inform him that he is frightening you and will want to take steps to keep that from happening again—unconditionally.

  Physical abuse is dangerous. Once it starts in a relationship, it can

  escalate over time to more serious assaults such as slapping, punching, or choking. Even if it doesn’t, so-called “lower-level” physical abuse can frighten you, give your partner power over you, and start to affect your ability to manage your own life. Any form of physical intimidation is highly upsetting to children who are exposed to it. No assault in a relationship, however “minor,” should be taken lightly.

  I am often asked whether physical aggression by women toward men, such as a slap in the face, is abuse. The answer is: “It depends.” Men typically experience women’s shoves or slaps as annoying and infuriating rather than intimidating, so the long-term emotional effects are less damaging. It is rare to find a man who has gradually lost his freedom or self-esteem because of a woman’s aggressiveness. I object to any form of physical aggression in relationships except for what is truly essential for self-defense, but I reserve the word abuse for situations of control or intimidation.

  A woman can intimidate another woman, however, and a man can be placed in fear by his male partner. Most of what I have described about the thinking and the tactics of heterosexual abusers is also true of abusive gay men and lesbians. We look more at this issue in Chapter 6.

• He coerces you into having sex or sexually assaults you.

  I have had clients who raped or sexually coerced their partners repeatedly over the course of the relationship but never once hit them. Sexual coercion or force in a relationship is abuse. Studies indicate that women who are raped by intimate partners suffer even deeper and longer-lasting effects than those who are raped by strangers or nonintimate acquaintances. If you have experienced sexual assault or chronic sexual pressure in your relationship, call an abuse hotline or a rape hotline, even if you don’t feel that the term

  rape applies to what your partner did.

• His controlling, disrespectful, or degrading behavior is a pattern.

  This item is as important as the others but requires the most judgment and ability to trust your instincts. When exactly does a behavior become a

  pattern? If it happens three times a year? If it happens once a week? There

  is no answer that applies to all actions or to all people. You will need to form your own conclusions about whether your partner’s mistreatment of you has become repetitive.

• You show signs of being abused.

All of the other indicators of abuse discussed above involve examining what the man does and how he thinks. But it is equally important to look at yourself, examining such questions as:

Are you afraid of him?

Are you getting distant from friends or family because he makes those relationships difficult?

Is your level of energy and motivation declining, or do you feel depressed?

Is your self-opinion declining, so that you are always fighting to be good enough and to prove yourself?

Do you find yourself constantly preoccupied with the relationship and how to fix it?

Do you feel like you can’t do anything right?

Do you feel like the problems in your relationship are all your fault?

Do you repeatedly leave arguments feeling like you’ve been messed with but can’t figure out exactly why?

These are signs that you may be involved with an abusive partner.

You may notice that the above distinguishing features of abuse include little mention of anger. While chronic anger can be one warning sign of abusiveness, the two are sometimes quite separate. There are cool, calculating abusers who rarely explode in ire, for example, and at the same time some nonabusive men feel or express anger often. You might decide

that you don’t want to be with a partner who is angry all the time—I wouldn’t care for it—but it isn’t abuse in itself.

WHAT IF HE’S SORRY?

Almost every time that I speak on abuse, hands go up with the following two questions: (1) When an abuser acts remorseful, is he really? and (2) If he’s really sorry, does that make him less likely to be abusive again?

 

Question 10:

Is he really sorry?

 

The good news is that remorse is often genuine; the bad news is that it rarely helps. To make sense out of this contradiction, we need to look first at a crucial aspect of what is going on inside an abuser: Abusers have

numerous contradictory attitudes and beliefs operating simultaneously in their minds. A few examples of the typical contradictions include:

“Women are fragile and in need of protection but they need to be intimidated from time to time or they get out of hand.”

“My partner and I should have equal say over things but my decisions should rule when it comes to issues that are important to me.”

“I feel terrible about how I treated her but I should never have to feel bad in a relationship, no matter what I did.”

“I shouldn’t raise my voice but I should have control over my partner, and sometimes I have to get loud to control her.”

“You should never hit a woman but sometimes a man has no other choice.”

When a man feels sorry for his abusive behavior, his regrets collide with his entitlement. The contradictory chatter inside his head sounds something like this:

I feel bad that I said “fuck you” to her; that’s not a good thing to say, especially in front of the children. I lost it, and I want my family to have an image of me as always being strong and in charge. I don’t like for them to see me looking ugly the way I did in that argument; it hurts my self-esteem. But she called me “irresponsible”! How does she expect

me to react when she says something like that? She can’t talk to me that way. Now the children are going to think I was the bad guy, when she was the cause of it. If they start siding with her, I’m going to let them

know why I was mad. Now she’s made me look really bad. Fuck her.

Let’s follow the path that this man’s internal dialogue takes. First, his

remorse is not primarily focused on the way his verbal assault wounded his partner. What he feels bad about mostly is: (1) He damaged his image in other people’s eyes; (2) he offended his own sense of how he would like to be; and (3) he feels he should be able to control his partner without resorting to abuse. From those thoughts he slides into blaming his outburst on his partner, which he feels entitled to do, and in this way rids himself of his feelings of guilt. By the end of his self-talk, he is holding his partner

responsible for everything, including the effects that he has just had on their children. The abuser’s self-focus and victim-blaming orientation tend to

cause his remorse to fade in this way.

