I feel like I’m going crazy.

Sometimes I can just tell it’s one of those days; no matter what I do, I’m going to get it sooner or later.

He’s a teddy bear underneath.

I never know what to expect; he can just turn on me, out of the blue.

I wouldn’t call him an abuser. I mean, he can be really nice for weeks at a time.

I really love him.

OVER THE FIFTEEN YEARS I have worked with abusive men, I have spent many hundreds of hours on the telephone listening to the partners of my

clients describe their lives. My job is to see my client through the woman’s eyes, using my imagination to enter her home and absorb the atmosphere that he creates day in and day out. By assuming her perspective, I begin to see beneath my client’s exterior.

At the same time, I don’t see exactly the same man the abused woman sees. The circumstances under which I see him have several unusual aspects:

It is safe for me to challenge and confront him, because I am sitting in a room full of witnesses, including my co-leader. In many cases,

 

I have some power over the man because he is on probation, so a negative report from me could get him brought before a judge.

I have names and descriptions for his tactics. He finds it difficult to confuse or intimidate me, or to make me feel bad about myself,

 

because I keep pointing out his maneuvers and his motives. Abuse loses some of its power when you have names for its weapons.

I don’t have to live with this man, so he has few opportunities to retaliate against me for standing up to him.

 

Some of the men in the group who are attempting to apply the concepts of the program may challenge the man on his attitudes

 

and behaviors. These challenges from other abusers make it harder for him to blame everything on his partner, or on women in general.

I also learn about a man from seeing his reactions to discussions in his group. For example, he tends to express disapproval of other clients whose abuse is different from his—because he considers anything he wouldn’t do to be “real” abuse—and while tending to express sympathy for and support of any fellow abuser who employs the same tactics or justifications that he does, turns to me to say: “But what do you expect the poor man to do given his circumstances?”

The abused woman and I thus try to form a team so that we can share our observations about the man and help each other to recognize patterns or dynamics. I am eager to learn from her about my client and at the same time eager to share with her any observations I have that might help her to protect herself or unravel what he is doing to her mind.

One of the earliest lessons I learned from abused women is that to understand abuse you can’t look just at the explosions; you have to examine with equal care the spaces between the explosions. The dynamics of these

periods tell us as much about the abuse as the rages or the thrown objects, as the disgusting name-calling or the jealous accusations. The abuser’s thinking and behavior during the calmer periods are what cause his big

eruptions that wound or frighten. In this chapter, we enter the mind of the

abuser at various points in daily life to better understand what sparks his abusive actions.

THE ABUSIVE MAN IN ARGUMENTS

I will begin by examining in detail an argument between an abusive man and his partner, the kind that I hear about routinely from my clients and their partners. Jesse and Bea are walking along in their town. Jesse is sullen and clearly annoyed.

A: What’s going on with you? I don’t understand what you’re upset about.

SE: I’m not upset; I just don’t feel like talking right now. Why do you always have to read something into it? Can’t I just be a little quiet sometimes? Not everybody likes to talk, talk, talk all the time just because you do.

A: I don’t talk, talk, talk all the time. What do you mean by that? I just want to know what’s bothering you.

SE: I just finished telling you, nothing’s bothering me…and give me a break that you don’t talk all the time. When we were having dinner with my brother and his wife, I couldn’t believe how you went on and on about your stupid journalism class. You’re forty years old, for Christ sake; the world isn’t excited about your fantasies of being famous. Grow up a little.

A: Fantasies of being famous? I’m trying to get a job, Jesse, because the travel agency jobs have all moved downtown. And I wasn’t going on about it. They were interested; they were asking me a lot of questions about it— that’s why we were on that subject for a while.

SE: Oh, yeah, they were real interested. They were being polite to you

because you’re so full of yourself. You’re so naive you can’t even tell when you’re being patronized.

A: I don’t believe this. That dinner was almost two weeks ago. Have you been brewing about it all this time?

SE: I don’t brew, Bea, you’re the one that brews. You love to get us confused. I’ll see you later. I’m really not in the mood for this shit.

A: In the mood for what shit?? I haven’t done anything! You’ve had it in for me since I arrived to meet you!

SE: You’re yelling at me, Bea. You know I hate being yelled at. You need to get help; your emotions just fly off the handle. I’ll see you later.

A: Where are you going?

SE: I’ll walk home, thank you. You can take the car. I’d rather be alone.

A: It’s going to take you more than a half hour to walk home, and it’s freezing today.

SE: Oh, now suddenly you care about me so much. Up yours. Bye. Walks off.)

The lives of abused women are full of these kinds of exchanges. Jesse didn’t call Bea any degrading names; he didn’t yell; he didn’t hit her or threaten her. Bea will be in a tough spot when the time comes to explain to a friend how upset she is, because Jesse’s behavior is hard to describe. What can she say? That he’s sarcastic? That he holds on to things? That he’s overly critical? A friend would respond: “Well, that sounds hard, but I wouldn’t call it abuse.” Yet, as Jesse walks away, Bea feels as if she has been slapped in the face.

What Is Going On in This Argument?

We will look first at what Jesse is doing and then examine how his thinking

works. The first point to illuminate is:

THE ABUSER’S PROBLEM IS NOT THAT HE RESPONDS INAPPROPRIATELY TO CONFLICT. HIS ABUSIVENESS IS OPERATING PRIOR TO THE CONFLICT: IT

USUALLY CREATES THE CONFLICT, AND IT DETERMINES THE SHAPE THE CONFLICT TAKES.

Therapists often try to work with an abuser by analyzing his responses to disagreements and trying to get him to handle conflicts differently. But such an approach misses the point: His abusiveness was what caused the tension to begin with.

Jesse uses an array of conversational control tactics, as most abusers do:

He denies being angry, although he obviously is, and instead of dealing with what is bothering him, he channels his energy into criticizing Bea about something else.

 

He insults, belittles, and patronizes Bea in multiple ways, including saying that she likes to talk all the time and has fantasies of becoming famous, stating that she should “grow up,” and telling her that she accuses him of stewing over things when it’s actually her.

 

He tells her that she is unaware that other people look down on her and don’t take her seriously and calls her “naive.”

 

He criticizes her for raising her voice in response to his stream of insults.

 

He tells her that she is mistreating him.

 

He stomps off and plays the victim by putting himself in the position of having to take a long, cold walk home.

 

Bea is now left miserable—feeling like a scratching post that a cat has just sharpened its claws on. Part of why she is so shaken up by this

experience is that she never knows when one of these verbal assaults is going to happen or what sets it off. On a different day she might have met Jesse to take him home and had a pleasant conversation with him about his workday. Thus she is left imagining that something bad must have happened to him at work and that he is taking it out on her—which may be true in a way but actually has little to do with what is happening.

