“This fascinating investigation into what makes abusive men
tick is alarming, but its candid handling of a difficult subject
makes it a valuable resource for professionals and victims
alike…. Jargon-free analysis is frequently broken up by
interesting first-person accounts and boxes that distill in-
depth information into simple checklists. Bancroft’s book
promises to be a beacon of calm for many storm-tossed
families.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Most books about abuse
in relationships focus on women—how they’re hurt, why
they stay. As important as these questions are, they can also
distract us from the heart of the problem. Bancroft boldly
asks—and brilliantly answers—the most important questions
of all: Why do so many men abuse women? What can be done
about it? T his book is desperately needed and long overdue.”
—Jackson Katz, creator of the award-winning video
Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity
“Bancroft, a former codirector of Emerge, the first U.S.
program for abusive men, and a fifteen-year veteran of work
with abusive men, reminds readers that each year in this
country, two to four million women are assaulted by their
partners and that at least one out of three American women
will be a victim of violence by a husband or boyfriend at some
point in her life. His valuable resource covers early warning
signs, ten abusive personality types, the abusive mentality,
problems with getting help from the legal system, and the
long, complex process of change.…T his is essential reading
for those in the helping professions and highly
recommended.”
—Library Journal (starred review) “At last—the straight
scoop on men who abuse women. This is a book not just for
abused women and domestic violence professionals, but for
everyone who wonders why there’s so much violence in
America. Read it.”
—Anne Jones, author of When Love Goes Wrong and Next
Time She’ll Be Dead “ Bancroft helps women who feel
trapped in unhealthy relationships make sense out of what is
happening.”
—Sarah Buel, J.D., codirector, Domestic Violence Clinic, and
lecturer, University of Texas Law School “A compelling read
about a tough topic. What you read here will come back to
you long after you put the book down.”
—Angela Browne, author of When Battered Women Kill “ An
informative and necessary read.”
—Susan Weitzman, Ph.D., author of Not to People Like Us:
Hidden Abuse in Upscale Marriages
INSIDE THE MINDS O F ANGRY AND
CO NTRO LLING MEN
Why Does He Do That?
Lundy Bancroft
BERKLEY BO O KS
New York
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The Library of Congress has catalogued the G. P. Putnam’s
Sons hardcover edition as follows: Bancroft, Lundy.
Why does he do that?: inside the minds of angry and
controlling men / Lundy Bancroft.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN: 978-1-1012-2073-3
1. Abusive men—United States—Psychology. 2. Wife
abuse—United States. 3. Family violence—United States.
4. Victims of family violence—United States. I. Title.
HV6626.2.B255 2002 2001048850
362.82'92'0973—dc21
For details, write: Special Markets, T he Berkley Publishing
Group, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
To the thousands of courageous women,
many of them survivors of abuse themselves,
who have created and sustained the movement
against the abuse of women, and to the many
men who have joined this struggle as allies.
6. THE ABUSIVE MAN IN EVERYDAY LIFE
7. ABUSIVE MEN AND S EX
8. ABUSIVE MEN AND ADDICTIO N
9. THE ABUSIVE MAN AND BREAKING UP
PART III
The Abusive Man in the World
10. ABUSIVE MEN AS PARENTS
11. ABUSIVE MEN AND THEIR ALLIES
12. THE ABUSIVE MAN AND THE LEGAL S YSTEM
PART IV
Changing the Abusive Man
13. THE MAKING O F AN ABUSIVE MAN
14. THE PRO CESS O F CHANGE
15. CREATING AN ABUSE-FREE WO RLD
Acknowledgments
I HAVE HAD MANY, many teachers along my path to
understanding the mentality and behavior of abusive men.
Before I can name names, however, I need to thank above
all the hundreds of female partners and ex-partners of my
clients who have shared their stories with me and who have
thereby shed light on the denial and distortions running
through my clients’ accounts of events. The survivors of
abuse have been my greatest educators; if we could hear
their voices much more, and the voices of the abusers and
their allies much less, the world would move rapidly to
eliminate the chronic mistreatment that so many women
currently face in their intimate relationships.
My early colleagues at Emerge have a unique
responsibility for setting me on the course that has brought
me here: David Adams, Susan Cayouette, Ted German,
Magueye Seck, Chuck Turner, Charlene Allen, and Jim
Ptacek. In addition to being such a pleasure to work with,
this group provided me with indispensable intellectual
support and stimulation; I hope I was able to return some
reasonable part of what they offered me.
Equally important to the growth of my understanding of
abusive men, and of their impact on their partners and
children, was Carole Sousa, who simultaneously educated
us at Emerge and kept us honest. Her criticisms of our
blind spots were often annoying, mostly because of how
right they were. No single person has contributed more to
the understandings that I am now sharing. I need further to
thank Carole for generously reviewing the manuscript for
this book and marking her comments (important ones, as
usual) with dozens of sticky tabs. Her suggestions have
strengthened this book in critical ways.
Other important influences on my insight into
controlling and angry men and the destructive trail they
leave behind them include Lonna Davis, Pam Whitney, Isa
Woldeguiorguis, Susan Schechter, Sarah Buel, Jim
Hardeman, Janet Fender, and Brenda Lopez. I would also
like to express my appreciation to Jeff Edleson, Claire
Renzetti, Jackson Katz, Peter Jaffe, Barbara Hart, Bonnie
Zimmer, Elaine Alpert, Joan Zorza, Jennifer Juhler,
Stephanie Eisenstat, Range Hutson, Scott Harshbarger, and
Maureen Sheeran for their contributions to my learning
about abuse and oppression and for their professional
support and encouragement. Kate O’Kane contributed by
providing me with a beautiful and relaxing place to write
during the day.
I also need to acknowledge how much I have learned
from my clients themselves over the years, but it would
not be appropriate for me to thank them, since without
their abuse of women the writing of this book would be
unnecessary.
I am grateful to Gillian Andrews, Carlene Pavlos, Jay
Silverman, Steve Holmes, Catherine Benedict, Gail Dines,
Carrie Cuthbert, and Kim Slote for their combination of
personal support and intellectual/professional stimulation
and assistance over the years. Gillian and Gail in particular
have both kept after me for years to write this book, and it
is largely due to their continued prodding that it is finally
here; Gillian also provided invaluable comments and
suggestions on the manuscript. My family, too, has been
loving and supportive (and tolerant) during the time-
consuming and sometimes stressful writing process; I love
you and thank you more than I can say for carrying me
along.
I owe tremendous gratitude to my agent, Wendy
Sherman, who not only found a home for this book but also
played a major role in forming the original concept and
guiding its direction. A writer could not be in better hands.
My appreciation also goes to Deb Futter at Doubleday,
who led me to Wendy. M y editor at Putnam, Jeremy Katz,
has had unshakable faith in this project from the beginning
and has helped me through several moments of anxiety or
hesitation. It fell to Jeremy to let my wagonloads of text
dump down upon him so that he could stir it all around and
figure out how to shape it into a presentable whole. I also
wish to express appreciation to other people at Putnam
who supported and worked on this book, including
AnnMarie Harris, Denise Silvestro, M arilyn Ducksworth,
and Brenda Goldberg.
Finally, I want to express my deep gratitude to three
people who don’t know me but whose work has inspired
and sustained me for years: Bruce Cockburn, Mercedes
Sosa, and Linda Hogan. Perhaps our paths will yet cross.
Lundy Bancroft
Winter 2002
Note on Terminology
IN REFERRING TO angry and controlling men in this book,
I have chosen to use in most cases the shorter terms
abusive man and abuser. I have used these terms for
readability and not because I believe that every man who
has problems with angry or controlling behaviors is
abusive. I needed to select a simple word I could apply to
any man who has recurring problems with disrespecting,
controlling, insulting, or devaluing his partner, whether or
not his behavior also involves more explicit verbal abuse,
physical aggression, or sexual mistreatment. Any of these
behaviors can have a serious impact on a woman’s life and
can lead her to feel confused, depressed, anxious, or afraid.
So even if your partner is not an abuser, you will find that
much of what is described in the pages ahead can help to
clarify for both of you the problems in your relationship
and what steps you can take to head in a more satisfying,
supportive, and intimate direction. If you are not sure
whether your partner’s behavior should be called abuse or
not, turn to Chapter 5, which will help you sort out the
distinctions.
At the same time, remember that even if your partner’s
behavior doesn’t fit the definition of abuse, it may still
have a serious effect on you. Any coercion or disrespect by
a relationship partner is an important problem. Controlling
men fall on a spectrum of behaviors, from those who
exhibit only a few of the tactics I describe in this book to
those who use almost all of them. Similarly, these men run
a gamut in their attitudes, from those who are willing to
accept confrontation about their behaviors and strive to
change them, to those who won’t listen to the woman’s
perspective at all, feel completely justified, and become
highly retaliatory if she attempts to stand up for herself.
(In fact, as we see in Chapter 5, one of the best ways to tell
how deep a man’s control problem goes is by seeing how
he reacts when you start demanding that he treat you
better. If he accepts your grievances and actually takes
steps to change what he does, the prospects for the future
brighten somewhat.) The level of anger exhibited by a
controlling man also shows wide variation, but
unfortunately it doesn’t tell us much in itself about how
psychologically destructive he may be or how likely he is
to change, as we will see.
In addition, I have chosen to use the terms he to refer to
the abusive person and she to the abused partner. I selected
these terms for convenience and because they correctly
describe the great majority of relationships in which power
is being abused. However, control and abuse are also a
widespread problem in lesbian and gay male relationships,
and the bulk of what I describe in this book is relevant to
same-sex abusers.
Why Does He Do That?
Introduction
I HAVE BEEN WORKING WIT H angry and controlling men
for fifteen years as a counselor, evaluator, and investigator,
and have accumulated a wealth of knowledge from the two
thousand or more cases with which I have been involved. I
have learned the warning signs of abuse and control that a
woman can watch out for early in a relationship. I’ve come
to know what a controlling man is really saying, the
meaning that is hidden behind his words. I’ve seen clues to
recognizing when verbal and emotional aggression are
heading toward violence. I’ve found ways to separate out
abusive men who are faking change from those who are
doing some genuine work on themselves. And I have
learned that the problem of abusiveness has surprisingly
little to do with how a man feels—my clients actually differ
very little from nonabusive men in their emotional
experiences—and everything to do with how he thinks. The
answers are inside his mind.
However, as delighted as I am to have had the
opportunity to gain this insight, I am not one of the people
who most needs it. The people who can best benefit from
knowledge about abusers and how they think are women,
who can use what I have learned to help themselves
recognize when they are being controlled or devalued in a
relationship, to find ways to get free of abuse if it is
happening, and to know how to avoid getting involved with
an abusive man—or a controller or a user—next time. The
purpose of this book is to equip women with the ability to
protect themselves, physically and psychologically, from
angry and controlling men.
To prepare for writing this book, I first generated a list
of the twenty-one questions that women most often ask
me about their abusive partners, questions such as:
“Is he really sorry?”
“Why do so many of our friends side with him?”
“Is he going to hit me some day?”
and many others. I then built my explanations around these
concerns, to make sure that women would be able to look
here to find the information they urgently need. You will
find these twenty-one questions highlighted as you go
through this book; you might want to flip through the
pages for a moment now just to grab a quick glimpse of
where I have addressed the issues that are most pressing
for you.
Another central goal of mine is to offer assistance to
each woman who is struggling with how she is being treated
in a relationship, regardless of what label she may put on
her partner’s behavior. Words like control and abuse can be
loaded ones, and you may not feel that they fit your
particular circumstances. I have chosen to use the term
abusers to refer to men who use a wide range of
controlling, devaluing, or intimidating behaviors. In some
cases I am talking about physical batterers and at other
times about men who use or insult their partners but never
frighten or intimidate them. Some of the men I describe in
the pages ahead change moods so drastically and so often
that a woman could never feel sure what they are like, much
less attach a label. Your partner may be arrogant, or may
play mind games, or may act selfishly over and over again,
but his better aspects may make you feel that he is miles
away from being an “abuser.” Please don’t let my language
put you off; I have simply chosen the word abuser as a
shorthand way of saying “men who chronically make their
partners feel mistreated or devalued.” You can adopt a
different term if you know one that fits your partner
better. But whatever style of mistreatment your partner
uses, rest assured that you will find in these pages the
answers to many questions that have perplexed you.
If the person you are involved with is the same sex as
you are, you have a place here too. Lesbians and gay men
who abuse their partners exhibit much of the same thinking,
and most of the same tactics and excuses, that abusive
heterosexual men do. In this book I have used the term he
for the abuser and she for the abused partner to keep my
discussions simple and clear, but abused lesbians and gay
men are very much in my thoughts, right alongside of
abused straight women. Of course, you will need to change
the gender language to fit your relationship, for which I
apologize in advance. You will also find a section in
Chapter 6 where I speak specifically about the similarities
and differences in same-sex abusers.
Similarly, this book includes stories of men from a very
wide range of racial and cultural backgrounds. Although the
attitudes and behaviors of controlling and abusive men vary
somewhat from culture to culture, I have found that their
similarities greatly outweigh their differences. If your
partner is a person of color or an immigrant, or if you are a
member of one of these groups yourself, you will find that
much of what this book discusses, or perhaps all of it, fits
your experience quite well. While I have not specified race
or ethnicity in the cases I describe in these pages, roughly
one-third of the abusers whose stories I tell are men of
color or men from nations outside of North America. I
further discuss some specific racial and cultural issues in
Chapter 6.
MY EXPERIENC E W O RKING WITH ANGRY AND
CO NTRO LLING MEN
I began counseling abusive men individually and in groups
in 1987, while working for a program called Emerge, the
first agency in the United States to offer specialized
services for men who abuse women. For roughly the next
five years I worked almost exclusively with clients who
were coming to the program voluntarily. They generally
attended under heavy pressure from their female partners,
who were either talking about leaving the relationship or
had already done so. In many cases, the woman had gone to
court to seek a restraining order legally barring the man
from the home and in many cases ordering him to stay
away from the woman altogether. The men’s main
motivation for seeking counseling was the hope of saving
their relationships. It was common for them to feel some
guilt or discomfort about their abusive behavior, but they
simultaneously believed strongly in the validity of their
excuses and justifications, so their feelings of remorse
would not have been enough in themselves to have kept
them in my program. In those early years, the clients I
worked with were men who used far more verbal and
emotional abuse than physical violence, although most of
them had been physically intimidating or assaultive on at
least a few occasions.