An abuser’s show of emotion after early incidents of abuse can be dramatic: I have had clients who cry, beg their partners for forgiveness, and say, “You deserve so much better, I don’t know why you are even with a jerk like me.” His remorse can create the impression that he is reaching out for real intimacy, especially if you’ve never seen him looking so sad before. But in a day or two his guilt is vanquished, driven out by his internal excuse-making skills. The effects of the incident last much longer for the abused woman, of course, and pretty soon the abuser may be snapping at her: “What, aren’t you over that yet? Don’t dwell on it, for crying out loud. Let’s put it behind us and move forward.” His attitude is: “I’m over it, so why isn’t she?”

Genuine remorse and theatricality are not mutually exclusive. Most

abusers are truly sorry—though perhaps largely for themselves—while also

playing up their emotions somewhat to win sympathy. A man’s dramatic remorse shifts the center of attention back to him; his partner may almost forget his earlier bullying as compassion for his guilt and self-reproach

washes over her. She may soon find herself reassuring him that she won’t leave him, that she still loves him, that she doesn’t think he’s a terrible

person. If they have children, she may find herself covering up what he did so that the children won’t blame him, because she doesn’t want him to feel even worse. He thus reaps soothing attention as a reward for his abusiveness, and his actions have the effect of keeping the family focused on his needs.

Remorse usually tends to decline as abusive incidents pile up. The genuine aspect fades as the abusive man grows accustomed to acting

abusively and tuning out his partner’s hurt feelings. The theatrical part fades as he becomes less concerned about losing the relationship, confident now that she is fully under his control and won’t leave him.

The salient point about remorse, however, is that it matters little

whether it is genuine or not. Clients who get very sorry after acts of abuse change at about the same rate as the ones who don’t. The most regretful are sometimes the most self-centered, lamenting above all the injury they’ve

done to their own self-image. They feel ashamed of having behaved like cruel dictators and want to revert quickly to the role of benign dictators, as if that somehow makes them much better people.

If Being Sorry After an Incident Doesn’t Help, What Would

The following steps could help prevent his next incident of abuse, in a way that apologies cannot:

 

Giving you some extended room to be angry about what he did, rather than telling you that you’ve been angry too long or trying to stuff your angry feelings back down your throat

 

Listening well to your perspective without interrupting, making excuses, or blaming his actions on you

 

Making amends for anything he did, for example, by picking up anything that he threw, admitting to friends that he lied about you,

or telling the children that his behavior was unacceptable and wasn’t your fault

Making unconditional agreements to immediately change behaviors

 

Going to get help without you having to put a lot of pressure on him to do it

 

If he is willing to take all of these steps after an incident of mistreatment

—and actually follow through on them—there’s some chance that he may not be deeply abusive. Without such clear action, however, the abuse will return.

TAKE SELF-PROTECTIVE STEPS QUICKLY

Many women take a “wait and see” attitude when signs of abuse appear in a partner’s behavior. They tell themselves: “It’s so hard to leave him right

now because I still love him. But if he gets worse, that will lessen my

feelings for him, and then breaking up will be easier.” This is a dangerous trap. The longer you are with an abuser, and the more destructive he becomes, the harder it can be to extricate yourself, for the following reasons:

 

The more time he has to tear down your self-opinion, the more difficult it will be for you to believe that you deserve better treatment.

 

The more time he has to hurt you emotionally, the more likely your energy and initiative are to diminish, so that it gets harder to muster the strength to get out.

 

The more damage he does to your relationships with friends and family, the less support you will have for the difficult process of ending the relationship.

 

The longer you have been living with his cycles of intermittent

abuse and kind, loving treatment, the more attached you are likely

to feel to him, through a process known as traumatic bonding (see Chapter 9).

For all of these reasons, act sooner rather than later.

At the same time, if you have already been in a relationship with an abuser for five years, or ten, or thirty, it is never too late to recover your rights and to get free. Help is available to you no matter how long your relationship has lasted and how deep the effects have been (see “Resources”).

One final word of caution: If you do not have children with your

abusive partner, keep it that way. Some women hope the arrival of a baby can cause an abuser to change his behaviors, but it can’t. It won’t make him settle down, become more responsible, or gain maturity. It won’t stop his

jealous accusations by convincing him that you are committed to him, nor will it get him to stop cheating on you. The presence of children in the

home won’t make him stop abusing you. Having children with an abusive partner will just make your life more stressful than it was before, as you begin to worry about the effects that his behavior is having on your children. And if you decide later that you do want to leave him, having children will make that choice much harder and will raise the possibility that he will threaten to seek custody of them (see Chapter 10). I have yet to encounter a case where the arrival of children solved a woman’s problems with an abusive man, or even lessened them.

 

Key points to remember

 

 

The early warning signs of abuse are usually visible if you know what to look for.

 

If the warning signs are there, act quickly either to set limits or to get out of the relationship. The more deeply you become involved with an abuser, the harder it is to get out.

 

You do not cause your partner’s slide into abusiveness, and you cannot stop it by figuring out what is bothering him or by

increasing your ability to meet his needs. Emotional upset and unmet needs have little to do with abusiveness.

 

Certain behaviors and attitudes are definitional of abuse, such as ridiculing your complaints of mistreatment, physically intimidating you, or sexually assaulting you. If any of these is present, abuse

has already begun.

 

Abused women aren’t “codependent.” It is abusers, not their partners, who create abusive relationships.

 

Call a hotline for support, or use one of the resources listed in the back of this book, as soon as you start to have questions about abuse. Don’t wait until you’re certain.