So, what is going on? The story began two weeks earlier, when Jesse and Bea were out to dinner with Jesse’s relatives. What we have just learned from their argument is that Jesse does not like Bea to be the center of attention for any length of time. Why not? There are a few reasons:

1. He considers it her job to play a supporting role to him. This is the same as the attitude that “behind every great man standsa woman.” So if either of them is going to be the center of attention, it should be him, and if he is feeling like being quiet she should be, too, remaining in his shadow.
2. He is constantly focused on her faults, so he assumes everyone else is, too.
3. He doesn’t like having her appear in public as smart, capable, and interesting, because that collides with his deeply held belief that

   she is irrational, incompetent, and worthy of being ignored—a view of her that he may want others to share with him.

4. He is afraid on some level that if she gets enough support for her strengths, she will leave him—and he’s quite likely right.

Notice that numbers two and three are almost opposites: He assumes that she comes off badly, which embarrasses him, but he is also concerned that she may have come off very well, because then other people might see her as a capable person. He reacts strongly to both possibilities.

We also see the signs that Jesse finds Bea’s journalism class threatening to his control over her. In fact, this is probably what he has been dwelling on most over the past two weeks, causing his grumpy mood. Abusive men are uncomfortable when they see signs of budding independence in their

partners and often look for ways to undermine the woman’s progress in the days ahead.

Returning now to the day of the argument, we can see that Jesse

launches into attributing many of his own characteristics to Bea, saying that she is full of herself, that she dwells on grievances, that she yells, that she doesn’t care about him. This behavior in abusers is sometimes mistakenly referred to as projection, a psychological process through which people

attribute their own fears or flaws to those around them. But as we saw in

Chapter 3, the process through which an abuser turns reality on its head is not quite the same as projection. Jesse perceives Bea to be yelling because one of his core values is that she’s not supposed to get angry at him, no matter what he does. He thinks she doesn’t care about him because in his mind she can’t care about him unless she cares only about him, and not at all about herself or other people. He thinks she is full of herself because she sometimes gets excited about her own goals or activities, when he believes she should be most excited about what he’s doing. He thinks she dwells on her grievances because she sometimes attempts to hold him accountable rather than letting him stick her with cleaning up his messes—literally and figuratively.

Jesse is also using projection as a control tactic. Part of why Jesse

accuses Bea of doing all the selfish or abusive things that he does is to make it hard for her to get anywhere with her grievances. I have had many clients tell me: “Oh, I knew what I was saying about her wasn’t true, but it’s a way to really get to her.” (It is surprising how common it is for abusers to admit

—if they are caught off guard—to deliberate use of abusive and controlling behaviors.) For all of these reasons, saying simply that “he’s projecting” doesn’t adequately capture the reasons for an abuser’s distorted accusations.

The final behavior we need to examine is Jesse’s decision to take a long, cold walk home by himself. Why does he make himself a victim?

 

He is drawn to making Bea feel sorry for him so that his feelings can remain the center of attention, crowding hers out. She will feel as though she shouldn’t pursue her complaints about the ways in which he has just assaulted her verbally, because he is suffering so much.

 

He also wants other people to feel sorry for him. He can describe to friends or relatives how the argument led to a miserable walk for him, and they will think: “The poor man.” And he will probably adjust the story to his advantage—abusers usually spruce up their

accounts—perhaps saying that she was furious and drove off without him, and he was left to walk shivering all the way home.

He doesn’t consciously plan these maneuvers ahead of time, but

experience has taught him on a deeper level that playing the victim increases the sympathy he receives.

He may want her to worry about what other people will think. She won’t want to come out looking like the mean one, so she’ll take steps to smooth over the fight.

 

On some level he enjoys walking alone for half an hour, wallowing in self-pity, because it helps him feel more justified about his recurring pattern of cruelty and undermining toward Bea. It’s a way of reassuring himself that she’s the bad one, not him. An abuser is a human being, and somewhere inside him, buried under thick layers of entitlement and disrespect, there is a heart that

 

knows that what he is doing is wrong. This heart periodically tries to send a few beats up through the layers, so the abuser has to stomp them back down.

Each verbal battle with an abuser is a walk through a minefield, and each field is different. Jesse appears to be a mixture of the Water Torturer and the Victim, with a sprinkling of Mr. Right. Perhaps an argument on the same subject with the Drill Segreant or the Player would go quite differently. But, regardless of specific style, very little of what an abuser

does in an argument is as irrational or emotional as it seems.

FOUR CRITICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF AN ABUSIVE ARGUMENT

You may find that each disagreement with your partner is unique and can start in any of a thousand ways, yet it can only arrive at four or five different endings—all of them bad. Your gnawing sensation of futility and inevitably is actually coming from the abusive man’s thinking about verbal conflict. His outlook makes it impossible for an argument to proceed toward anything other than the fulfillment of his wishes—or toward nowhere at all. Four features stand out:

1. The abuser sees an argument as war.

   His goal in a verbal conflict is not to negotiate different desires, understand each other’s experiences, or think of mutually beneficial solutions. He

   wants only to win. Winning is measured by who talks the most, who makes the most devastating or “humorous” insults (none of which is funny to his partner), and who controls the final decision that comes out of the debate.

   He won’t settle for anything other than victory. If he feels he has lost the argument, he may respond by making a tactical retreat and gathering his forces to strike again later.

   Under this layer there is an even deeper stratum in many abusive men where we unearth his attitude that the whole relationship is a war. To this

   mind-set, relationships are dichotomous, and you’re on either one end or the other: the dominator or the submitter, the champ or the chump, the cool man or the loser. He can imagine no other way.

2. She is always wrong in his eyes.

   It is frustrating, and ultimately pointless, to argue with someone who is certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that his perspective is accurate and complete and that yours is wrong and stupid. Where can the conversation possibly go?

   The question isn’t whether he argues forcefully or not. Many

   nonabusive people express their opinions with tremendous conviction and emotion yet still allow themselves to be influenced by the other person’s point of view. On the other hand, it isn’t hard to tell when someone is refusing to grapple in good faith with your ideas and instead is just reaching for whatever stick he thinks will deal the heaviest blow to your side. When your partner says to you disparagingly, “Oh, the real reason why you complain about how I argue is that you can’t deal with my having strong

   opinions,” he’s diverting attention from the tactics he uses. He is also reversing reality, which is that he can’t accept your differences of opinion and doesn’t want to let his thinking be influenced by yours. (And on the

   rare occasions when he does adopt your ideas, he may claim they were his to begin with.)