During the 1990s the legal system became much more
involved than it had been in the past in responding to
domestic abuse, with the result that court-mandated clients
started at first to trickle and then to pour in the doors of
our program. These men often had a much greater
propensity for physical violence than our earlier clients,
sometimes involving the use of weapons or vicious beatings
resulting in the hospitalization of their partners. Yet we
observed that in other ways these men were generally not
significantly different from our verbally abusive clients:
their attitudes and excuses tended to be the same, and they
used mental cruelty side by side with their physical
assaults. Equally important was that the female partners of
these battering men were largely describing the same
distresses in their lives that we were hearing about from
women who had been psychologically abused, showing us
that different forms of abuse have similar destructive
impacts on women.
Throughout my years of working with controlling and
abusive men, my colleagues and I have been strict about
always speaking to the woman whom our client has
mistreated, whether or not the couple is still together. (And
if he has started a new relationship, we talk with his
current partner as well, which is part of how we became
aware of the ways in which abusive men continue their
patterns from one relationship to the next.) It is through
these interviews with women that we have received our
greatest education about power and control in
relationships. The women’s accounts also have taught us
that abusive men present their own stories with
tremendous denial, minimization, and distortion of the
history of their behaviors and that it is therefore otherwise
impossible for us to get an accurate picture of what is going
on in an abusive relationship without listening carefully to
the abused woman.
Counseling abusive men is difficult work. They are
usually very reluctant to face up to the damage that they
have been causing women, and often children as well, and
hold on tightly to their excuses and victim blaming. As you
will see in the pages ahead, they become attached to the
various privileges they earn through mistreating their
partners, and they have habits of mind that make it difficult
for them to imagine being in a respectful and equal
relationship with a woman.
I am sometimes asked: Why work with abusive men if it
is so hard to get them to change? The reasons are several.
First, if even one man out of a ten-person group makes
substantial and lasting changes, then my time and energy
have been invested well, because his partner and his
children will experience a dramatic change in the quality of
their lives. Second, I believe in holding abusers accountable
for their actions. If they attend an abuser program they can
at least be called to task for the harm they have done, and I
have hope (and see the signs) that cultural values can
change over time if people find that men who chronically
mistreat and degrade women are being made answerable.
Third, and probably most important, is that I consider the
woman that my client has mistreated to be the person I am
primarily serving, and I make contact with her at least
every few weeks. M y goal is to give her emotional
support, help her learn about counseling and legal services
that exist for her in her community (usually for free), and
help her get her mind untangled from the knot that her
abusive partner has tied. I can make it more difficult for
him to manipulate her, and I may be able to warn her of
underhanded maneuvers that he is planning or of escalation
that I’m observing. As long as I stay focused on the woman
and her children as those who are most deserving and in
need of my assistance, I can almost always make a positive
contribution, whether or not my abusive client decides to
seriously face his own problem. (In Chapter 14, I describe
what actually goes on inside a counseling program for
abusive men, and I explain how a woman can determine
whether or not a particular program is being run properly.)
In recent years, through my work as a child abuse
investigator and as a custody evaluator for various courts, I
have come to interact in a new way with families affected
by abusive men. I share some of the insights I have gained
through these experiences in Chapter 10, which examines
the experiences of children who are exposed to abusive men
—usually their fathers or stepfathers—and the ways in
which some abusers continue their patterns of controlling
and intimidating behavior through custody actions in the
family courts.
HOW TO USE THIS BO O K
One of the prevalent features of life with an angry or
controlling partner is that he frequently tells you what you
should think and tries to get you to doubt or devalue your
own perceptions and beliefs. I would not like to see your
experience with this book re-create that unhealthy
dynamic. So the primary point to bear in mind as you read
the pages ahead is to listen carefully to what I am saying,
but always to think for yourself. If any part of what I
describe about abusers doesn’t match your experience, cast
it aside and focus on the parts that do fit. You might even
put the book down from time to time and ask yourself,
“How does this apply to my relationship? What are my
own examples of how a controlling or cruel man thinks and
behaves?” If you come upon sections that don’t speak to
you—because you don’t have children, for example, or
because your partner is never physically frightening—just
skip ahead to the pieces that can help you more.
Some women will find that being alone with this book is
too difficult because it awakens feelings and realizations
that are overwhelming. I encourage you to reach out for
support from trusted friends and family as you go along.
While reading this book is likely to be clarifying for you, it
may also awaken an awareness that can be painful or
distressing.
If you can’t find someone whom you know to talk to—
or even if you can—call the abuse hotline in your area. If
you need a listing near where you live in the United States
or Canada, call the National Abuse Hotline at (800) 799-
7233, and they will give you your local program
information (in almost any language imaginable). For many
other options for assistance, look in the “Resources”
section at the back of this book. Again, don’t be stymied
by the word abuse; the hot line staff is there to listen to
you and to help you think about any relationship in which
you are being treated in a way that is making you feel bad.
I understand how uncomfortable it can be to take the
leap of talking with people you care about regarding the
mistreatment you are experiencing in your relationship.
You may feel ashamed of having a partner who sometimes
behaves in unkind or bullying ways, and you may fear that
people will be critical of you for not leaving him right
away. Or you might have the opposite concern: that
people around you are so fond of your partner that you
question whether they will believe you when you describe
how mean or abusive he can be. But, regardless of these
anxieties, it is essential not to stay isolated with your
distress or confusion about what is happening in your
relationship. Find someone whom you can trust—it might
even be a person you have never considered opening up to
before—and unburden yourself. This is probably the single
most critical step you can take toward building a life that is
free from control or abuse.
If your partner’s controlling or devaluing behavior is
chronic, you no doubt find yourself thinking about him a
great deal of the time, wondering how to please him, how
to keep him from straying, or how to get him to change. As
a result, you may find that you don’t get much time to
think about yourself—except about what is wrong with
you in his eyes. One of my central reasons for writing this
book is, ironically, to help you think about him less. I’m
hoping that by answering as many questions as possible
and clearing away the confusion that abusive behavior
creates, I can make it possible for you to escape the trap of
preoccupation with your partner, so that you can put
yourself—and your children if you are a mother—back in
the center of your life where you belong. An angry and
controlling man can be like a vacuum cleaner that sucks up
a woman’s mind and life, but there are ways to get your life
back. The first step is to learn to identify what your
partner is doing and why he does it, which is what the
pages ahead will illuminate. But when you have finished
diving deeply into the abuser’s mind, which this book will
enable you to do, it is important to rise back to the surface
and from then on try to stay out of the water as much as you
can. I don’t mean that you should necessarily leave your
partner—that is a complex and highly personal decision
that only you can make. But whether you stay or go, the
critical decision you can make is to stop letting your
partner distort the lens of your life, always forcing his way
into the center of the picture. You deserve to have your life
be about you; you are worth it.
PART I
The Nature of Abusive Thinking
1
The Mystery
LISTEN TO THE VOICES O F THESE WO MEN:
He’s two different people. I feel like I’m living
with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
He really doesn’t mean to hurt me. He just loses
control.
Everyone else thinks he’s great. I don’t know
what it is about me that sets him off.
He’s fine when he’s sober. But when he’s drunk,
watch out.
I feel like he’s never happy with anything I do.
He’s scared me a few times, but he never
touches the children. He’s a great father.
He calls me disgusting names, and then an hour
later he wants sex. I don’t get it.
He messes up my mind sometimes.
The thing is, he really understands me.
Why does he do that?
THESE ARE T HE WORDS of women who are describing
their anxiety and inner conflict about their relationships.
Each of these women knows that something is wrong—
very wrong—but she can’t put her finger on what it is.
Every time she thinks she’s got her partner figured out,
that she finally understands what is bothering him,
something new happens, something changes. The pieces
refuse to fit together.
Each of these women is trying to make sense out of the
roller-coaster ride that her relationship has become.
Consider Kristen’s account:
When I first met M aury, he was the man I had dreamed
of. It seemed too good to be true. He was charming,
funny, and smart, and best of all, he was crazy about
me. I opened up to him about hard things I’d been
through over the previous few years, and he was so
much on my side about it all. And he was so game for
doing things—whatever I wanted to do, he was up for
it. The first year or so that we were together was great.
I can’t say exactly when things started to change. I
think it was around the time we started living together. It
started with him saying he needed more space. I felt
confused, because before that it had always seemed like
he was the one who wanted to be together every second.
Then he began to have more and more criticisms and
complaints.
He would say that I talk on and on and that I’m self-
centered. M aybe I am—it’s true that I talk a lot. But
earlier it had seemed like he couldn’t hear enough about
me. He started to say that I wasn’t doing anything with
my life. I know he has big ambitions, and maybe he’s
right that I should be more that way, but I’m happy with
what I have. And then it was my weight. It started to
seem like all the time he was saying that I needed to work
out more, that I wasn’t watching what I ate. That hurt the
most, to tell you the truth. He seemed to want sex less
and less often, and if I ever tried to be the one to initiate
lovemaking, forget it.
We’re still together, but I have a feeling he’s going to
leave me. I just can’t seem to live up to what he needs.
I’m trying, but he doesn’t think so. And now when he’s
really angry or frustrated, he says things that cut me
down. A few days ago he said, “You’re a lazy bitch, just
looking for a man to live off of like your mother.” I don’t
get that; I’ve contributed a lot. I haven’t worked the last
two years since our baby was born, but I’m getting ready
to go back to work soon. I don’t think he really meant it,
but still…
He says I’ve changed a lot, but I’m not always so sure
it’s me.
Sometimes for a few days he seems like the guy I fell
in love with, and I get hopeful, but then he slips away
again into being so unhappy with me. I set him off
somehow, but I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.
Kristen was troubled by several questions. What had
happened to the man she had loved so much? Why was he
always putting her down? What could she do to stop his
explosions? Why did he think she was the one who had
changed?
Other women tell stories that are quite distinct from
Kristen’s, but they feel just as confused as she does. Here
is what Barbara describes:
Fran is kind of quiet and shy. But he’s cute as a button,
and I got a crush on him the day I met him. I had to
really go after him; it was hard to draw him out. We
would go out and have great talks, and I couldn’t wait to
see him again. But three weeks would go by, and he’d
say he hadn’t been feeling well, or his sister was in
town, or whatever. A couple of times he forgot dates we
had.
Well, he finally opened up. It turned out he’d been
really hurt before. He’d been cheated on a lot, and women
had done some pretty mean things to him. He was afraid
to get close again.
Little by little, he came around, but I was definitely
the pursuer. I tried to show him that I wasn’t like other
women he’d been with. I’m not flirtatious. I don’t show
my body off to other men; I’m just not that style. But
Fran wouldn’t believe it. He would always say that I was
making eyes at a man at the next table, or that I was
checking someone out who walked past us. I feel bad for
him, he’s so insecure. His mother cheated on his father
when he was growing up, so I guess that’s made it even
worse.
I was eager to get married, because I thought then he’d
feel secure that I was his, but he was very reluctant to
commit. When we finally did tie the knot, he was more
trusting for a while, but then the jealousy came back, and
it’s never left. I’ve asked him off and on for years to go
see a therapist, but he gets really mad and says there’s
nothing wrong with him.
A few days ago we went to a birthday party for a
friend of his, and I had this great conversation with his
friend’s brother. It was nothing but talking—I mean, the
guy isn’t even cute. Well, suddenly Fran was saying that
we had to go home because he had a bad headache. On the
drive home, it turned out the real reason was jealousy. He
started yelling at me, saying he was sick of me humiliating
him in front of other people, “strutting your stuff,” and
on and on. He was pounding his fist on the dashboard,
and two or three times he shoved me up against the car
door. Each time that I told him it wasn’t true he would go
through the roof, so I stopped saying that. Our children
were sitting in the backseat; it scared the daylights out of
them.
At my age, it’s hard to think about leaving him.
Starting all over now seems so hard. I just wish he would
get some help.
Barbara was struggling with issues different from
Kristen’s. Why couldn’t Fran trust her, and why was he
isolating her from other people? Why couldn’t he see that
he had a problem, and get help? Was he going to hurt her
badly some day? Would her life ever get better?
At first look, M aury and Fran sound nothing like each
other: One is young, popular, energetic, and assertive; the
other is socially awkward, passive, and easily hurt. Fran is
physically violent sometimes, whereas M aury is not. But
are they as different as they seem? Or do they both
actually have the same set of issues under the surface,
driving their behavior? These are some of the questions for
which we will find answers in the chapters ahead.
Consider one more account, from Laura:
Paul is a great guy. We dated for about six months, and
now we’ve been living together for several more. We’re
engaged. I feel so bad for him. His ex-wife accused him
of abusing her, and it’s a total lie. He made one mistake,
which is that he cheated on her, and she is determined to
get him back for that. She will stop at nothing. Now she
is even saying that he was violent, claiming he slapped
her a few times and broke her things. That’s ridiculous!
I’ve been with him for over a year now, and I can tell
you, he’s nothing like that. Paul has never even raised a
hand to me. In fact, he’s tried to help me get my life
together and has been really there for me. I was in a bad
place when I met him, I was depressed and I was
drinking too much, and I’m doing so much better now,
because of him. I hate that bitch for accusing him of
those things. We’re going to work together on getting
custody of his kids, because she’s out of control.
Laura wondered how Paul’s ex-wife could accuse such a
delightful man of abuse. She was so angry about it that she
didn’t notice several warning signs about her own
relationship with Paul.
If Kristen, Barbara, and Laura were to sit down together
and compare notes, they might decide that their partners
couldn’t be more different. The personalities of the three
men seem miles apart, and their relationships follow very
separate paths. Yet Maury, Fran, and Paul actually have
far more in common than meets the eye. Their moodiness,
their excuses, their outlook, are all bubbling from the same
source. And all three are abusive men.
THE TRAGEDY O F ABUSE
Abuse of women in relationships touches an unimaginable
number of lives. Even if we leave aside cases of purely
verbal and mental abuse and just look at physical violence,
the statistics are shocking: 2 to 4 million women are
assaulted by their partners per year in the United States.
The U.S. Surgeon General has declared that attacks by male
partners are the number one cause of injury to women
between the ages of fifteen and forty-four. The American
Medical Association reports that one woman out of three
will be a victim of violence by a husband or boyfriend at
some point in her life. The emotional effects of partner
violence are a factor in more than one-fourth of female
suicide attempts and are a leading cause of substance abuse
in adult women. Government statistics indicate that 1,500
to 2,000 women are murdered by partners and ex-partners
per year, comprising more than one-third of all female
homicide victims, and that these homicides almost always
follow a history of violence, threats, or stalking.
The abuse of women sends shock waves through the
lives of children as well. Experts estimate that 5 million
children per year witness an assault on their mothers, an
experience that can leave them traumatized. Children
exposed to violence at home show higher rates of school
behavior and attention problems, aggression, substance
abuse, depression, and many other measures of childhood
distress. Abuse of women has been found to be a cause of
roughly one-third of divorces among couples with children
and one-half of divorces where custody is disputed.
As alarming as this picture is, we also know that
physical assaults are just the beginning of the abuse that
women may be subjected to. There are millions more
women who have never been beaten but who live with
repeated verbal assaults, humiliation, sexual coercion, and
other forms of psychological abuse, often accompanied by
economic exploitation. The scars from mental cruelty can
be as deep and long-lasting as wounds from punches or
slaps but are often not as obvious. In fact, even among
women who have experienced violence from a partner, half
or more report that the man’s emotional abuse is what is
causing them the greatest harm.
The differences between the verbally abusive man and
the physical batterer are not as great as many people
believe. The behavior of either style of abuser grows from
the same roots and is driven by the same thinking. M en in
either category follow similar processes of change in
overcoming their abusiveness—if they do change, which
unfortunately is not common. And the categories tend to
blur. Physically assaultive men are also verbally abusive to
their partners. Mentally cruel and manipulative men tend
to gradually drift into using physical intimidation as well.
In this book you will meet abusers on a spectrum, ranging
from those who never use violence to those who are
terrifying. The extent of their common ground may startle
you.
One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment
in relationships is that most abusive men simply don’t
seem like abusers. They have many good qualities,
including times of kindness, warmth, and humor, especially
in the early period of a relationship. An abuser’s friends
may think the world of him. He may have a successful
work life and have no problems with drugs or alcohol. He
may simply not fit anyone’s image of a cruel or
intimidating person. So when a woman feels her
relationship spinning out of control, it is unlikely to occur
to her that her partner is an abuser.
The symptoms of abuse are there, and the woman
usually sees them: the escalating frequency of put-downs.
Early generosity turning more and more to selfishness.
Verbal explosions when he is irritated or when he doesn’t
get his way. Her grievances constantly turned around on
her, so that everything is her own fault. His growing
attitude that he knows what is good for her better than she
does. And, in many relationships, a mounting sense of fear
or intimidation. But the woman also sees that her partner is
a human being who can be caring and affectionate at times,
and she loves him. She wants to figure out why he gets so
upset, so that she can help him break his pattern of ups
and downs. She gets drawn into the complexities of his
inner world, trying to uncover clues, moving pieces around
in an attempt to solve an elaborate puzzle.
The abuser’s mood changes are especially perplexing.
He can be a different person from day to day, or even from
hour to hour. At times he is aggressive and intimidating, his
tone harsh, insults spewing from his mouth, ridicule
dripping from him like oil from a drum. When he’s in this
mode, nothing she says seems to have any impact on him,
except to make him even angrier. Her side of the argument
counts for nothing in his eyes, and everything is her fault.
He twists her words around so that she always ends up on
the defensive. As so many partners of my clients have said
to me, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.”
At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost,
hungering for love and for someone to take care of him.
When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready
to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior
softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child,
difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this
deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the
abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes
him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the
tender person she now sees.
Sooner or later, though, the shadow comes back over
him, as if it had a life of its own. Weeks of peace may go
by, but eventually she finds herself under assault once
again. Then her head spins with the arduous effort of
untangling the many threads of his character, until she
begins to wonder whether she is the one whose head isn’t
quite right.
To make matters worse, everyone she talks to has a
different opinion about the nature of his problem and what
she should do about it. Her clergyperson may tell her,
“Love heals all difficulties. Give him your heart fully, and
he will find the spirit of God.” Her therapist speaks a
different language, saying, “He triggers strong reactions in
you because he reminds you of your father, and you set
things off in him because of his relationship with his
mother. You each need to work on not pushing each other’s
buttons.” A recovering alcoholic friend tells her, “He’s a
rage addict. He controls you because he is terrified of his
own fears. You need to get him into a twelve-step
program.” Her brother may say to her, “He’s a good guy. I
know he loses his temper with you sometimes—he does
have a short fuse—but you’re no prize yourself with that
mouth of yours. You two need to work it out, for the good
of the children.” And then, to crown her increasing
confusion, she may hear from her mother, or her child’s
schoolteacher, or her best friend: “He’s mean and crazy,
and he’ll never change. All he wants is to hurt you. Leave
him now before he does something even worse.”
All of these people are trying to help, and they are all
talking about the same abuser. But he looks different from
each angle of view.
The woman knows from living with the abusive man
that there are no simple answers. Friends say: “He’s
mean.” But she knows many ways in which he has been
good to her. Friends say: “He treats you that way because
he can get away with it. I would never let someone treat me
that way.” But she knows that the times when she puts her
foot down the most firmly, he responds by becoming his
angriest and most intimidating. When she stands up to him,
he makes her pay for it—sooner or later. Friends say:
“Leave him.” But she knows it won’t be that easy. He will
promise to change. He’ll get friends and relatives to feel
sorry for him and pressure her to give him another chance.
He’ll get severely depressed, causing her to worry whether
he’ll be all right. And, depending on what style of abuser he
is, she may know that he will become dangerous when she
tries to leave him. She may even be concerned that he will
try to take her children away from her, as some abusers do.
How is an abused woman to make a sensible picture out
of this confusion? How can she gain enough insight into the
causes of his problem to know what path to choose? The
questions she faces are urgent ones.
FIVE PUZZLES
Professionals who specialize in working with abusive and
controlling men have had to face these same perplexing
issues at work. I was a codirector of the first counseling
program in the United States—and perhaps in the world—
for abusive men. When I began leading groups for abusers
fifteen years ago, they were as much of a mystery to me as
they are to the women they live with. My colleagues and I
had to put a picture together from the same strange clues
faced by Kristen, Barbara, and Laura. Several themes kept
confronting us over and over again in our clients’ stories,
including:
HIS VERSIO N O F THE ABUSE IS WO RLDS APART
FRO M HERS.
A man named Dale in his mid-thirties gave the following
account when he entered my group for abusive men:
My wife Maureen and I have been together for eleven
years. The first ten years we had a good marriage, and
there was no problem with abuse or violence or
anything. She was a great girl. Then about a year ago she
started hanging around with this bitch she met named
Eleanor who really has it in for me. Some people just
can’t stand to see anyone else happy. This girl was
single and was obviously jealous that Maureen was in a
good marriage, so she set out to wreck it. Nobody can
get along with Eleanor, so of course she has no
relationships that last. I just had the bad luck that she
ran into my wife.
So this bitch started planting a lot of bad stuff about
me in M aureen’s head and turning her against me. She
tells M aureen that I don’t care about her, that I’m
sleeping with other girls, all kinds of lies. And she’s
getting what she wants, because now M aureen and I have
started having some wicked fights. This past year we
haven’t gotten along at all. I tell Maureen I don’t want her
hanging around with that girl, but she doesn’t listen to
me. She sneaks around and sees her behind my back. And,
look, I’m not here to hide anything. I’ll tell you straight
out, it’s true that two or three times this year I finally
couldn’t take all the accusations and yelling anymore, and
I’ve hauled off and slapped her. I need help, I’m not
denying it. I have to learn to deal with the stress better; I
don’t want her to get me arrested. And maybe I can still
figure out how to persuade Maureen not to throw a great
thing away, because at the rate we’re going we’ll be
broken up in six months.
I always interview the partner of each of my clients as
soon as possible after he enrolls in the program. I reached
Maureen by phone several days later, and heard her
account:
Dale was great when I first met him, but by the time we
got married something was already wrong. He had gone
from thinking I was perfect to constantly criticizing me,
and he would get in such bad moods over the littlest
things. I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to get him to
feel better. Only a couple of months after the wedding
he shoved me for the first time, and after that some
explosion would happen about two or three times a
year. Usually he would break something or raise a fist,
but a few times he shoved me or slapped me. Some
years he didn’t do it at all, and I would think it was all
over, but then it would happen again—it sort of came in
waves. And he was always, always, putting me down
and telling me what to do. I couldn’t do anything right.
Anyhow, about a year ago I made a new friend,
Eleanor. She started telling me that what Dale was doing
was abuse, even though he had never punched me or
injured me, and that I hadn’t done anything to deserve it.
At first I thought she was exaggerating, because I’ve
known women that got it so much worse than me. And
Dale can be really sweet and supportive when you least
expect it. We’ve had a lot of good times, believe it or not.
Anyhow, Eleanor kind of opened my eyes up. So I
started standing up to Dale about how he talks to me, and
told him I was thinking of moving out for a while. And
what’s happened is that he’s gone nuts. I swear,
something has happened to him. He’s backhanded me
twice in the last eight months, and another time he threw
me over a chair and my back went out. So I finally moved
out. For now I’m not planning to get back with him, but I
guess it depends partly on what he does in the abuser
program.
Notice the striking contrasts. Dale describes the first ten
years of his marriage as abuse-free, while Maureen
remembers put-downs and even physical assaults during
those years. M aureen says that Eleanor helps and supports
her, while Dale sees her as corrupting M aureen and turning
her against him. Dale says that they are still together, while
Maureen reports that they have already broken up. Each
one thinks the other has developed a problem. How can
their perceptions clash so strongly? In the chapters ahead,
we will explore the thinking of abusive men to answer the
question of why Dale’s view contains such serious
distortions.
HE GETS INSANELY JEALO US, BUT IN O THER
WAYS HE SEEMS ENTIRELY RATIO NAL.
In a group session one day, a young client named
Marshall was recounting a confrontation with his partner
that had occurred in the previous week:
My wife and I had plans to meet in the lobby of the
building where she works to go out for lunch. I was
waiting around near the elevators, and when she finally
came out I saw that she’d been alone on the elevator
with this good-looking guy. He had a look on his face,
and she did too, I can’t really describe it, but I could tell
something was up. I said, “What was that all about?,”
and she pretended like she didn’t know what I was
talking about. That really pissed me off, and I guess I
kind of blew up at her. I may have gotten a little louder
than I should have. I was mad, though, and I was saying,
“You were making it with that guy on the elevator,
weren’t you? Don’t lie to me, you slut, I’m not a fool.”
But she kept on playing dumb, saying she doesn’t even
know him, which is a crock.
Marshall was extremely jealous, but I had worked with
him long enough to know that he wasn’t crazy. He was
lucid and logical in group, had a stable work history and
normal friendships, and showed no signs of living in a
world of fantasy or hallucination. He simply did not have
symptoms of the type of serious mental illness that could
convince a man that his wife could have sex in an elevator,
fully clothed and standing up, between floors of a busy
office building. M arshall had to know that his accusation
wasn’t true. And when I confronted him, he admitted it.
Given that even very jealous abusers turn out to have a
reasonable grasp on reality, why do they make these
insane-seeming accusations? Is there something about
acting crazy that they enjoy? What does this behavior
accomplish for them? (I answer these questions in Chapter
3, where we consider the issue of possessiveness.)
HE SUCCEEDS IN GETTING PEO PLE TO TAKE HIS
SIDE AGAINST HER.
Martin, a man in his late twenties, joined my abuser
group while also seeing an individual therapist. He told me
the first day that he was confused about whether he had a
problem or not, but that his long-time girlfriend Ginny was
preparing to break up with him because she considered him
abusive. He went on to describe incidents of insulting or
ignoring Ginny and of deliberately causing her emotional
pain “to show her how it feels when she hurts me.” He also
admitted to times of humiliating her in front of other
people, being flirtatious with women when he was mad at
her, and ruining a couple of recent important events in her
life by causing big scenes. He justified all of these behaviors
because of ways he felt hurt by her.
As a routine part of my assessment of Martin, I
contacted his private therapist to compare impressions.
The therapist turned out to have strong opinions about the
case:
THERAPIST : I think it’s a big mistake for Martin to be
attending your abuser program. He has very low self-
esteem; he believes anything bad that anyone says about
him. If you tell him he’s abusive, that will just tear him
down further. His partner slams him with the word abusive
all the time, for reasons of her own. Ginny’s got huge
control issues, and she has obsessive-compulsive disorder.
She needs treatment. I think having M artin in your program
just gets her what she wants.
BANCROFT : So you have been doing couples counseling with
them?
THERAPIST : No, I see him individually.
BANCROFT : How many times have you met with her?
THERAPIST : She hasn’t been in at all.
BANCROFT : You must have had quite extensive phone
contact with her, then.
THERAPIST : No, I haven’t spoken to her.
BANCROFT : You haven’t spoken to her? You have assigned
Ginny a clinical diagnosis based only on M artin’s
descriptions of her?
THERAPIST : Yes, but you need to understand, we’re talking
about an unusually insightful man. Martin has told me
many details, and he is perceptive and sensitive.
BANCROFT : But he admits to serious psychological abuse of
Ginny, although he doesn’t call it that. An abusive man is
not a reliable source of information about his partner.
What M artin was getting from individual therapy,
unfortunately, was an official seal of approval for his
denial, and for his view that Ginny was mentally ill. How
had he shaped his therapist’s view of his partner to get her
to adopt this stance? How can abusers be so adept at
recruiting team members in this way, including sometimes
ones with considerable status or influence, and why do
they want to? (These questions are the focus of Chapter
11, “Abusive M en and Their Allies.”)
DURING SO ME INCIDENTS HE SEEMS TO LO SE
CO NTRO L, BUT C ERTAIN O THER CO NTRO LLING
BEHAVIO RS O F HIS APPEAR VERY CALCULATED.
Several years ago, a young man named Mark came to
one of my abuser groups. When a client joins the program,
I set behavioral goals with him as soon as possible. I often
begin by asking, “What are the top three or four complaints
your partner has about you?” Mark’s response was:
One of the things Eileen gets on me about the most is
that she says I ignore her. She says I make her a low
priority and always want to do other things instead of
be with her, so she feels like she’s nothing. I like to have
time to myself a lot, or to relax and watch television. I
guess I kind of tune her out.
Based on Mark’s account, I wrote near the top of his
Behavior Plan: “Spend more time with Eileen. Make
her a higher priority.”