3. He has an array of control tactics in conflicts.

   My clients have so many ways to bully their way through arguments that I couldn’t possibly name them all, but the abuser’s most common tactics are listed in the box below:

    

   Sarcasm Ridicule

   Distorting what you say

   Distorting what happened in an earlier interaction Sulking

   Accusing you of doing what he does, or thinking the way he thinks

   Using a tone of absolute certainty and final authority

   —“defining reality” Interrupting

   Not listening, refusing to respond Laughing out loud at your opinion or perspective Turning your grievances around to use against you

   Changing the subject to his grievances Criticism that is harsh, undeserved, or frequent Provoking guilt

   Playing the victim

   Smirking, rolling his eyes, contemptuous facial expressions Yelling, out-shouting

   Swearing

    

    

   Name-calling, insults, put-downs Walking out

   Towering over you

   Walking toward you in an intimidating way Blocking a doorway

   Other forms of physical intimidation, such as getting too close while he’s angry

   Threatening to leave you

   Threatening to harm you

    

   Conversational control tactics are aggravating no matter who uses them, but they are especially coercive and upsetting when used by an abusive man because of the surrounding context of emotional or physical intimidation. I have rarely met an abuser who didn’t use a wide array of the above tactics in conflicts; if you consider an argument with a partner to be a war, why not use every weapon you can think of? The underlying mind-set makes the

   behaviors almost inevitable.

   The abusive man wants particularly to discredit your perspective, especially your grievances. He may tell you, for example, that the “real” reasons why you complain about the way he treats you are:

   You don’t want him to feel good about himself. 

   You can’t handle it if he has an opinion that differs from yours, if he is angry, or if he is right. 

   You are too sensitive, you read too much into things, or you take things the wrong way. 

   You were abused as a child or by a former partner, so you think everything is abuse. 

   These are all strategies he uses to avoid having to think seriously about your grievances, because then he might be obligated to change his

   behaviors or attitudes.

   The abusive man’s goal in a heated argument is in essence to get you to stop thinking for yourself and to silence you, because to him your opinions and complaints are obstacles to the imposition of his will as well as an affront to his sense of entitlement. If you watch closely, you will begin to notice how many of his controlling behaviors are aimed ultimately at

   discrediting and silencing you.

4. He makes sure to get his way—by one means or another.

The bottom line with an abuser in an argument is that he wants what he wants—today, tomorrow, and always—and he feels he has a right to it.

THE ABUSIVE MAN’S CYCLES

Life with an abuser can be a dizzying wave of exciting good times and painful periods of verbal, physical, or sexual assault. The longer the relationship lasts, the shorter and farther apart the positive periods tend to become. If you have been involved with an abusive partner for many years, the good periods may have stopped happening altogether, so that he is an unvarying source of misery.

Periods of relative calm are followed by a few days or weeks in which

the abuser becomes increasingly irritable. As his tension builds, it takes less and less to set him off on a tirade of insults. His excuses for not carrying his weight mount up, and his criticism and displeasure seem constant. Many women tell me that they learn to read their partner’s moods during this buildup and can sense when he is nearing an eruption. One day he finally

hits his limit, often over the most trivial issue, and he bursts out with screaming, disgusting and hurtful put-downs, or frightening aggression. If he is a violent abuser, he turns himself loose to knock over chairs, hurl objects, punch holes in walls, or assault his partner directly, leaving her scared to death.

After he has purged himself, he typically acts ashamed or regretful about his cruelty or violence, at least in the early years of a relationship.

Then he may enter a period when he reminds you of the man you fell in

love with—charming, attentive, funny, kind. His actions have the effect of drawing you into a repetitive traumatic cycle in which you hope each time that he is finally going to change for good. You then begin to see the signs of his next slow slide back into abuse, and your anxiety and confusion rise again.

Women commonly ask me: “What is going on inside his mind during

this cycle? Why can’t he just stay in the good period, what can I do to keep him there?” To answer these questions, let’s look through his eyes during each phase:

• The tension-building phase

  During this period, your partner is collecting negative points about you and squirreling them away for safekeeping. Every little thing that you have done wrong, each disappointment he has experienced, any way in which you

  have failed to live up to his image of the perfect selfless woman—all goes down as a black mark against your name.

  Abusers nurse their grievances. One of my former colleagues referred to this habit as The Garden of Resentments, a process through which an abuser plants a minor complaint and then cultivates it carefully while it grows to

  tremendous dimensions, worthy of outrage and abuse. Jesse, for example, planted the dinner-table conversation in his Garden of Resentments and then harvested it two weeks later to throw in Bea’s face, lumping it together with several other issues into one big ugly ball.

  To defend against any complaints you attempt to express, the abuser stockpiles his collected grievances like weapons to protect his precious

  terrain of selfishness and irresponsibility. And some of his negativity about you is just plain habit. An abuser falls into a routine of walking around dwelling on his partner’s purported faults. Since he considers you

  responsible for fixing everything for him, he logically chooses you as his dumping ground for all of life’s normal frustrations and disappointments.

• The eruption

  The abusive man tends to mentally collect resentments toward you until he feels that you deserve a punishment. Once he’s ready to blow, the tiniest spark will ignite him. Occasionally an abused woman may decide to touch her partner off herself at this point, as scary as that is, because the fear of waiting to see what he will do and when he will do it is worse. The explosion of verbal or physical assault that results is horrible, but at least it’s over.

  After he blows, the abuser absolves himself of guilt by thinking of himself as having lost control, the victim of his partner’s provocations or his own intolerable pain. Whereas at other times he may say that men are stronger and less emotional than women, he now switches, saying, “There is only so much a man can take,” or “She really hurt my feelings, and I

  couldn’t help going off.” He may consider women’s emotional reactions— such as breaking into tears—contemptible, even when they hurt no one, but when a man has powerful emotions, even violence may be excusable. Some of my most tough-guy clients unabashedly use their painful feelings to

  excuse their cruel behavior.

• The “hearts and flowers” stage

After the apologies are over, the abuser may enter a period of relative calm. He appears to have achieved a catharsis from opening up the bomb bays and raining abuse down on his partner. He feels rejuvenated and may speak the language of a fresh start, of steering the relationship in a new direction. Of course, there is nothing cathartic for his partner about being the target of his abuse (she feels worse with each cycle), but in the abuser’s self-centered way he thinks she should feel better now because he feels better.

During this period, an abuser works to rebuild the bridge that his

abusiveness just burned down. He wants to be back in his partner’s good graces; he may want sex; and he seeks reassurance that she isn’t going to

leave him—or expose him. Cards and gifts are common in this phase; hence the name “hearts and flowers.” The abusive man does not, however, want to look seriously at himself; he is merely looking to paste up some wallpaper to cover the holes he has made—figuratively or literally—and return to

business as usual. The good period can’t last because nothing has changed. His coercive habits, his double standards, his contempt, are all still there.