Eileen was very difficult to reach by phone, but three
weeks later she finally called me, with a surprising story to
tell:
A few weeks before Mark started your program, I told
him that I needed a total break from the relationship. I
just couldn’t take it anymore, the yelling and the
selfishness. He won’t even let me sleep. So I didn’t even
want to talk to him for a while; I had to have time away
to get myself together. I reassured him that the
relationship wasn’t over, and we’d work on getting back
together in a couple of months, after a breather.
Then, a couple of weeks later, he called me and said
that he had enrolled in an abuser program. He said that his
counselor wants him to spend more time with me and had
written it on his sheet, and that the program told him that
being with me was part of how he needed to work on his
issues. I wasn’t ready for that yet at all, but I also didn’t
want to interfere with his program. So I started seeing
him again. I want whatever is going to work best to help
him change. I could have used a little more time apart, to
tell you the truth, but if that’s what your program
recommends…
Mark had succeeded in twisting the abuser program to
suit his own purposes. I explained to Eileen what had
happened and apologized for the way my program had
added to the many difficulties she already had with him.
The high degree of manipulativeness that Mark used is not
uncommon among abusive men, unfortunately. How can
abusers be capable of such calculation yet at other times
appear to be so out of control? What’s the connection? The
answers can be found in Chapter 2, where we examine the
excuses that abusive men use to justify their behavior.
SO METIMES HE SEEMS TO BE REALLY C HANGING,
BUT IT TENDS TO VANISH.
Carl was a twenty-six-year-old man who had been
arrested repeatedly for domestic assaults and had finally
served a few months in jail. He said to me in a group
session:
Going to jail was the last straw. I finally got it that I
have to stop blaming my problems on everybody else
and take a look at myself instead. People in jail said the
same thing to me: If you don’t want to be back in here,
get real with yourself. I have a bad temper, and kind of a
mean streak to tell you the truth, and I have to deal with
it. I don’t want to be back inside for anything.
At the end of each counseling session, Carl would make
comments such as, “I can see that I’ve really got to work
on my attitude” and “I learned a lot tonight about how
excuses keep me from changing.” One night he looked at me
and said, “I’m really glad I met you, because I think if I
wasn’t hearing the things you are saying, I would be headed
straight back to being locked up. You’re helping me get my
head on straight.”
I reached Carl’s girlfriend, Peggy, by telephone and
began to ask her about the history of Carl’s problem with
abusiveness. She sounded noticeably distracted and
uncomfortable. I suspected strongly that Carl was listening
to the conversation, so I made an excuse to wrap it up
soon. However, when Carl was at my group the next week,
I left my co-leader in charge of the session and slipped out
to give Peggy another call, to see if she would feel freer to
talk. This time she gave me an earful:
Carl comes home from your program in a rage every
week. I’m afraid to be around the house on Wednesday
nights, which is when he has his group session. He says
the program is total bullshit, and that he wouldn’t have
to be sitting there getting insulted by you people if I
hadn’t called the police on him, and he says that I know
the fight that night was my fault anyhow. He says he
especially hates that guy Lundy. A few nights ago I told
him to stop blaming it on me that he has to go to
counseling, and he slammed me up against the doorjamb
and told me if I didn’t shut up he’d choke me. I should
call the police, but he’d get sent away for two years this
time because he’s on parole, and I’m afraid that would
be enough to get him to kill me when he got out.
Peggy then went on to describe the history of beatings
she had suffered at Carl’s hands before he went to jail: the
black eyes, the smashed furniture, the time he had held a
knife to her throat. He invariably had blamed each attack on
her, no matter how brutal his abuse or how serious her
injuries.
After speaking with Peggy, I returned to the group
session, where Carl went through his usual routine of self-
exploration and guilt. I of course said nothing; if he knew
Peggy had told me the truth, she would be in extraordinary
danger. Soon after this, I reported to his probation officer
that he was not appropriate for our program, without
giving the real reason.
Carl created the appearance of learning a great deal at
each session, and his comments suggested serious reflection
on the issues, including the effects of his abuse on his
partner. What was happening each week inside his mind
before he got home? How can an abuser gain such insight
into his feelings and still behave so destructively? And how
does real change happen? (We’ll return to these questions
in Chapter 14, “The Process of Change.”)
THESE ARE JUST a very few of the many confounding
questions that face anyone—the partner of an abusive man,
a friend, or a professional—who is looking for effective
ways to respond to abusive behavior. I came to realize,
through my experience with over two thousand abusers,
that the abusive man wants to be a mystery. To get away
with his behavior and to avoid having to face his problem,
he needs to convince everyone around him—and himself—
that his behavior makes no sense. He needs his partner to
focus on everything except the real causes of his behavior.
To see the abuser as he really is, it is necessary to strip
away layer after layer of confusion, mixed messages, and
deception. Like anyone with a serious problem, abusers
work hard to keep their true selves hidden.
Part of how the abuser escapes confronting himself is by
convincing you that you are the cause of his behavior, or
that you at least share the blame. But abuse is not a
product of bad relationship dynamics, and you cannot
make things better by changing your own behavior or by
attempting to manage your partner better. Abuse is a
problem that lies entirely within the abuser.
Through years of direct work with abusers and their
partners, I found that the realities behind the enigmatic
abuser gradually came out into the bright light forming a
picture that increasingly made sense to me. The pages
ahead will take you through the pieces that I watched fall
into place one by one, including:
Why abusers are charming early in
relationships but don’t stay that way
What the early warning signs are that can
tip you off that you may be involved with
an abusive or controlling man
Why his moods change at the drop of a hat
What goes on inside his mind and how his
thinking causes his behavior
What role alcohol and drugs play—and
don’t play—in partner abuse
Why leaving an abusive man doesn’t
always solve the problem
How to tell whether an abuser is really
changing—and what to do if he isn’t
How friends, relatives, and other
community members can help to stop
abuse
Why many abusive men seem to be
mentally ill—and why they usually aren’t
We will explore answers to these questions on three
levels. The first level is the abuser’s thinking—his attitudes
and beliefs—in daily interactions. The second is his
learning process, through which his thinking began to
develop early in his life. And the third involves the rewards
he reaps from controlling his partner, which encourage him
to use abusive behavior over and over again. As we clear
away the abusive man’s smoke screen with these
understandings, you will find that abusiveness turns out to
be far less mysterious than it appears at first.
Inside the abuser’s mind, there is a world of beliefs,
perceptions, and responses that fits together in a
surprisingly logical way. His behavior does make sense.
Underneath the facade of irrationality and explosiveness,
there is a human being with a comprehensible—and
solvable—problem. But he doesn’t want you to figure him
out.
The abuser creates confusion because he has to. He can’t
control and intimidate you, he can’t recruit people around
him to take his side, he can’t keep escaping the
consequences of his actions, unless he can throw everyone
off the track. When the world catches on to the abuser, his
power begins to melt away. So we are going to travel
behind the abuser’s mask to the heart of his problem. This
journey is critical to the health and healing of abused
women and their children, for once you grasp how your
partner’s mind works, you can begin reclaiming control of
your own life. Unmasking the abuser also does him a favor,
because he will not confront—and overcome—his highly
destructive problem as long as he can remain hidden.
The better we understand abusers, the more we can
create homes and relationships that are havens of love and
safety, as they should be. Peace really does begin at home.
2
The Mythology
He’s crazy.
He feels so bad about himself. I just need to
build up his self-image a little.
He just loses it.
He’s so insecure.
His mother abused him, and now he has a
grudge against women and he takes it out on
me.
I’m so confused. I don’t understand what’s
going on with him.
IN ONE IMPORTANT WAY, an abusive man works like a
magician: His tricks largely rely on getting you to look off
in the wrong direction, distracting your attention so that
you won’t notice where the real action is. He draws you
into focusing on the turbulent world of his feelings to keep
your eyes turned away from the true cause of his
abusiveness, which lies in how he thinks. He leads you into
a convoluted maze, making your relationship with him a
labyrinth of twists and turns. He wants you to puzzle over
him, to try to figure him out, as though he were a
wonderful but broken machine for which you need only to
find and fix the malfunctioning parts to bring it roaring to
its full potential. His desire, though he may not admit it
even to himself, is that you wrack your brain in this way
so that you won’t notice the patterns and logic of his
behavior, the consciousness behind the craziness.
To further divert your gaze, he may work to shape your
view of his past partners to keep you from talking to them
directly and to prepare you to disbelieve them should you
happen to hear what they say. If you could follow the
thread of his conduct over a series of relationships, you
would find out that his behavior isn’t as erratic as it looks;
in fact, it follows a fairly consistent pattern from woman to
woman, except for brief relationships or ones he isn’t that
serious about.
Above all, the abusive man wants to avoid having you
zero in on his abusiveness itself. So he tries to fill your
head up with excuses and distortions and keep you
weighed down with self-doubt and self-blame. And,
unfortunately, much of the society tends to follow
unsuspectingly along behind him, helping him to close your
eyes, and his own, to his problem.
The mythology about abusive men that runs through
modern culture has been created largely by the abusers
themselves. Abusive men concoct explanations for their
actions which they give to their partners, therapists,
clergypeople, relatives, and social researchers. But it is a
serious error to allow abusers to analyze and account for
their own problems. Would we ask an active alcoholic to
tell us why he or she drinks, and then accept the
explanation unquestioningly? This is what we would hear:
“I drink because I have bad luck in life.”
“I actually don’t drink much at all—it’s just a rumor
that some people have been spreading about me because
they don’t like me.”
“I started to drink a lot because my self-esteem was
ruined by all these unfair accusations that I’m alcoholic,
which I’m not.”
When we hear these kinds of excuses from a drunk, we
assume they are exactly that—excuses. We don’t consider
an active alcoholic a reliable source of insight. So why
should we let an angry and controlling man be the authority
on partner abuse? Our first task, therefore, is to remove the
abusive man’s smoke and mirrors, and then set about
watching carefully to see what he is really doing.
A BRIEF EXERC ISE
In my public presentations on abuse, I often begin with a
simple exercise. I ask the audience members to write down
everything they have ever heard, or ever believed, about
where an abuser’s problem comes from. I invite you to
close this book for two or three minutes now and make a
similar list for yourself, so that you can refer to it as we go
along.
I then ask people to call out items from their lists, and I
write them on the blackboard, organizing them into three
categories: one for myths, one for partial truths, and one
for accurate statements. We usually end up with twenty or
thirty myths, four or five half-truths, and perhaps one or
two realities. The audience members squint at me and fidgit
in their seats, surprised to discover that the common beliefs
about the causes of abuse contain several dollops of
fantasy and misconception for each ounce of truth. If you
find as you go through this chapter that your own list turns
out to contain mostly myths, you are not alone.
For the partner of an abusive or controlling man, having
all of these mistaken theories pulled out from under you at
once can be overwhelming. But for each stick that we pull
out of the structure of misconception about abusive men, a
brick is waiting to take its place. When we’re finished, your
partner will find it much harder than before to throw you
off balance and confuse you, and your relationship will
make sense to you in a way that it hasn’t before.
THE MYTHS ABO UT ABUSERS
1. He was abused as a child.
2. His previous partner hurt him.
3. He abuses those he loves the
most.
4. He holds in his feelings too
much.
5. He has an aggressive
personality.
6. He loses control.
7. He is too angry.
8. He is mentally ill.
9. He hates women.
10. He is afraid of intimacy and
abandonment.
11. He has low self-esteem.
12. His boss mistreats him.
13. He has poor skills in
communication and conflict
resolution.
14. There are as many abusive
women as abusive men.
15. His abusiveness is as bad for
him as for his partner.
16. He is a victim of racism.
17. He abuses alcohol or drugs.
MYTH #1:
He was abused as a child, and he needs
therapy for it.
The partners of my clients commonly believe that the roots
of the man’s abusiveness can be found in mistreatment that
he suffered himself, and many professionals share the same
misconception. I hear explanations along the lines of:
“He calls me all those horrible things because that is
what his mother used to do to him.”
“His father used to get angry at him and beat him with a
belt, so now if I get angry at all, he just freaks out and
starts throwing things around the house. He says it’s
because deep down, he’s really scared of my anger.”
“His stepmother was a witch. I’ve met her; she’s
vicious. So now he really has this thing against women.”
QUESTION 1:
IS IT BECAUSE HE W AS ABUSED AS A
CHILD?
Multiple research studies have examined the question of
whether men who abuse women tend to be survivors of
childhood abuse, and the link has turned out to be weak;
other predictors of which men are likely to abuse women
have proven far more reliable, as we will see. Notably, men
who are violent toward other men are often victims of child
abuse—but the connection is much less clear for men who
assault women. The one exception is that those abusers
who are brutally physically violent or terrifying toward
women often do have histories of having been abused as
children. In other words, a bad childhood doesn’t cause a
man to become an abuser, but it can contribute to making a
man who is abusive especially dangerous.
If abusiveness were the product of childhood emotional
injury, abusers could overcome their problem through
psychotherapy. But it is virtually unheard of for an
abusive man to make substantial and lasting changes in his
pattern of abusiveness as a result of therapy. (In Chapter
14, we’ll examine the differences between psychotherapy
and a specialized abuser program, because the latter
sometimes can bring good results.) He may work through
other emotional difficulties, he may gain insight into
himself, but his behavior continues. In fact it typically gets
worse, as he uses therapy to develop new excuses for his
behavior, more sophisticated arguments to prove that his
partner is mentally unstable, and more creative ways to
make her feel responsible for his emotional distress.
Abusive men are sometimes masters of the hard-luck story,
and may find that accounts of childhood abuse are one of
the best ways to pull heartstrings.
For some abusive men, the blame-the-childhood
approach has an additional reason for being appealing: By
focusing on what his mother did wrong, he gets to blame a
woman for his mistreatment of women. This explanation
can also appeal to the abused woman herself, since it makes
sense out of his behavior and gives her someone safe to be
angry at—since getting angry at him always seems to blow
up in her face. The wider society, and the field of
psychology in particular, has often jumped on this
bandwagon instead of confronting the hard questions that
partner abuse raises. Abuse of women by men is so
rampant that, unless people can somehow make it
women’s own fault, they are forced to take on a number of
uncomfortable questions about men and about much of
male thinking. So it may seem easier to just lay the problem
at the feet of the man’s mother?
My clients who have participated extensively in
therapy or substance-abuse recovery programs sometimes
sound like therapists themselves—and a few actually have
been—as they adopt the terms of popular psychology or
textbook theory. One client used to try to lure me into
intellectual debates with comments such as, “Well, your
group follows a cognitive-behavioral model, which has been
shown to have limitations for addressing a problem as deep
as this one.” An abusive man who is adept in the language
of feelings can make his partner feel crazy by turning each
argument into a therapy session in which he puts her
reactions under a microscope and assigns himself the role of
“helping” her. He may, for example, “explain” to her the
emotional issues she needs to work through, or analyze her
reasons for “mistakenly” believing that he is mistreating
her.