The cycle is repeated because there is no reason why it wouldn’t be.

Some abusive men don’t follow a discernable cycle like the one I have just described. Your partner’s abusive incidents may follow no pattern, so you can never guess what will happen next. I have had clients who seemed almost to get a thrill out of their own unpredictability, which further increased their power. Random abuse can be particularly deleterious psychologically to you and to your children.

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE GOOD PERIODS

When an alcohol abuser goes a month or two without a drink, we say the person is “on the wagon.” The dry period is a break from the pattern and

inspires some hope of a positive trend. But, with partner abuse, the periods when the man is being good—or at least not at his worst—are not really

outside of his pattern. They are generally an integral aspect of his abusiveness, woven into the fabric of his thinking and behavior.

What functions do the good periods play? They perform several, including the following:

His spurts of kindness and generosity help him to feel good about himself. He can persuade himself that you are the one who is messed up, “because look at me, I’m a great guy.”

 

You gradually feel warmer and more trusting toward him. The good periods are critical to hooking you back into the relationship, especially if he doesn’t have another way to keep you from leaving, such as financial control or the threat of taking the children.

 

While you are feeling more trusting, you expose more of your true feelings about different issues in your life and you show him more caring, which creates vulnerability that he can use later to control you (though he probably doesn’t consciously plan to do this).

 

During one of Jesse’s bad periods, for example, Bea would probably protect herself by telling him that she was taking a journalism class “just to get the English credits toward my college degree.” But during a more intimate period, she might open up about her dream of pursuing a career in journalism, and he would say it was a great idea. And still later, when he was back in abuse mode, he would be armed with knowledge about her inner life with which to hurt her, as we saw in their argument.

He uses the good periods to shape his public image, making it harder for you to get people to believe that he’s abusive.

 

I have not encountered any case, out of the roughly two thousand men I have worked with, in which one of an abuser’s good periods has lasted into the long term, unless the man has also done deep work on his abusive attitudes. Being kind and loving usually just becomes a different approach to control and manipulation and gradually blends back into more overt abuse. I recognize how painful or frightening it can be for an abused woman to accept this reality, because those times of kindness, and the hope that comes with them, can feel like all you have left to hold on to, given

how much he has taken away from you. But illusions of change also keep you trapped and can increase your feelings of helplessness or disappointment when he returns to his old ways. Real change looks very

different from a typical good period—so different that you could scarcely mistake the two, as we will see in Chapter 14.

TEN REASONS TO STAY THE SAME

To answer the question “Why Does He Do That?” we have to examine the foundation on which abusive behaviors are based. On the first level are the abuser’s attitudes, beliefs, and habits—the thinking that drives his behavior day in and day out, which we have been looking at. On the second level is the learning process by which some boys develop into abusive men or, in

other words, where abusive values come from, which is the topic of Chapter 13.

There is also a third level, which is rarely mentioned in discussions of abuse but which is actually one of the most important dynamics: the

benefits that an abuser gets that make his behavior desirable to him. In what ways is abusiveness rewarding? How does this destructive pattern get

reinforced?

Consider the following scenario: Mom, Dad, and their children are having dinner on a Wednesday night. Dad is snappy and irritable, criticizing everybody during the meal, spreading his tension around like electricity.

When he finishes eating, he leaves the table abruptly and heads out of the room. His ten-year-old daughter says, “Dad, where are you going?

Wednesday is your night to wash the dishes.” Upon hearing these words, Dad bursts into flames, screaming, “You upstart little shit, don’t you dare try to tell me what to do! You’ll be wearing a dish on your face!” He grabs a plate off the table, makes like he is going to throw it at her, and then turns away and smashes it on the floor. He knocks a chair over with his hand and storms out of the room. Mom and the children are left trembling; the daughter bursts into tears. Dad reappears in the doorway and yells that she’d better shut up, so she chokes off her tears, which causes her to shake even more violently. Without touching a soul, Dad has sent painful shock

waves through the entire family.

We move ahead now to the following Wednesday. Dinner passes fairly normally, without the previous week’s tension, but Dad still strolls out of

the kitchen when he finishes eating. Does a family member remind him that it’s his turn to wash the dishes? Of course not. It will be many, many

months before anyone makes that mistake again. They quietly attend to the cleanup, or they squabble among themselves about who should do it, taking out their frustrations over Dad’s unfairness and volatility on each other.

Dad’s scary behavior has created a context in which he won’t have to do the dishes anytime he doesn’t feel like it, and no one will dare take him to task for it.

Any incident of abusive behavior brings the abuser benefits just as this one did. Over time, the man grows attached to his ballooning collection of comforts and privileges. Here are some of the reasons why he may appear so determined not to stop bullying:

1. The intrinsic satisfaction of power and control

   The abusive man gains power through his coercive and intimidating

   behaviors—a sensation that can create a potent, thrilling rush. The wielder of power feels important and effective and finds a momentary relief from life’s normal distresses. It isn’t the woman’s pain that appeals to him; most abusers are not sadists. In fact, he has to go to some lengths to shield himself from his own natural tendency to empathize with her. The feeling that he rules is where the pleasure lies.

   Yet the heady rush of power is the bare beginning of what the abuser

   gains through his mistreatment of his partner. If the rewards stopped here, I would find it much easier than I do to prevail upon my clients to change.

2. Getting his way, especially when it matters to him the most

   A romantic partnership involves a never-ending series of negotiations between two people’s differing needs, desires, and preferences. Many of the differences that have to be worked out are matters of tremendous

   importance to the emotional life of each partner, such as:

    

   Are we spending Christmas (or whatever holidays are most important to a particular couple) with my relatives, whom I enjoy, or with your relatives, who get on my nerves and don’t seem to

   like me?

    

   Are we eating dinner tonight at my favorite restaurant, or at a place that I’m tired of and where the children seem to get wound up and irritating?

   Am I going to have to go alone to my office party, which makes me feel terrible, or are you going to come with me even though you would rather spend your evening doing almost anything else on earth? 

   It is important not to underestimate the impact of these kinds of day-to- day decisions. Your happiness in a relationship depends greatly on your ability to get your needs heard and taken seriously. If these decisions are taken over by an abusive or controlling partner, you experience disappointment after disappointment, the constant sacrificing of your needs.

   He, on the other hand, enjoys the luxury of a relationship where he rarely has to compromise, gets to do the things he enjoys, and skips the rest. He shows off his generosity when the stakes are low, so that friends will see what a swell guy he is.

   The abuser ends up with the benefits of being in an intimate relationship without the sacrifices that normally come with the territory. That’s a pretty privileged lifestyle.