An abusive man may embellish his childhood suffering
once he discovers that it helps him escape responsibility.
The National District Attorney’s Association Bulletin
reported a revealing study that was conducted on another
group of destructive men: child sexual abusers. The
researcher asked each man whether he himself had been
sexually victimized as a child. A hefty 67 percent of the
subjects said yes. However, the researcher then informed
the men that he was going to hook them up to a lie-detector
test and ask them the same questions again. Affirmative
answers suddenly dropped to only 29 percent. In other
words, abusers of all varieties tend to realize the mileage
they can get out of saying, “I’m abusive because the same
thing was done to me.”
Although the typical abusive man works to maintain a
positive public image, it is true that some women have
abusive partners who are nasty or intimidating to everyone.
How about that man? Do his problems result from
mistreatment by his parents? The answer is both yes and
no; it depends on which problem we’re talking about. His
hostility toward the human race may sprout from cruelty
in his upbringing, but he abuses women because he has an
abuse problem. The two problems are related but distinct.
I am not saying that you should be unsympathetic to
your partner’s childhood suffering. An abusive man
deserves the same compassion that a nonabusive man does,
neither more nor less. But a nonabusive man doesn’t use
his past as an excuse to mistreat you. Feeling sorry for
your partner can be a trap, making you feel guilty for
standing up to his abusiveness.
I have sometimes said to a client: “If you are so in touch
with your feelings from your abusive childhood, then you
should know what abuse feels like. You should be able to
remember how miserable it was to be cut down to nothing,
to be put in fear, to be told that the abuse is your own
fault. You should be less likely to abuse a woman, not more
so, from having been through it.” Once I make this point,
he generally stops mentioning his terrible childhood; he
only wants to draw attention to it if it’s an excuse to
stay the same, not if it’s a reason to change.
MYTH #2:
He had a previous partner who mistreated
him terribly, and now he has a problem with
women as a result. He’s a wonderful man,
and that bitch made him get like this.
As we saw with Fran in Chapter 1, an abuser’s bitter tale
of emotional destruction by a past wife or girlfriend can
have a powerful impact on his current partner. In the most
common version of this story, the man recounts how his
ex-partner broke his heart by cheating on him, perhaps
with several different men. If you ask him how he found
out, he answers that “everybody” knew about it or that his
friends told him. He also may say, “I caught her cheating
myself,” but when you press him on what he actually saw,
it often turns out that he saw nothing, or that he saw her
talking to some guy or riding in his car late at night, “so I
could tell.”
He may describe other wounds he received from a
previous partner: She tried to control him; she wouldn’t let
him have any freedom; she expected him to wait on her
hand and foot; she turned their children against him; she
even “had him arrested” out of vindictiveness. What he is
describing usually are his own behaviors, but he attributes
them to the woman so that he is the victim. He can gain
sympathy from his new partner in this fashion, especially
because so many women know what it is like to be abused
—unfortunately—so they can connect with his distress.
The abusive or controlling man can draw a rich set of
excuses from his past relationships. For controlling his
current partner’s friendships and for accusing her of
cheating on him: “It’s because my ex-partner hurt me so
badly by cheating on me so many times, and that’s why
I’m so jealous and can’t trust you.” For throwing a tempter
tantrum when she asks him to clean up after himself: “M y
ex-partner controlled my every move, and so now it makes
me furious when I feel like you’re telling me what to do.”
For having affairs of his own or keeping other love interests
going on the side: “I got so hurt last time that now I am
really afraid of committing, so I want to keep having
involvements with other people.” He can craft an excuse to
fit any of his controlling behaviors.
I recommend applying the following principle to
assertions that an angry or controlling man makes about
past women in his life:
IF IT IS AN EXCUSE FO R MISTREATING YO U, IT’S A
DISTO RTIO N.
A man who was genuinely mistreated in a relationship
with a woman would not be using that experience to get
away with hurting someone else.
Consider the reverse situation for a moment: Have you
ever heard a woman claim that the reason why she is
chronically mistreating her male partner is because a
previous man abused her? I have never run into this excuse
in the fifteen years I have worked in the field of abuse.
Certainly I have encountered cases where women had
trouble trusting another man after leaving an abuser, but
there is a critical distinction to be made: Her past
experiences may explain how she feels, but they are not an
excuse for how she behaves. And the same is true for a
man.
When a client of mine blames a past relationship for his
cruel or controlling behavior in the present, I jump in with
several questions: “Did your ex-partner ever say that she
felt controlled or intimidated by you? What was her side of
the story? Did you ever put your hands on her in anger, or
did she ever get a restraining order?” By the time he has
finished providing his answers, I usually can tell what
happened: He abused that woman too.
It is fine to commiserate with a man about his bad
experience with a previous partner, but the instant he uses
her as an excuse to mistreat you, stop believing anything he
tells you about that relationship and instead recognize it as
a sign that he has problems with relating to women. Track
down his ex-partner and talk with her as soon as possible,
even if you hate her. An abuser can mistreat partner after
partner in relationships, each time believing that the
problems are all the woman’s fault and that he is the real
victim.
Whether he presents himself as the victim of an ex-
partner, or of his parents, the abuser’s aim—though
perhaps unconscious—is to play on your compassion, so
that he can avoid dealing with his problem.
MYTH #3:
He’s abusive because he feels so strongly
about me.
People cause those they care about most
deeply the most pain.
Excuses along these lines crop up frequently in my groups
for abusive men. M y clients say to me, “No one else gets
me upset like she does. I just go out of my head sometimes
because I have such strong feelings for her. The things she
does really hurt me, and nobody else can get under my skin
like that.” Abusers can use this rationalization successfully
with their partners, friends, and relatives. There is a grain
of truth to it: People we love can cause us deeper pain than
anyone else. But what does this have to do with abuse?
The abuser would like us to accept the following simple
but erroneous formula:
“FEELINGS CAUSE BEHAVIOR.”
“When people feel hurt, they lash out at someone else in
retaliation. When they feel jealous, they become possessive
and accusatory. When they feel controlled, they yell and
threaten.” Right?
Wrong. Each human being deals with hurt or resentment
in a unique way. When you feel insulted or bullied, you
may reach for a chocolate bar. In the same circumstance, I
might burst into tears. Another person may put his or her
feelings quickly into words, confronting the mistreatment
directly. Although our feelings can influence how we wish
to act, our choices of how to behave are ultimately
determined more by our attitudes and our habits. We
respond to our emotional wounds based on what we
believe about ourselves, how we think about the person
who has hurt us, and how we perceive the world. Only in
people who are severely traumatized or who have major
mental illnesses is behavior governed by feelings. And only
a tiny percentage of abusive men have these kinds of severe
psychological problems.
There are other reasons not to accept the “love causes
abuse” excuse. First, many people reserve their best
behavior and kindest treatment for their loved ones,
including their partners. Should we accept the idea that
these people feel love less strongly, or have less passion,
than an abuser does? Nonsense. Outside of my
professional life, I have known many couples over the
years who had passion and electricity between them and
who treated each other well. But unfortunately there is
wide acceptance in our society of the unhealthy notion that
passion and aggression are interwoven and that cruel verbal
exchanges and bomblike explosions are the price you pay
for a relationship that is exciting, deep, and sexy. Popular
romantic movies and soap operas sometimes reinforce this
image.
Most abusive men have close relationships with people
other than their wives or girlfriends. My clients may feel
deep fondness for one or both of their parents, a sibling, a
dear friend, an aunt or uncle. Do they abuse their other
loved ones? Rarely. It isn’t the love or deep affection that
causes his behavior problem.
MYTH #4:
He holds in his feelings too much, and they
build up until he bursts. He needs to get in
touch with his emotions and learn to express
them to prevent those explosive episodes.
My colleagues and I refer to this belief as “The Boiler
Theory of Men.” The idea is that a person can only
tolerate so much accumulated pain and frustration. If it
doesn’t get vented periodically—kind of like a pressure
cooker—then there’s bound to be a serious accident. This
myth has the ring of truth to it because we are all aware of
how many men keep too much emotion pent up inside.
Since most abusers are male, it seems to add up.
But it doesn’t, and here’s why: Most of my clients are
not unusually repressed. In fact, many of them express
their feelings more than some nonabusive men. Rather than
trapping everything inside, they actually tend to do the
opposite: They have an exaggerated idea of how important
their feelings are, and they talk about their feelings—and
act them out—all the time, until their partners and children
are exhausted from hearing about it all. An abuser’s
emotions are as likely to be too big as too small. They can
fill up the whole house. When he feels bad, he thinks that
life should stop for everyone else in the family until
someone fixes his discomfort. His partner’s life crises, the
children’s sicknesses, meals, birthdays—nothing else
matters as much as his feelings.
It is not his feelings the abuser is too distant from; it is
his partner’s feelings and his children’s feelings. Those are
the emotions that he knows so little about and that he
needs to “get in touch with.” M y job as an abuse counselor
often involves steering the discussion away from how my
clients feel and toward how they think (including their
attitudes toward their partners’ feelings). M y clients keep
trying to drive the ball back into the court that is familiar
and comfortable to them, where their inner world is the
only thing that matters.
For decades, many therapists have been attempting to
help abusive men change by guiding them in identifying and
expressing feelings. Alas, this well-meaning but misguided
approach actually feeds the abuser’s selfish focus on
himself, which is an important force driving his
abusiveness.
Part of why you may be tempted to accept “The Boiler
Theory of Men” is that you may observe that your partner
follows a pattern where he becomes increasingly
withdrawn, says less and less, seems to be bubbling
gradually from a simmer to a boil, and then erupts in a
geyser of yelling, put-downs, and ugliness. It looks like an
emotional explosion, so naturally you assume that it is. But
the mounting tension, the pressure-cooker buildup of his
feelings, is actually being driven by his lack of empathy for
your feelings, and by a set of attitudes that we will examine
later. And he explodes when he gives himself permission to
do so.
MYTH #5:
He has a violent, explosive personality.
He needs to learn to be less aggressive.
Does your partner usually get along reasonably well with
everyone else except you? Is it unusual for him to verbally
abuse other people or to get in physical fights with men? If
he does get aggressive with men, is it usually related
somehow to you—for example, getting up in the face of a
man who he thinks is checking you out? The great majority
of abusive men are fairly calm and reasonable in most of
their dealings that are unrelated to their partners. In fact,
the partners of my clients constantly complain to me:
“How come he can be so nice to everyone else but he has
to treat me like dirt?” If a man’s problem were that he had
an “aggressive personality,” he wouldn’t be able to reserve
that side of himself just for you. M any therapists have
attempted over the years to lead abusive men toward their
more sensitive, vulnerable side. But the sad reality is that
plenty of gentle, sensitive men are viciously—and
sometimes violently—abusive to their female partners. The
two-sided nature of abusers is a central aspect of the
mystery.
The societal stereotype of the abuser as a relatively
uneducated, blue-collar male adds to the confusion. The
faulty equation goes: “Abusive equals muscle-bound
caveman, which in turn equals lower class.” In addition to
the fact that this image is an unfair stereotype of working-
class men, it also overlooks the fact that a professional or
college-educated man has roughly the same likelihood of
abusing women as anyone else. A successful
businessperson, a college professor, or a sailing instructor
may be less likely to adopt a tough-guy image with tattoos
all over his body but still may well be a nightmare partner.
Class and racial stereotypes permit the more privileged
members of society to duck the problem of abuse by
pretending that it is someone else’s problem. Their thinking
goes: “It’s those construction-worker guys who never went
to college; it’s those Latinos; it’s those street toughs—
they’re the abusers. Our town, our neighborhood, isn’t like
that. We’re not macho men here.”
But women who live with abuse know that abusers
come in all styles and from all backgrounds. Sometimes the
more educated an abuser, the more knots he knows how to
tie in a woman’s brain, the better he is at getting her to
blame herself, and the slicker is his ability to persuade
other people that she is crazy. The more socially powerful
an abuser, the more powerful his abuse can be—and the
more difficult it can be to escape. Two of my early clients
were Harvard professors.
Some women are attracted to the tough-guy image, and
some can’t stand it. Take your pick. There are ways to tell
whether a man is likely to turn abusive, as we will see in
Chapter 5, but his gentle or macho personality style is not
one of them. (But do beware of one thing: If a man
routinely intimidates people, watch out. Sooner or later, he
will turn his intimidation on you. At first it may make you
feel safe to be with a man who frightens people, but not
when your turn comes.)
MYTH #6:
He loses control of himself. He just goes
wild.
Many years ago, I was interviewing a woman named Sheila
by telephone. She was describing the rages that my client
Michael would periodically have: “He just goes absolutely
berserk, and you never know when he’s going to go off like
that. He’ll just start grabbing whatever is around and
throwing it. He heaves stuff everywhere, against the walls,
on the floor—it’s just a mess. And he smashes stuff,
important things sometimes. Then it’s like the storm just
passes; he calms down; and he leaves for a while. Later he
seems kind of ashamed of himself.”
I asked Sheila two questions. The first was, when things
got broken, were they M ichael’s, or hers, or things that
belonged to both of them? She left a considerable silence
while she thought. Then she said, “You know what? I’m
amazed that I’ve never thought of this, but he only breaks
my stuff. I can’t think of one thing he’s smashed that
belonged to him.” Next, I asked her who cleans up the
mess. She answered that she does.
I commented, “See, M ichael’s behavior isn’t nearly as
berserk as it looks. And if he really felt so remorseful, he’d
help clean up.”
QUESTION 2:
IS HE DO ING IT O N PURPO SE?
When a client of mine tells me that he became abusive
because he lost control of himself, I ask him why he didn’t
do something even worse. For example, I might say, “You
called her a fucking whore, you grabbed the phone out of
her hand and whipped it across the room, and then you
gave her a shove and she fell down. There she was at your
feet, where it would have been easy to kick her in the head.
Now, you have just finished telling me that you were
‘totally out of control’ at that time, but you didn’t kick
her. What stopped you?” And the client can always give
me a reason. Here are some common explanations:
“I wouldn’t want to cause her a serious injury.”
“I realized one of the children was watching.”
“I was afraid someone would call the police.”
“I could kill her if I did that.”
“The fight was getting loud, and I was afraid neighbors
would hear.”