3. Someone to take his problems out on

   Have you ever suffered a sharp disappointment or a painful loss and found yourself looking for someone to blame? Have you, for example, ever been nasty to a store clerk when you were really upset about your job? Most

   people have an impulse to dump bad feelings on some undeserving person, as a way to relieve—temporarily—sadness or frustration. Certain days you may know that you just have to keep an eye on yourself so as not to bite someone’s head off.

   The abusive man doesn’t bother to keep an eye on himself, however. In fact, he considers himself entitled to use his partner as a kind of human

   garbage dump where he can litter the ordinary pains and frustrations that

   life brings us. She is always an available target, she is easy to blame—since no partner is perfect—and she can’t prevent him from dumping because he will get even worse if she tries. His excuse when he jettisons his distresses on to her is that his life is unusually painful—an unacceptable rationalization even if it were true, which it generally isn’t.

4. Free labor from her; leisure and freedom for him

   No abusive man does his share of the work in a relationship. He may take advantage of his partner’s hard work keeping the house, preparing the meals, caring for the children, and managing the myriad details of life. Or,

   if he is one of the few abusers who carries his weight in these areas, then he exploits her emotionally instead, sucking her dry of attention, nurturing, and support, and returning only a trickle.

   All this uncompensated labor from her means leisure for him. During the hours he spends talking about himself he is relieved of the work of listening. The long weekend days when she cares for the children are his opportunity to watch sports, go rock climbing, or write his novel. My

   clients don’t make the connection that someone takes care of the work; they think of it as just mysteriously getting done and refer to women as “lazy.” Yet on a deeper level the abuser seems to realize how hard his partner works, because he fights like hell not to have to share that burden. He is accustomed to his luxury and often talks exaggeratedly about his exhaustion to excuse staying on his rear end.

   Studies have shown that a majority of women feel that their male

   partners don’t contribute fairly to household responsibilities. However, a woman whose partner is not abusive at least has the option to put her foot down about her workload and insist that the man pick up the slack. With an abusive man, however, if you put your foot down he either ignores you or makes you pay.

   The abuser comes and goes as he pleases, meets or ignores his

   responsibilities at his whim, and skips anything he finds too unpleasant. In fact, some abusers are rarely home at all, using the house only as a base for periodic refueling.

5. Being the center of attention, with priority given to his needs

   When a woman’s partner chronically mistreats her, what fills up her

   thoughts? Him, of course. She ponders how to soothe him so that he won’t explode, how to improve herself in his eyes, how she might delicately raise a touchy issue with him. Little space remains for her to think about her own life, which suits the abuser; he wants her to be thinking about him. The abuser reaps cooperation and catering to his physical, emotional, and sexual needs. And if the couple has children, the entire family strives to enhance

   his good moods and fix his bad ones, in the hope that he won’t start tearing pieces out of anyone. Consistently at the center of attention and getting his

   own way, the abuser can ensure that his emotional needs get met on his terms—a luxury he is loath to part with.

6. Financial control

   Money is a leading cause of tension in modern relationships, at least in families with children. Financial choices have huge quality-of-life

   implications, including: Who gets to make the purchases that matter most to him or her; what kinds of preparations are made for the future, including retirement; what types of leisure activities and travel are engaged in; who

   gets to work; who gets to not work if he or she doesn’t want to; and how the children’s needs are met. To have your voice in these decisions taken away is a monumental denial of your rights and has long-term implications. On

   the flip side, the abuser who dominates these kinds of decisions extorts important benefits for himself, whether the family is low income or wealthy. One of the most common tactics I hear about, for example, is that the abuser manages to finagle dealings so that his name is on his partner’s belongings—such as her house or her car—along with, or instead of, her name. In fact, I have had clients whose abuse was almost entirely economically based and who managed to take many thousands of dollars away from their partners, either openly or through playing financial tricks.

   An abuser’s history of economic exploitation tends to put him in a much better financial position than his partner if the relationship splits up. This

   imbalance makes it harder for her to leave him, especially if she has to find a way to support her children. He may also threaten to use his economic

   advantage to hire a lawyer and pursue custody, one of the single most terrifying prospects that can face an abused woman.

7. Ensuring that his career, education, or other goals are prioritized

   Closely interwoven with financial control is the question of whose personal goals receive priority. If the abuser needs to be out several evenings studying for a certificate that will improve his job advancement potential, he’s going to do it. If a career opportunity for him involves moving to a new state, he is likely to ignore the impact of his decision on his partner. Her own goals may also advance at times, but only as long as they don’t

   interfere with his.

8. Public status of partner and/or father without the sacrifices

   With his strong people-pleasing skills and his lively energy when under the public gaze, the abusive man is often thought of as an unusually fun and loving partner and a sweet, committed dad. He soaks up the smiles and appreciation he receives from relatives, neighbors, and people in the street who are unaware of his behavior in private.

9. The approval of his friends and relatives

   An abuser often chooses friends who are supportive of abusive attitudes. On top of that, he may come from an abusive family; in fact, his father or stepfather may have been his key role model for how to treat female partners. If these are his social surroundings, he gets strokes for knowing

   how to control his partner, for “putting her in her place” from time to time, and for ridiculing her complaints about him. His friends and relatives may even bond with him on the basis of his view of women in general as being irrational, vindictive, or avaricious. For this man to renounce abuse, he would have to give up his cheerleading squad as well.

10. Double standards

An abusive man subtly or overtly imposes a system in which he is exempt from the rules and standards that he applies to you. He may allow himself to have occasional affairs, “because men have their needs,” but if you so much as gaze at another man, you’re a “whore.” He may scream in arguments, but if you raise your voice, you’re “hysterical.” He may pick up one of your children by the ear, but if you grab your son and put him in time-out for punching you in the leg, you’re a “child abuser.” He can leave his schedule open and flexible while you have to account for your time. He can point out your faults, while setting himself above criticism, so that he doesn’t have to deal with your complaints or be confronted with the effects of his selfish and destructive actions. The abusive man has the privilege of living by a special set of criteria that were designed just for him.

GLANCE BACK QUICKLY over this impressive collection of privileges. Is it any wonder that abusive men are reluctant to change? The benefits of abuse are a major social secret, rarely mentioned anywhere. Why? Largely because

abusers are specialists in distracting our attention. They don’t want anyone to notice how well this system is working for them (and usually don’t even

want to admit it to themselves). If we caught on, we would stop feeling sorry for them and instead start holding them accountable for their actions. As long as we see abusers as victims, or as out-of-control monsters, they will continue getting away with ruining lives. If we want abusers to change, we will have to require them to give up the luxury of exploitation.

When you are left feeling hurt or confused after a confrontation with your controlling partner, ask yourself: What was he trying to get out of what he just did? What is the ultimate benefit to him? Thinking through these

questions can help you clear your head and identify his tactics.