And the most frequent response of all:
“Jesus, I wouldn’t do that. I would never do something
like that to her.”
The response that I almost never heard—I remember
hearing it twice in fifteen years—was: “I don’t know.”
These ready answers strip the cover off of my clients’
loss-of-control excuse. While a man is on an abusive
rampage, verbally or physically, his mind maintains
awareness of a number of questions: “Am I doing
something that other people could find out about, so it
could make me look bad? Am I doing anything that could
get me in legal trouble? Could I get hurt myself? Am I doing
anything that I myself consider too cruel, gross, or
violent?”
A critical insight seeped into me from working with my
first few dozen clients: An abuser almost never does
anything that he himself con siders morally
unacceptable. He may hide what he does because he
thinks other people would disagree with it, but he feels
justified inside. I can’t remember a client ever having said to
me: “There’s no way I can defend what I did. It was just
totally wrong.” He invariably has a reason that he considers
good enough. In short, an abuser’s core problem is that
he has a distorted sense of right and wrong.
I sometimes ask my clients the following question:
“How many of you have ever felt angry enough at your
mother to get the urge to call her a bitch?” Typically, half
or more of the group members raise their hands. Then I ask,
“How many of you have ever acted on that urge?” All the
hands fly down, and the men cast appalled gazes on me, as
if I had just asked whether they sell drugs outside
elementary schools. So then I ask, “Well, why haven’t
you?” The same answer shoots out from the men each time
I do this exercise: “But you can’t treat your mother like
that, no matter how angry you are! You just don’t do
that!”
The unspoken remainder of this statement, which we
can fill in for my clients, is: “But you can treat your wife
or girlfriend like that, as long as you have a good enough
reason. That’s different.” In other words, the abuser’s
problem lies above all in his belief that controlling or
abusing his female partner is justifiable. This insight has
tremendous implications for how counseling work with
abusers has to be done, as we will see.
When I was new to counseling abusive men, my own
loss-of-control myth collided repeatedly with the realities
contained in the stories of my early clients. Kenneth
admitted that he used to dim the lights and then insist to
Jennifer that nothing had changed, trying to make her feel
crazy. (He also stands out in my mind for his outspoken
criticisms of his group mates for their insensitivity toward
their partners, despite his own actions.) James told me that
he sometimes would hide something his partner was
looking for, such as her pocketbook or car keys, wait for
her to become frantic and frustrated looking for it, and then
put it back out in plain view and insist that it had been
there all along. M ario measured the distance from his house
to the supermarket, and when his wife reported going out
to shop during the day, he would check the odometer of her
car to make sure she hadn’t gone anywhere else.
One year my colleagues David and Carole were
preparing a skit on abuse for a conference, and they decided
to perform a rehearsal for their abuser group. Afterward,
the group members rapid-fired their suggestions for
improving the skit, directing them mostly at David: “No,
no, you don’t make excuses for why you’re home late, that
puts you on the defensive, you’ve got to turn it around on
her, tell her you know she’s cheating on you.…You’re
staying too far away from her, David. Take a couple of
steps toward her, so she’ll know that you mean business.
…You’re letting hersay too much. You’ve got to cut her off
and stick to your points.” The counselors were struck by
how aware the clients were of the kinds of tactics they use,
and why they use them: In the excitement of giving
feedback on the skit, the men let down their facade as “out-
of-control abuser who doesn’t realize what he’s doing.”
As we review the stories of my clients throughout this
book, you will observe over and over the degree of
consciousness that goes into their cruel and controlling
actions. At the same time, I don’t want to make abusive
men sound evil. They don’t calculate and plan out every
move they make—though they use forethought more often
than you would expect. It isn’t that each time an abuser
sweeps a pile of newspapers onto the floor or throws a
cup against the wall he has determined ahead of time to
take that course. For a more accurate model, think of an
abuser as an acrobat in a circus ring who does “go wild” to
some extent but who never forgets where the limits are.
When one of my clients says to me, “I exploded” or “I
just lost it,” I ask him to go step by step in his mind
through the moments leading up to his abusive behavior. I
ask, “Did you really ‘just explode,’ or did you actually
decide at one point to give yourself the green light? Wasn’t
there a moment when you decided you ‘had had enough’ or
you ‘weren’t going to take it anymore,’ and at that instant
you gave yourself permission, setting yourself free to do
what you felt like doing?” Then I see a flicker of
recognition cross my client’s eyes, and usually he admits
that there is indeed a moment at which he turns himself
loose to begin the horror show.
Even the physically violent abuser shows self-control.
The moment police pull up in front of the house, for
example, he usually calms down immediately, and when the
officers enter, he speaks to them in a friendly and
reasonable tone. Police almost never find a fight in progress
by the time they get in the door. Ty, a physical batterer
who now counsels other men, describes in a training video
how he would snap out of his rage when the police pulled
up in front of the house and would sweet-talk the police,
“telling them what she had done. Then they would look at
her, and she’d be the one who was totally out of control,
because I had just degraded her and put her in fear. I’d say
to the police, ‘See, it isn’t me.’” Ty managed to escape
arrest repeatedly with his calm demeanor and claims of
self-defense.
MYTH #7:
He’s too angry. He needs to learn anger-
management skills.
A few years ago, the partner of one of my clients went
through an ordeal where her twelve-year-old son (from a
previous marriage) disappeared for more than forty-eight
hours. For two days Mary Beth’s heart was beating faster
and faster as she drove around town looking for her son,
made panicked phone calls to everyone she knew, and
dropped her son’s photograph at police departments,
newspapers, and radio stations. She barely slept.
Meanwhile her new husband, Ray, who was in one of my
groups, was slowly building to a boil inside. Toward the
end of the second day he finally burst out yelling at her, “I
am so sick of being ignored by you! It’s like I don’t even
exist! Go fuck yourself!”
When people conclude that anger causes abuse, they are
confusing cause and effect. Ray was not abusive because he
was angry; he was angry because he was abusive. Abusers
carry attitudes that produce fury. A nonabusive man would
not expect his wife to be taking emotional care of him
during a crisis of this gravity. In fact, he would be focused
on what he could do for her and on trying to find the child.
It would be futile to teach Ray to take a time-out to punch
pillows, take a brisk walk, or concentrate on deep
breathing, because his thinking process will soon get him
enraged again. In Chapter 3, you will see how and why an
abuser’s attitudes keep him furious.
When a new client says to me, “I’m in your program
because of my anger,” I respond, “No you’re not, you’re
here because of your abuse.” Everybody gets angry. In
fact, most people have at least occasional times when they
are too angry, out of proportion to the actual event or
beyond what is good for their health. Some give themselves
ulcers and heart attacks and hypertension. But they don’t
necessarily abuse their partners. In Chapter 3, we’ll take a
look at why abusive men tend to be so angry—and why at
the same time their anger isn’t really the main problem.
The abuser’s explosive anger can divert your attention
from all the disrespect, irresponsibility, talking over you,
lying, and other abusive and controlling behaviors that he
exhibits even at times when he isn’t especially upset. Is it
anger that causes such a high proportion of abusers to cheat
on their partners? Does an abuser’s rage cause him to
conceal for years the fact that a former girlfriend went into
hiding to get away from him? Is it a form of explosiveness
when your partner pressures you into dropping your
friendships and spending less time with your siblings? No.
Perhaps his loudest, most obvious, or most intimidating
forms of abuse come out when he’s angry, but his deeper
pattern is operating all the time.
MYTH #8:
He’s crazy. He’s got some mental illness
that he should be medicated for.
When a man’s face contorts in bitterness and hatred, he
looks a little insane. When his mood changes from elated to
assaultive in the time it takes to turn around, his mental
stability seems open to question. When he accuses his
partner of plotting to harm him, he seems paranoid. It is no
wonder that the partner of an abusive man would come to
suspect that he was mentally ill.
Yet the great majority of my clients over the years have
been psychologically “normal.” Their minds work logically;
they understand cause and effect; they don’t hallucinate.
Their perceptions of most life circumstances are reasonably
accurate. They get good reports at work; they do well in
school or training programs; and no one other than their
partners—and children—thinks that there is anything
wrong with them. Their value system is unhealthy, not
their psychology.
Much of what appears to be crazy behavior in an abuser
actually works well for him. We already met Michael, who
never broke his own stuff, and Marshall, who did not
believe his own jealous accusations. In the pages ahead,
you will encounter many more examples of the method
behind the abuser’s madness. You will also learn how
distorted his view of his partner is—which can make him
appear emotionally disturbed—and where those distortions
spring from.
The most recent research shows that even in physically
violent abusers the rate of mental illness is not high. Several
of my brutal battering clients have had psychological
evaluations, and only one of them was found to have a
mental illness. At the same time, some of my clients whom
I have believed to be truly insane have not necessarily been
among the most violent. Research does indicate that the
most extreme physical batterers—the ones who choke their
partners to unconsciousness, who hold guns to their heads,
who stalk and kill—have increased rates of mental illness.
But there is no particular mental health condition that is
typical of these severe batterers; they can have a range of
diagnoses, including psychosis, borderline personality,
manic depression, antisocial personality, obsessive-
compulsive disorder, and others. (And, even among the
most dangerous abusers, there are many who do not show
clear psychiatric symptoms of any kind.)
How can all these different mental illnesses cause such
similar behavioral patterns? The answer is, they don’t.
Mental illness doesn’t cause abusiveness any more than
alcohol does. What happens is rather that the man’s
psychiatric problem interacts with his abusiveness to form
a volatile combination. If he is severely depressed, for
example, he may stop caring about the consequences his
actions may cause him to suffer, which can increase the
danger that he will decide to commit a serious attack against
his partner or children. A mentally ill abuser has two
separate—though interrelated—problems, just as the
alcoholic or drug-addicted one does.
The basic reference book for psychiatric conditions, the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM-IV), includes no condition that fits abusive men well.
Some clinicians will stretch one of the definitions to apply
it to an abusive client—“intermittent explosive disorder,”
for example—so that insurance will cover his therapy.
However, this diagnosis is erroneous if it is made solely on
the basis of his abusive behavior; a man whose destructive
behaviors are confined primarily or entirely to intimate
relationships is an abuser, not a psychiatric patient.
Two final points about mental illness: First, I
occasionally hear someone who is discussing a violent
abuser say, “He must be delusional to think he can get
away with this.” But, unfortunately, it often turns out that
he can get away with it, as we discuss in Chapter 12, so his
belief is not a delusion at all. Second, I have received just a
few reports of cases in which an abuser’s behavior has
improved for a while as a result of taking medication
prescribed by a psychiatrist. His overall abusiveness hasn’t
stopped, but the most devastating or terrifying behaviors
have eased. Medication is not a long-term solution,
however, for two important reasons:
1. Abusers don’t like to be medicated
because they tend to be too selfish to put
up with the side effects, no matter how
much the improvement may benefit their
partners, so they almost always quit the
medication after a few months. The
medication then can become another tool
to be used in psychological abuse. For
example, the abuser can stop taking his
pills when he is upset with her, knowing
that this will make her anxious and afraid.
Or when he wants to strike out at her
dramatically he may deliberately overdose
himself, creating a medical crisis.
2. No medication yet discovered will turn an
abuser into a loving, considerate,
appropriate partner. It will just take the
edge off his absolute worst behaviors—if
it even does that. If your abusive partner
is taking medication, be aware that you are
only buying time. Take advantage of the
(more) peaceful period to get support in
your own healing. Begin by calling a
program for abused women.
MYTH #9
He hates women. His mother, or some
other woman, must have done something
terrible to him.
The notion that abusive men hate women was popularized
by Susan Forward’s book Men Who Hate Women and the
Women Who Love Them. Dr. Forward’s descriptions of
abusive men are the most accurate ones I have read, but she
was mistaken on one point: Most abusers don’t hate
women. They often have close relationships with their
mothers, or sisters, or female friends. A fair number are
able to work successfully with a female boss and respect
her authority, at least outwardly.
Disrespect for women certainly is rampant among
abusive men, with attitudes toward women that fall on a
continuum from those who can interact fairly
constructively with most women (as long as they are not
intimately involved with them) to men who are
misogynists and treat most women they encounter with
superiority and contempt. In general, I find that my clients’
view that their partners should cater to their needs and are
not worthy of being taken seriously does indeed carry over
into how they view other females, including their own
daughters. But, as we will see in Chapter 13, the disrespect
that abusive men so often direct toward women in general
tends to be born of their cultural values and conditioning
rather than personal experiences of being victimized by
women. Some abusive men use the excuse that their
behavior is a response to such victimization because they
want to be able to make women responsible for men’s
abuse. It is important to note that research has shown that
men who have abusive mothers do not tend to develop
especially negative attitudes toward females, but men who
have abusive fathers do; the disrespect that abusive men
show their female partners and their daughters is often
absorbed by their sons.
So while a small number of abusive men do hate women,
the great majority exhibit a more subtle—though often
quite pervasive—sense of superiority or contempt toward
females, and some don’t show any obvious signs of
problems with women at all until they are in a serious
relationship.
MYTH #10:
He is afraid of intimacy and abandonment.
Abusive men are often jealous and possessive, and their
coercive and destructive behaviors can escalate when their
partners attempt to break up with them. Some
psychologists have glanced quickly at this pattern and
concluded that abusers have an extreme fear of
abandonment. But many people, both male and female, are
afraid of abandonment and may reel from panic, heartbreak,
or desperation when being left by a partner. If a person’s
panicked reaction to being left could cause threats, stalking,
or murder, our entire society would be a war zone. But
postseparation homicides of intimate partners are
committed almost exclusively by men (and there is almost
always a history of abuse before the breakup). If fear of
abandonment causes postseparation abuse, why are the
statistics so lopsided? Do women have a much easier time
with abandonment than men do? No, of course not. (We’ll
examine the real causes of the extreme behaviors some
abusers use postseparation in Chapter 9.)
A close cousin of the abandonment myth is the belief
that abusive men “are afraid of intimacy,” which attempts
to explain why most abusers mistreat only their partners
and why most are male. According to this theory, the
abuser uses his periodic cruelty to keep his partner from
getting too close to him emotionally, a behavior which, in
the language of psychologists, is called mediating the
intimacy.
But there are several holes in this theory. First, abusive
men usually have their worst incidents after a period of
mounting tension and distance, not at the moments of
greatest closeness. Some keep their emotional distance all
the time so the relationship never gets close enough to
trigger any fears of intimacy they might have, yet the abuse
continues. Wife abuse occurs just as severely in some
cultures where there is no expectation of intimacy between
husbands and wives, where marriage has nothing to do with
real emotional connection. And, finally, there are plenty of
men who have powerful fears of intimacy who don’t abuse
or control their partners—because they don’t have an
abusive mentality.