Certainly the abusive man also loses a great deal through his abusiveness. He loses the potential for genuine intimacy in his relationship, for example, and his capacity for compassion and empathy. But these are often not things that he values, so he may not feel their absence. And even if he would like greater intimacy, that wish is outweighed by his attachment to the benefits of abuse.

IS HE GOING TO GET VIOLENT?

An abusive man can be scary. Even if he never raises a hand or makes a threat, his partner may find herself wondering what he is capable of. She sees how ugly he can turn, sometimes out of the blue. His desire to crush her emotionally is palpable at times. He sometimes tears into her verbally with a cruelty that she could never have imagined earlier in their relationship. When a man shows himself capable of viciousness, it is natural, and in fact wise, to wonder if he will go even further. Abused women ask me over and over again: “Do you think my partner could get violent? Am I overreacting? I mean, he’s not a batterer or something.”

Before I take you through a list of points to consider in examining this issue, make a mental note of the following:

RESEARCH INDICATES THAT A WOMAN’S INTUITIVE SENSE OF WHETHER OR NOT HER PARTNER WILL BE VIOLENT TOWARD HER IS A SUBSTANTIALLY MORE

ACCURATE PREDICTOR OF FUTURE VIOLENCE THAN ANY OTHER WARNING SIGN.

So listen closely to your inner voices above all.

When a woman tells me of her concerns about her partner’s potential for violence, I first encourage her to pay close attention to her feelings. If he is scaring her, she should take her intuitive sense seriously, even if she doesn’t believe his frightening behavior is intentional. Next, I want to learn more about what has already happened:

Has he ever trapped you in a room and not let you out? Has he ever raised a fist as if he were going to hit you? Has he ever thrown an object that hit you or nearly did?

Has he ever held you down or grabbed you to restrain you? Has he ever shoved, poked, or grabbed you?

Has he ever threatened to hurt you?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then we can stop wondering whether he’ll ever be violent; he already has been. In more than half of

cases in which a woman tells me that her partner is verbally abusive, I discover that he is physically assaultive as well.

It is critical to use common-sense—and legal—definitions of what

constitute violence, not the abuser’s definition. An abuser minimizes his behavior by comparing himself to men who are worse than he is, whom he thinks of as “real” abusers. If he never threatens his partner, then to him

threats define real abuse. If he only threatens but never actually hits, then real abusers are those who hit. Any abuser hides behind this mental process: If he hits her but never punches her with a closed fist…If he punches her but she has never had broken bones or been hospitalized…If he beats her up badly but afterward he apologizes and drives her to the hospital himself (as several clients of mine have done)…In the abuser’s mind, his behavior is never truly violent.

A related mental process reveals itself when a client says to me, as many do: “I’m not like one of those guys who comes home and beats his wife for no reason.” In other words, if he had adequate justification, then it isn’t violence. The abuser’s thinking tends to wend its way inside of the

woman, too, like a tapeworm. The partners of my clients say things to me, such as “I really pushed him too far,” or “He’s never hit me; he just shoves me sometimes,” that almost certainly come from the abuser’s indoctrination.

To steer clear of these distortions, we need to wrestle the definition of violence out of the hands of the abusers and implement a proper one of our own. Violence is behavior that does any of the following:

Physically hurts or frightens you, or uses contact with your body to control or intimidate you

 

Takes away your freedom of movement, such as by locking you in a room or refusing to let you out of a car

 

Causes you to believe that you will be physically harmed

 

Forces you to have sexual contact or other unwanted physical intimacy

 

Drawing on the above definition, we can answer important questions that arise:

s it violence if he tells me he will “kick the crap” out of me but he never does it?

Yes. Threats of bodily harm are physical abuse. The woman ducks or cowers, she runs out of the room, she goes into hiding with her children. There are emotional effects as well, of course, as physical abuse is by nature psychologically abusive.

s it violence if he pokes me?

Probably. Noncoercive men don’t poke their partners in my experience. If it frightens you, causes you pain, controls you, or makes you start wondering what he will do next time, it’s violence. Whether it will have these effects partly depends on what his history of past intimidation has been and on what his motives appeared to be in the specific incident. If he is repeatedly

emotionally abusive, then a poke is definitely violent. In other words, context matters.

The abuser will of course deny that he meant to intimidate his partner; he just “lost his cool” or “couldn’t take it anymore.” He may ridicule her for being so upset: “You call a poke violent?? That’s abuse?? You’re the most hysterical, melodramatic person in the world!” To me, this bullying

response makes clear that he did indeed have power motives.

slapped him in the face, and he punched me and gave me a black eye. He says what he did was self-defense. Is he right?

No, it was revenge. My clients often report having hit their partners back “so that she’ll see what it’s like” or “to show her that she can’t do that to me.” That isn’t self-defense, which means using the minimal amount of force needed to protect oneself. He uses her hitting him as an opening to let his

violence show, thereby putting her on notice about what might happen in the future if she isn’t careful. His payback is usually many times more

injurious and intimidating than what she did to him, making his claims of self-defense even weaker; he believes that when he feels hurt by you, emotionally or physically, that gives him the right to do something far

worse to you.

He says that I’m violent, because I’ve slapped him or shoved him a couple of times. Is he right?

f your actions did not harm, frighten, or control him, they wouldn’t fit my definition of violence. He labels you as violent in order to shift the focus to what you do wrong, which will just lock you more tightly in his grip.

However, I do recommend that you not assault him again, as he might seize on it as an excuse to injure you seriously. Some women persuade

themselves that they are holding their own by using violence too, saying, “I can take it, but I can also dish it out.” But over time you will find that you are the one being controlled, hurt, and frightened. Besides, hitting a partner is just plain wrong, except in self-defense. Use your own behavior as a

warning sign that you can’t manage your abusive partner, and call an abuse hot line now.

 

Question 11:

Will his verbal abuse turn to violence?

 

If your partner has not used any physical violence yet, how can you tell if he is likely to head in that direction? These are some of the rumblings that can tip you off that a violent storm may come some day:

 

When he is mad at you, does he react by throwing things, punching doors, or kicking the car? Does he use violent gestures such as gnashing teeth, ripping at his clothes, or swinging his arms around in the air to show his rage? Have you been frightened when he

does those things?

 

Is he willing to take responsibility for those behaviors and agree to stop them, or does he justify them angrily?

 

Can he hear you when you say that those behaviors frighten you, or does he throw the subject back on you, saying that you cause his behaviors, so it’s your own problem if you’re scared?

 

Does he attempt to use his scary behaviors as bargaining chips, such as by saying that he won’t punch walls if you will stop going out with your friends?

 

Does he deny that he even engaged in the scary behaviors, such as claiming that a broken door was caused by somebody else or that you are making up or exaggerating what happened?

 

Does he ever make veiled threats, such as “You don’t want to see me mad,” or “You don’t know who you’re messing with”?

 

Is he severely verbally abusive? (Research studies indicate that the best behavioral predictor of which men will become violent to their partners is their level of verbal abuse.)

Although these questions can help you determine the degree of your partner’s tendency to violence, it is important to contact a program for abused women regardless of your answers; the fact that you are even considering his potential for violence means that something is seriously wrong.

If your partner is hurting or scaring you, consider seeking legal protection. In many states, for example, you can seek a restraining order even if your partner has never hit or sexually assaulted you, as long as he has put you in fear. Some states offer a woman the option of obtaining an order that allows the man to continue residing in the home but that forbids him from behaving in frightening ways.

Some approaches to assessing how dangerous your partner may be are covered in “Leaving an Abuser Safely” in Chapter 9. The advantages and disadvantages of taking legal steps are discussed in “Should I Get a Restraining Order?” in Chapter 12.

RACIAL AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN ABUSE

I find that the fundamental thinking and behavior of abusive men cut across racial and ethnic lines. The underlying goal of these abusers, whether

conscious or not, is to control their female partners. They consider

themselves entitled to demand service and to impose punishments when they feel that their needs are not being met. They look down on their

partners as inferior to them, a view that often extends to their outlook on women in general.

At the same time, the particular shape that abusiveness takes can vary considerably among races and cultures. Abusers rely heavily on the forms of abuse that are most acceptable among men of their background. My

white American clients, for example, tend to be extremely rigid about how their partners are allowed to argue or express anger. If the partner of one of these clients raises her voice, or swears, or refuses to shut up when told to do so, abuse is likely to follow. Clients from certain other cultures are more focused on precisely how their partners care for the house and prepare meals. Their social lives revolve around food, so they expect to be waited on like royalty with a warm, creative, and tasty dinner every night. If the man shows up two hours late without calling, the meal is still expected to be

warm somehow, or else. I find that clients from certain countries stand out for their fanatical jealousy, which can lead verbally to ripping into their

partners for speaking to a stranger on the street for ten minutes or for dancing one number with another man at a party. Abusive men from one region of the world commonly hit their children with belts, a behavior that meets with stern disapproval from abusers from other parts of the world, who in turn may horrify the first group by taking custody of their children away from the mothers.

Not only abusive behaviors but also the excuses and justifications that accompany them are formed partly by an abusive man’s background. Men of one group may rely more on the excuse of having lost control of themselves, for example, whereas others admit that their behavior is a

choice but justify it by saying that they have to resort to abuse to keep the family from spinning out of control.

As we will see in Chapter 13, abusiveness in relationships is a problem that is transmitted from generation to generation by cultural training and

therefore takes a unique shape within each society. But for the women (and often children) who are the targets of this cruelty, the cultural variations don’t necessarily change the quality of life very much. Abusiveness can be thought of as a recipe that involves a consistent set of ingredients: control, entitlement, disrespect, excuses, and justifications (including victim

blaming)—elements that are always present, often accompanied by physical intimidation or violence. Abusive men tend to use a little more of one ingredient and a little less of another, substituting different tactics and

excuses depending on their culture, allowing their partners certain rights and taking away others. But, despite the variations, the flavor of abuse

remains pretty much the same. Abusers—and therefore their abused

partners—have a tremendous amount in common across national and racial lines.

Is Abuse of Women Acceptable in Some Cultures?

I commonly run into the misconception that men from some national or

ethnic groups behave much more abusively toward women than those in the mainstream of the United States and Canada. Social workers sometimes say to me, for example, “The family I am working with right now comes from one of those cultures where domestic violence is considered normal and

acceptable.” The reality, however, is that cultural approval for partner abuse

is disturbingly high in our society, even among the privileged and educated (see Chapter 13), and our domestic-violence statistics, while not the worst in the world, are on the high end. The United States is the only industrialized nation that has failed to ratify the UN convention on eliminating discrimination against women, which specifically refers to

violence against women as a form of discrimination. Pointing fingers at other countries can be a way to ignore the serious problems in our own.

In reality, abuse of women—and societal approval of it—is a widespread problem in the great majority of modern cultures. The only

places where it has been found not to exist are among some tribal peoples who are highly disapproving of all forms of aggression and who give women and men equal or nearly equal power.

Abusive men from some national backgrounds are very explicit and direct about their cultural or religious rules, which can make their attitudes appear to be unusually bad. A man might say, for example, “God ordained that the man chastise the woman,” or he might say threateningly to this partner, “Part of a wife’s job is to give the man sex when he wants it.” Do white American abusers think in these ways less than abusers of other

cultures do? No. They do often hide their beliefs better and, by doing so, can create the impression of being more “enlightened.” But the directness of a cultural message is not the same thing as its strength. I have worked with hundreds of nonwhite abusers from a spectrum of cultures and religions, with more than twenty different countries of origin among them, and I can assure you that my white, middle-class clients feel every bit as justified as the others and have attitudes toward women that are just as superior and disrespectful. As a product of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture, I am familiar with its centuries-old tradition of hiding its abuse of women under pretty packaging. Unwrapped, it doesn’t look very different.

Some Specific Cultural Excuses and Justifications

Certain culturally specific rationalizations used by abusive men can be particularly confusing to women. For example, I find it fairly common for an abusive man of color to believe that the racial discrimination he has faced in his life excuses his mistreatment of his partner. If you complain to him that he is abusing you, he may accuse you of betraying him as a man of color, saying that you are siding with the white culture that has already torn him down so much. Because racism does remain a harsh reality, he may

succeed in making you feel guilty for criticizing him or for trying to leave him. If your background is the same as his, he applies a double standard of racial solidarity; in his mind he isn’t betraying his racial group even though he is abusing a woman of color, yet he considers you disloyal when you complain of his treatment or denounce him. He’s got reality turned around backward: The one who is betraying solidarity is him.

I have also had a few dozen clients over the years who belong to fundamentalist religious groups, usually Christian or Islamic fundamentalist or Orthodox Judaic. Abusive men from these groups tend to openly espouse a system in which women have next to no rights and a man is entitled to be the unquestioned ruler of the home. To make matters worse, these religious sects have greatly increased their political power around the globe over the past two decades. As a case in point, consider the growing influence of Christian fundamentalism in the United States. Women who live within

these religious groups may feel especially trapped by abuse, since their

resistance to domination is likely to be viewed as evil and the surrounding community may support or even revere the abuser. (Christian women living with abuse can find excellent guidance in Keeping the Faith by Marie Fortune. See “Resources.”)