MYTH #11:
He suffers from low self-esteem. He needs
his self-image shored up.
QUESTION 3:
IS IT BECAUSE HE FEELS BAD ABO UT
HIMSELF?
An abused woman tends to pour precious energy into
supporting her abusive partner and massaging his ego,
hoping against hope that if he is kept well stroked his next
explosion might be averted. How well does this strategy
work? Unfortunately, not very. You can’t manage an
abuser except for brief periods. Praising him and boosting
his self-opinion may buy you some time, but sooner or
later he’ll jump back into chewing pieces out of you. When
you try to improve an abuser’s feelings about himself, his
problem actually tends to get worse. An abusive man
expects catering, and the more positive attention he
receives, the more he demands. He never reaches a point
where he is satisfied, where he has been given enough.
Rather, he gets used to the luxurious treatment he is
receiving and soon escalates his demands.
My colleagues and I discovered this dynamic through a
mistake we made in the early years of abuse work. A few
times we asked clients who had made outstanding progress
in our program to be interviewed on television or to speak
to a group of high school students because we thought the
public could benefit from hearing an abuser speak in his
own words about his behaviors and his process of change.
But we found that each time we gave a client public
attention, he had a bad incident of mistreating his partner
within a few days thereafter. Feeling like a star and a
changed man, his head swelled from all the attention he had
been given, he would go home and rip into his partner with
accusations and put-downs. So we had to stop taking our
clients to public appearances.
The self-esteem myth is rewarding for an abuser,
because it gets his partner, his therapist, and others to cater
to him emotionally. Imagine the privileges an abusive man
may acquire: getting his own way most of the time, having
his partner bend over backward to keep him happy so he
won’t explode, getting to behave as he pleases, and then on
top of it all, he gets praise for what a good person he is,
and everyone is trying to help him feel better about
himself!
Certainly an abuser can be remorseful or ashamed after
being cruel or scary to his partner, especially if any
outsider has seen what he did. But those feelings are a
result of his abusive behavior, not a cause. And as a
relationship progresses, the abusive man tends to get more
comfortable with his own behavior and the remorse dies
out, suffocated under the weight of his justifications. He
may get nasty if he doesn’t receive the frequent
compliments, reassurance, and deference he feels he
deserves, but this reaction is not rooted in feelings of
inferiority; in fact, the reality is almost the opposite, as we
will see.
Think for a just a moment about how your partner’s
degrading and bullying behavior has hurt your self-esteem.
Have you suddenly turned into a cruel and explosive
person? If low self-esteem isn’t an excuse for you to
become abusive, then it’s no excuse for him either.
MYTH #12:
His boss abuses him, so he feels powerless
and unsuccessful.
He comes home and takes it out on his
family because that is the one place he can
feel powerful.
I call this myth “boss abuses man, man abuses woman,
woman abuses children, children hit dog, dog bites cat.”
The image it creates seems plausible, but too many pieces
fail to fit. Hundreds of my clients have been popular,
successful, good-looking men, not the downtrodden looking
for a scapegoat for their inner torment. Some of the worst
abusers I have worked with have been at the top of the
management ladder—with no boss to blame. The more
power these men have in their jobs, the more catering and
submission they expect at home. Several of my clients have
told me: “I have to order people around where I work, so I
have trouble snapping out of that mode when I get home.”
So while some abusers use the “mean boss” excuse, others
use the opposite.
The most important point is this one: In my fifteen
years in the field of abuse, I have never once had a client
whose behavior at home has improved because his job
situation improved.
MYTH #13:
He has poor communication, conflict-
resolution, and stress-management skills. He
needs training.
An abusive man is not unable to resolve conflicts
nonabusively; he is unwilling to do so. The skill deficits of
abusers have been the subject of a number of research
studies, and the results lead to the following conclusion:
Abusers have normal abilities in conflict resolution,
communication, and assertiveness when they choose to use
them. They typically get through tense situations at work
without threatening anyone; they manage their stress
without exploding when they spend Thanksgiving with
their parents; they share openly with their siblings
regarding their sadness over a grandparent’s death. But
they don’t want to handle these kinds of issues
nonabusively when it involves their partners. You can
equip an abuser with the most innovative, New Age skills
for expressing his deep emotions, listening actively, and
using win-win bargaining, and then he will go home and
continue abusing. In the coming chapter, we’ll see why.
MYTH #14:
There are just as many abusive women as
abusive men.
Abused men are invisible because they are
ashamed to tell.
There certainly are some women who treat their male
partners badly, berating them, calling them names,
attempting to control them. The negative impact on these
men’s lives can be considerable. But do we see men whose
self-esteem is gradually destroyed through this process?
Do we see men whose progress in school or in their careers
grinds to a halt because of the constant criticism and
undermining? Where are the men whose partners are forcing
them to have unwanted sex? Where are the men who are
fleeing to shelters in fear for their lives? How about the
ones who try to get to a phone to call for help, but the
women block their way or cut the line? The reason we
don’t generally see these men is simple: They’re rare.
I don’t question how embarrassing it would be for a man
to come forward and admit that a woman is abusing him.
But don’t underestimate how humiliated a woman feels
when she reveals abuse; women crave dignity just as much
as men do. If shame stopped people from coming forward,
no one would tell.
Even if abused men didn’t want to come forward, they
would have been discovered by now. Neighbors don’t turn
a deaf ear to abuse the way they might have ten or twenty
years ago. Now, when people hear screaming, objects
smashing against walls, loud slaps landing on skin, they call
the police. Among my physically abusive clients, nearly
one-third have been arrested as a result of a call to the
police that came from someone other than the abused
woman. If there were millions of cowed, trembling men out
there, the police would be finding them. Abusive men
commonly like to play the role of victim, and most men
who claim to be “battered men” are actually the
perpetrators of violence, not the victims.
In their efforts to adopt victim status, my clients try to
exaggerate their partners’ verbal power: “Sure, I can win a
physical fight, but she is much better with her mouth than I
am, so I’d say it balances out.” (One very violent man said
in his group session, “She stabs me through the heart with
her words,” to justify the fact that he had stabbed his
partner in the chest with a knife.) But abuse is not a battle
that you win by being better at expressing yourself. You
win it by being better at sarcasm, put-downs, twisting
everything around backward, and using other tactics of
control—an arena in which my clients win hands down
over their partners, just as they do in a violent altercation.
Who can beat an abuser at his own game?
Men can be abused by other men, however, and women
can be abused by women, sometimes through means that
include physical intimidation or violence. If you are a gay
man or lesbian who has been abused by a partner or who is
facing abuse now, most of what I explain in this book will
ring loud bells for you. The “he and she” language that I use
obviously won’t fit your experience, but the underlying
dynamics that I describe largely will. We’ll explore this
issue further in Chapter 6.
MYTH #15:
Abuse is as bad for the man who is doing it
as it is for his partner. They are both
victims.
My clients get over the pain of the abuse incidents far, far
faster than their partners do. Recall Dale from Chapter 1,
who insisted to me that the first ten years of his marriage
had gone swimmingly, while Maureen recounted ten years
of insults and cruelty? Certainly abusing one’s partner is
not a healthy lifestyle, but the negative effects don’t hold a
candle to the emotional and physical pain, loss of freedom,
self-blame, and numerous other shadows that abuse casts
over the life of its female target. Unlike alcoholics or
addicts, abusive men don’t “hit bottom.” They can
continue abusing for twenty or thirty years, and their
careers remain successful, their health stays normal, their
friendships endure. As we’ll see in Chapter 6, abusers
actually tend to benefit in many ways from their controlling
behaviors. An abuser can usually outperform his victim on
psychological tests, such as the ones that are routinely
required during custody disputes, because he isn’t the one
who has been traumatized by years of psychological or
physical assault. No one who listens carefully to the tragic
accounts of abused women and then sees the abusers each
week at a counseling group, as my colleagues and I have
done, could be fooled into believing that life is equally hard
for the men.
MYTH #16:
He is abusive because he has faced so much
societal discrimination and disempowerment
as a man of color, so at home he needs to feel
powerful.
I address this myth in detail in Chapter 6 under “Racial and
Cultural Differences in Abuse,” so here I offer only a brief
overview. First, a majority of abusive men are white, many
of them well educated and economically privileged, so
discrimination couldn’t be a central cause of partner abuse.
Second, if a man has experienced oppression himself, it
could just as easily make him more sympathetic to a
woman’s distress as less so, as is true for childhood abuse
(see Myth #1). And in fact there are men of color among
the most visible leaders in the United States in the
movement against the abuse of women. So while
discrimination against people of color is a terribly serious
problem today, it should not be accepted as an excuse for
abusing women.
MYTH #17:
The alcohol is what makes him abusive. If I
can get him to stay sober, our relationship
will be fine.
So many men hide their abusiveness under the cover of
alcoholism or drug addiction that I have chosen to devote
Chapter 8 to explore the issue of addiction in detail. The
most important point to be aware of is this: Alcohol cannot
create an abuser, and sobriety cannot cure one. The only
way a man can overcome his abusiveness is by dealing with
his abusiveness. And you are not “enabling” your partner
to mistreat you; he is entirely responsible for his own
actions.
WE HAVE NOW COMPLETED our tour through a museum
of myths about abusive men. You may find it difficult to
leave these misconceptions behind. I was attached to my
own myths years ago, but the abusers themselves kept
forcing me to look at the realities, even as they stubbornly
avoided doing so themselves. If you are involved with a
man who bullies you or cuts you down, perhaps you feel
even more confused than you did before reading this
chapter. You may be thinking, “But if his problem doesn’t
spring from these sources, where does it come from?”
So our next step is to carefully weave back together the
tangled strands we have just unraveled, to form a coherent
picture. As we do so, you will gradually find yourself
relieved to leave these eye-bending distortions behind. An
energizing clarity can then take their place, and the mystery
that abusers work so hard to create will vanish.
KEY PO INTS TO REMEMBER
An abusive man’s emotional problems do
not cause his abusiveness. You can’t change
him by figuring out what is bothering him,
helping him feel better, or improving the
dynamics of your relationship.
Feelings do not govern abusive or
controlling behavior; beliefs, values, and
habits are the driving forces.
The reasons that an abusive man gives for
his behavior are simply excuses. There is
no way to overcome a problem with
abusiveness by focusing on tangents such
as self-esteem, conflict resolution, anger
management, or impulse control.
Abusiveness is resolved by dealing with
abusiveness.
Abusers thrive on creating confusion,
including confusion about the abuse itself.
There is nothing wrong with you. Your
partner’s abuse problem is his own.
3
The Abusive Mentality
His attitude always seems to be: “You owe me.”
He manages to twist everything around so that
it’s my fault.
I feel suffocated by him. He’s trying to run my
life.
Everyone seems to think he’s the greatest guy in
the world. I wish they could see the side of him
that I have to live with.
He says he loves me so much. So why does he
treat me like this?
CHRO NIC MISTREATMENT gets people to doubt
themselves. Children of abusive parents know that
something is wrong, but they suspect the badness is inside
of them. Employees of an abusive boss spend much of
their time feeling that they are doing a lousy job, that they
should be smarter and work harder. Boys who get bullied
feel that they should be stronger or less afraid to fight.
When I work with an abused woman, my first goal is to
help her to regain trust in herself; to get her to rely on her
own perceptions, to listen to her own internal voices. You
don’t really need an “expert” on abuse to explain your life
to you; what you do need above all is some support and
encouragement to hold on to your own truth. Your abusive
partner wants to deny your experience. He wants to pluck
your view of reality out of your head and replace it with
his. When someone has invaded your identity in this way
enough times, you naturally start to lose your balance. But
you can find your way back to center.
An abuser creates a host of misconceptions to get his
partner to doubt herself and to make it possible for him to
lead her down dead-end paths. Having dispelled those
myths, we can now zero in on the roots of his steamrolling
style. I believe you will recognize them.
The insights I share in the pages ahead have been taught
to me primarily by the abused women themselves who are
the experts on abuse. My other teachers have been my
abusive clients, who lead us toward clarity each time that
they accidentally reveal their true thinking.
REALITY #1:
He is controlling.
My client Glenn arrived angry and agitated for his group
session one night. His words spilled out rapidly:
Harriet started yelling at me on Friday afternoon and
told me she is going to move out soon. Then she left for
the whole weekend and took my two-year-old son with
her. She really hurt me. So I decided to hurt her too, and
I wanted to go after something that was really important
to her, to show her what it’s like. She had been working
for a week on this college paper that she had put a lot of
hours into and was going to hand in on M onday. She left
it sitting right on top of her dresser, just asking for it. So
I tore it up into little pieces. Then I ripped up a bunch
of pictures of the three of us, and I left it all in a nice
pile on the bed for her to come home to. I think she
learned something from that.
Glenn was remarkably honest with me about his thought
process and his motives, probably because of how justified
he felt. He believed in his right to control his partner’s
actions; he expected his word to be the last word; and he
did not accept defiance. He considered it his right to punish
Harriet—in the most severe way he could think of—if she
took steps to recover ownership of her life. He talked
proudly of how he had “allowed” her various freedoms
while they were together, as if he were her parent, and
defended his right to remove her privileges when he thought
the time had come.
Control comes in many different forms. A few of my
clients have been so extremely controlling they could have
passed for military commanders. Russell, for example,
went so far as to require his children to do calisthenics each
morning before school. His wife was not allowed to speak
to anyone without his permission, and he would order her
back to her room to change clothes in the morning if he
didn’t approve of her outfit. At dinnertime, he would sit
back and comment like a restaurant reviewer on the
strengths and weaknesses of what she had prepared and
would periodically instruct her to go to the kitchen to get
things for the children, as if she were a waitress.
Russell’s style was at one end of the spectrum of
controlling behavior, however. M ost of my clients stake
out specific turf to control, like an explorer claiming land,
rather than trying to run everything. One abuser may be
fanatical about having to win every argument but leave his
partner alone about what she wears. Another man may
permit his partner to argue with him about the children, for
example, but if she refuses to let him change the TV station
when he wants, watch out. (Dozens of my clients have
thrown or smashed remote controls; the television is tightly
controlled by many abusers.) One abuser will have a
curfew for his partner, while another will allow his partner
to come and go as she pleases—as long as she makes his
meals and does his laundry.