Some of my African-American clients claim that black women are too tough to abuse, and they may even claim to be victims of the women’s violence. This claim is sometimes accompanied by descriptions of the black family as “matriarchal” or “female dominated.” These exaggerations of cultural differences serve to cover up the fact that, according to the latest

U.S. statistics, African-American woman are abused at roughly the same rate as white women. It is true, in my experience, that black women

sometimes fight back more than white women against a physically violent abuser (though many white women fight back also), but they don’t come out any less injured, frightened, or controlled.

Finally, men of some tribal cultures develop abusive behaviors toward women after they have had extensive contact with modern societies for the first time. Tribal women have sometimes reported, for example, that when television came to their geographic areas, domestic violence came with it, as their men began to learn the violent and male-dominant attitudes that

characterize so much of modern culture. The tribal man thus may justify his abusiveness in terms of progress and moving into the mainstream, linking

his ridicule of his partner to disparaging the overall tribal way of life,

though some do the opposite, falsely claiming that tradition supports their oppressive behaviors.

WHILE I HAVE FOCUSED here on cultural differences and similarities among abusive men, there is another situation in which race and culture are very important to abuse: when the abuser is white American (or Canadian) but his partner is a woman of color or an immigrant. The abuser in such a relationship tends to use racism as an additional tactic to insult and control his partner. Women of color who have white abusers can face considerable bias from police, courts, or child protective services. Some specific

resources for abused women of color—regardless of the race of the abusive man—are listed in the back of this book.

THE SAME-SEX ABUSER

Although most abusers are male and most abused partners are female, the reasons for this lopsided picture are social, not biological. Women

sometimes abuse their lesbian partners, and men may be abused by their gay partners. The thinking that drives the behavior of lesbian and gay male abusers largely follows the patterns we have been examining. While it is

true that some justifications used by heterosexual male abusers are not

available to the gay or lesbian abuser—such as “I have the right to rule over you because I’m the man and you’re the woman”—the same-sex abuser

replaces these with others that can be as powerful. The abused lesbian or gay man therefore can get as badly ensnarled as the straight woman.

First, let’s look at some of the things the same-sex abuser can’t do as easily (I am going to call the abuser “she”):

 

She won’t be able to use sex-role expectations that are based on cultural or religious rules as easily as the straight male abuser can.

 

She doesn’t have as many social power advantages as a man who

is involved with a woman does. (The straight male abuser can take advantage in multiple ways of the fact that we still live in “a man’s world,” despite recent societal changes.)

She may not be able to use size and strength to intimidate as easily as most straight male abusers do. In fact, she may be smaller or appear to be less “tough” than her partner.

 

The same-sex abuser compensates for these gaps in several ways. I will offer just a few examples:

1. She may have an even deeper conviction than the straight male abuser that she couldn’t possibly be abusive, no matter how cruel or even violent she gets, because abuse “doesn’t happen” in same- sex relationships. She may sound so sure of herself on this point that she is able to convince her abused partner that what is happening is just normal relationship conflict.
2. She uses her partner’s homosexuality against her. When she is angry, she may threaten to tell her partner’s parents about their relationship or to call up her place of employment and “out” her, which could cause her to lose her job. If she is a violent abuser, she may tell her partner: “You think the police or the courts are going to help you when they know you’re lesbian?” The gay male abuser may tell his partner: “The police are just going to laugh at you when you tell them you are afraid. They’ll tell you to act like a

   man.”

   The lesbian or gay male who is involved with a violent or threatening abuser does genuinely face discrimination from the police and courts, and the abuser knows this. In many states, for example, an abused person cannot obtain a restraining order to keep the abuser away if that person is of the same sex.

3. The same-sex abuser may get even more mileage out of playing

   the victim than the straight male abuser does. When a straight male goes around claiming that a woman is abusing him, he often meets with considerable skepticism—as well he should. But when we look at two people of the same sex, how are we to tell which one is abusing power? A quick glance won’t give us the answer.

   The result is that a same-sex abuser can often convince people around her, and sometimes even her own partner, that she is the

   one being abused. When lesbians or gay men go to agencies for help with relationship abuse, it is not unheard of for the abuser to say that she is the victim and for the victim to say that she is the abuser! Sometimes the abuser succeeds in getting support and sympathy for quite a while before service providers catch on to the fact that they are assisting the wrong person.

4. The abuser can sometimes get her wider community to be silent about the abuse, because everyone is already struggling with the negative social image of homosexuality. Many lesbians and gay men feel, quite understandably, that awareness of abuse in same- sex relationships will be used by bigoted people as an excuse for further stereotyping and discrimination. And there’s really no question that bigots will do exactly that. But silence is not the answer either, since it isolates and abandons abused lesbians and gay men and allows the abusers to go steamrolling forward over the lives of their partners.

The same-sex abuser may have had an extremely difficult life, and she may feel that anyone who labels her “abusive” is being unfair to her, given what she has gone through. She may have been banished from her family because of her homosexuality, barred from progressing in her career, or filled with secret shame during her adolescence. People in her social circle may have gone through similar trials and thus feel an instant sympathy for her excuses. But nonabusive lesbians and gay men have also endured

oppressive experiences because of their sexuality. Same-sex abusers, like straight male abusers, seize any excuse they can to absolve themselves of responsibility for their actions and to elicit sympathy.

Ultimately, the thinking and actions of lesbian and gay male abusers are more similar to than different from those of other abusers. Later on, when we explore the social roots of abusiveness, it will become clear why all

abusers follow more or less the same template.

 

Key Points to Remember

 

 

For the most part, an abusive man uses verbally aggressive tactics in an argument to discredit your statements and silence you. In short, he wants to avoid having to deal seriously with your

perspective in the conflict.

 

Arguments that seem to spin out of control “for no reason” actually are usually being used by the abusive man to achieve certain goals, although he may not always be conscious of his own motives. His actions and statements make far more sense than they appear to.

 

An abusive man’s good periods are an important and integrated aspect of his abuse, not something separate from it.

 

Abusive men find abusiveness rewarding. The privileged position they gain is a central reason for their reluctance to change.

 

Abusive men tend to be happy only when everything in the relationship is proceeding on their terms. This is a major reason for the severe mood swings that they so often exhibit from day to day.

 

Violence is not just punches and slaps; it is anything that puts you in physical fear or that uses your body to control you.

 

The styles of abusers vary by race, nationality, and sexual orientation. However, their commonalities far outweigh their differences.

 

The turbulence, insecurity, and fear that your partner causes in daily life can make it hard to recognize his pattern of attitudes and behaviors. By taking a mental step back, you may begin to see recurring themes.

 

Be cautious, and seek out assistance. You don’t deserve to live like this, and you don’t have to. Try to block his words out of your mind and believe in yourself. You can do it.