THE SPHERES O F CO NTRO L
An abusive man’s control generally falls into one or more
of the following central spheres:
ARGUMENTS AND DECISION MAKING
An intimate relationship involves a steady flow of
decisions to be made, conflicting needs to negotiate, tastes
and desires to balance. Who is going to clean up the mess in
the kitchen? How much time should we spend alone
together and how much with other friends? Where do our
other hobbies and interests fit into our priorities? How will
we process and resolve annoyances or hurt feelings? What
rules will we have for our children?
The mind-set that an abuser brings to these choices and
tensions can make him impossible to get along with.
Consider how challenging it is to negotiate or compromise
with a man who operates on the following tenets (whether
or not he ever says them aloud):
1. “An argument should only last as long as
my patience does. Once I’ve had enough,
the discussion is over and it’s time for
you to shut up.”
2. “If the issue we’re struggling over is
important to me, I should get what I want.
If you don’t back off, you’re wronging
me.”
3. “I know what is best for you and for our
relationship. If you continue disagreeing
with me after I’ve made it clear which
path is the right one, you’re acting
stupid.”
4. “If my control and authority seem to be
slipping, I have the right to take steps to
reestablish the rule of my will, including
abuse if necessary.”
The last item on this list is the one that most
distinguishes the abuser from other people: Perhaps any of
us can slip into having feelings like the ones in numbers one
through three, but the abuser gives himself permission to
take action on the basis of his beliefs. With him, the
foregoing statements aren’t feelings; they are closely held
convictions that he uses to guide his actions. That is why
they lead to so much bullying behavior.
PERSO NAL FREEDO M
An abusive man often considers it his right to control
where his partner goes, with whom she associates, what
she wears, and when she needs to be back home. He
therefore feels that she should be grateful for any freedoms
that he does choose to grant her, and will say something in
a counseling session like, “She’s all bent out of shape
because there’s one sleazy girl I don’t let her hang out with,
when all the rest of the time I allow her to be friends with
anyone she wants.” He expects his partner to give him a
medal for his generosity, not to criticize him for his
oppressiveness. He sees himself as a reasonably permissive
parent—toward his adult partner—and he does not want to
meet with a lot of resistance on the occasions when he
believes that he needs to put his foot down.
Sometimes this control is exercised through wearing the
woman down with constant low-level complaints, rather
than through yelling or barking orders. The abuser may
repeatedly make negative comments about one of his
partner’s friends, for example, so that she gradually stops
seeing her acquaintance to save herself the hassle. In fact,
she might even believe it was her own decision, not noticing
how her abuser pressured her into it.
Is the abusive man’s thinking distorted? Certainly. A
man’s partner is not his child, and the freedoms he “grants”
her are not credits to be spent like chips when the urge to
control her arises. But his rules make sense to him, and he
will fight to hang on to them.
PARENTING
If the couple has children, the abusive man typically
considers himself the authority on parenting, even if he
contributes little to the actual work of looking after them.
He sees himself as a wise and benevolent head coach who
watches passively from the sidelines during the easy times
but steps in with the “correct” approach when his partner
isn’t handling the children properly. His arrogance about
the superiority of his parenting judgment may be matched
only by how little he truly understands, or pays attention
to, the children’s needs. No matter how good a mother his
partner is, he thinks she needs to learn from him, not the
other way around.
THE ABUSIVE MAN CLAIMS that his control is in his
partner’s best interest. This justification was captured by
my client Vinnie:
Olga and I were driving in a really bad neighborhood. We
were arguing, and she got crazy the way she does and
started trying to get out of the car. It was dark. This was
the kind of place where anything could happen to her. I
told her to stay in the car, that she wasn’t getting out in
a place like this, but she kept trying to push the door
open. I couldn’t get her to stop, so I finally had to slap
her in the arm, and unfortunately she hit her head against
the window. But at least that got her to settle down and
stay in the car.
Does Vinnie really believe that he is abusing his partner
for her own good? Yes and no. To some extent he does,
because he has convinced himself. But his real motivation is
plain to see: Olga wants out of the car in order to escape
Vinnie’s control, and he wants to make sure she can’t.
Unfortunately, an abuser can sometimes succeed at
convincing people that his partner is so irrational and out
of control, that her judgment is so poor, that she has to be
saved from herself. Never believe a man’s claim that he has
to harm his partner in order to protect her; only abusers
think this way.
When a man starts my program, he often says, “I am
here because I lose control of myself sometimes. I need to
get a better grip.” I always correct him: “Your problem is
not that you lose control of yourself, it’s that you take
control of your partner. In order to change, you don’t
need to gain control over yourself, you need to let go of
control of her.” A large part of his abusiveness comes in
the form of punishments used to retaliate against you for
resisting his control. This is one of the single most
important concepts to grasp about an abusive man.
REALITY #2:
He feels entitled.
Entitlement is the abuser’s belief that he has a special status
and that it provides him with exclusive rights and privileges
that do not apply to his partner. The attitudes that drive
abuse can largely be summarized by this one word.
To understand entitlement, we first need to look at how
rights should properly be conceived of in a couple or
family.
The man’s rights and the woman’s rights are the same
size. They have the right to have their opinions and desires
respected, to have a 50 percent say in decision making, to
live free from verbal abuse and physical harm. Their
children’s rights are somewhat smaller but substantial
nonetheless; children can’t have an equal say in decisions
because of their limited knowledge and experience, but they
do have the right to live free from abuse and fear, to be
treated with respect, and to have their voices heard on all
issues that concern them. However, an abuser perceives the
rights of the family like this:
Not only are the rights of his partner and children
diminished—with some abusers those little circles
disappear altogether—but his rights are greatly inflated.
My fundamental task as a counselor is to get the abusive
man to expand his perception of his partner’s and
children’s rights to their proper size and to shrink his view
of his own rights down to where it belongs. The abusive
man awards himself all kinds of “rights,” including:
Physical caretaking
Emotional caretaking
Sexual caretaking
Deference
Freedom from accountability
Physical caretaking is the focus of the more traditionally
minded abuser. He expects his partner to make dinner for
him the way he likes it, look after the children, clean the
house, and perform an endlessly continuing list of
additional tasks. He sees her essentially as an unpaid
servant. He grouches, “I work my butt off all day, and
when I come home I expect a little peace and quiet. Is that
too much to ask for?” He seems to expect a soft chair, a
newspaper, and a footstool. On the weekends he expects
everything in the home to be taken care of so that he can
watch sports or tinker with his car, go golfing or bird
watching, or sleep. If she doesn’t fulfill her myriad
household responsibilities to his satisfaction, he feels
entitled to dole out harsh criticism.
Although this style of abuser may seem out of date, he
is alive and well. He did learn to use some prettier
packaging for his regal expectations during the ’80s and
’90s, but the change is superficial. Fewer abusers look me
in the eye nowadays and say, “I expect a warm, tasty
dinner on the table when I come home,” but they may still
explode if it isn’t there.
Interwoven with the abuser’s overvaluation of his own
work is the devaluation of his partner’s labor. My clients
grumble to me: “I don’t know what the hell she does all
day. I come home and the house is a mess, the children
haven’t been fed, and she’s talking on the telephone. She
spends her time watching soap operas.” If she works
outside the home—and few families can get by on one
income—then he insists that her job is easy compared to
his. Of course, if he attempts to do what she does—for
example, if he is the primary parent for a while because
he’s unemployed and she’s working—he does an abrupt
about-face: Suddenly he declares that parenting and
housekeeping are monumental and admirable tasks,
requiring hours a day of rest for him to recuperate.
Emotional caretaking can be even more important than
homemaking services to the modern abuser. Remember
Ray, who swore at Mary Beth for “ignoring” him for two
days while she looked for her missing son? His problem
was that he believed that nothing—not even a missing child
—should interfere with Mary Beth’s duty to meet his
emotional needs. Just as common as the abuser who blows
up because dinner is late is the one who explodes because
his partner gets tired of listening to him talk endlessly
about himself, or because she wants to spend a little time
doing something alone that she enjoys, or because she
didn’t drop everything to soothe him when he was feeling
down, or because she failed to anticipate needs or desires he
hadn’t even expressed.
Abusive men often hide their high emotional demands
by cloaking them as something else. My client Bert, for
example, would be furious if his girlfriend Kirsten didn’t
get off the phone as soon as he came in the door. His
excuse to tear into her would be “all the money she’s
wasting on the phone bill when she knows we can’t afford
it,” but we noticed that the issue only arose when he
wanted her attention. If she called England when he wasn’t
around, or if he spent an hour on the phone to his parents
every Saturday morning, the expense was no big deal.
When I have new clients, I go to the board and draw a
compass with the needle pointing straight up to a big N.
“You want your partner to be this compass,” I say to
them, “and you want to be North. No matter where the
compass goes, it always points in the same direction. And
no matter where she goes, or what she’s doing, or what’s
on her mind, you expect her to always be focused on you.”
My clients sometimes protest to me, “But that’s what
being in a relationship is about. We’re supposed to focus on
each other.” But I notice that when he focuses on her, most
of what he thinks about is what she can do for him, not the
other way around. And when he doesn’t feel like focusing
on her at all, he doesn’t bother.
An abuser can seem emotionally needy. You can get
caught in a trap of catering to him, trying to fill a
bottomless pit. But he’s not so much needy as entitled, so
no matter how much you give him, it will never be enough.
He will just keep coming up with more demands because he
believes his needs are your responsibility, until you feel
drained down to nothing.
Sexual caretaking means that he considers it his
partner’s duty to keep him sexually satisfied. He may not
accept having his sexual advances rejected, yet turn her
down whenever he feels like it. Even her pleasure exists for
his benefit: If she doesn’t reach orgasm, for example, he
may resent her for it because he wants the pleasure of
seeing himself as a great lover.
Not all abusive men have great interest in sex. Some are
too busy with outside relationships or use substances that
diminish their sex drive. A few are gay, using their female
partners for window dressing. Some of my clients can feel
attracted to a woman only as part of a domination fantasy.
This style of abuser loses interest in sex if his partner
starts to assert herself as an equal human being deserving of
respect, or he begins to coerce or assault her sexually. In
short, he wants sex on his terms or not at all.
Deference refers to the abuser’s entitlement to have his
tastes and opinions treated as edicts. Once he has made the
pronouncement that a certain movie is shallow, or that
Louise was trying to seduce Jay at the picnic, or that
Republicans don’t know how to manage the economy, his
partner is supposed to accept his view unquestioningly. It
is especially important to him that she not disagree with
him in front of other people; if she does, he may later yell
at her, “You made me look like a fool, you’re always out to
show me up,” and similar accusations. His unstated rule is
that she is not to question his ideas.
Freedom from accountability means that the abusive
man considers himself above criticism. If his partner
attempts to raise her grievances, she is “nagging” or
“provoking” him. He believes he should be permitted to
ignore the damage his behavior is causing, and he may
become retaliatory if anyone tries to get him to look at it. I
had the following exchange with a man who was new to my
program:
BANCROFT : Can you explain to me why you are joining this
abuser group?
HANK: Well, I slapped my girl a few weeks ago, and now she
says I can’t come back in the house unless I get counseling.
BANCROFT : What led up to your abuse? Were you arguing?
HANK: Yes. And she accused me of having an affair! That
really pissed me off!
BANCROFT : Well, were you having an affair?
HANK (Pause, a little startled by my question): Well, yeah…
but she had no proof! She shouldn’t go saying things like
that when she has no proof!
Hank reserved for himself the privilege of being critical
of his partner, a privilege that he exercised a great deal.
Complaints against him, including drawing any attention to
how his behavior had hurt other people in the family, he
was quick to stifle. In Hank’s case, the retaliation took the
form of a physical assault.
The abusive man’s high entitlement leads him to have
unfair and unreasonable expectations, so that the
relationship revolves around his demands. His attitude is:
“You owe me.” For each ounce he gives, he wants a pound
in return. He wants his partner to devote herself fully to
catering to him, even if it means that her own needs—or her
children’s—get neglected. You can pour all your energy
into keeping your partner content, but if he has this mind-
set, he’ll never be satisfied for long. And he will keep
feeling that you are controlling him, because he doesn’t
believe that you should set any limits on his conduct or
insist that he meet his responsibilities.
Many men feel specifically entitled to use violence. A
recent study of college males studying psychology,
published in 1997, found that 10 percent believed that it
was acceptable to hit a female partner for refusing to have
sex, and 20 percent believed that it was acceptable to do so
if the man suspected her of cheating. Studies have found
similar statistics regarding young men’s belief that they
have the right to force a female to have sex if they have
spent a substantial amount of money on the evening’s
entertainment or if the woman started wanting sex but then
changed her mind. These studies point to the importance of
focusing on changing the entitled attitudes of abusers,
rather than attempting to find something wrong in their
individual psychology.
THE ABUSER’S OUTLO O K O N THE WO MAN’S
ANGER
The abusive man’s problem with anger is almost the
opposite of what is commonly believed. The reality is:
YO UR ABUSIVE PARTNER DO ESN’T HAVE A
PROBLEM WITH HIS ANGER; HE HAS A PRO BLEM
WITH YOUR ANGER.
One of the basic human rights he takes away from you
is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he
treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn’t rise and
your blood shouldn’t boil. The privilege of rage is reserved
for him alone. When your anger does jump out of you—as
will happen to any abused woman from time to time—he is
likely to try to jam it back down your throat as quickly as
he can. Then he uses your anger against you to prove what
an irrational person you are. Abuse can make you feel
straitjacketed. You may develop physical or emotional
reactions to swallowing your anger, such as depression,
nightmares, emotional numbing, or eating and sleeping
problems, which your partner may use as an excuse to
belittle you further or make you feel crazy.
Why does your partner react so strongly to your anger?
One reason may be that he considers himself above
reproach, as I discussed above. The second is that on some
level he senses—though not necessarily consciously—that
there is power in your anger. If you have space to feel and
express your rage, you will be better able to hold on to
your identity and to resist his suffocation of you. He tries
to take your anger away in order to snuff out your capacity
to resist his will. Finally, he perceives your anger as a
challenge to his authority, to which he responds by
overpowering you with anger that is greater than your own.
In this way he ensures that he retains the exclusive right to
be the one who shows anger.
THE ABUSER’S OWN ANGER
Once you grasp the nature of entitlement, the following
concept about the abusive man becomes clear:
HE ISN’T ABUSIVE BECAUSE HE IS ANGRY; HE’S
ANGRY BECAUSE HE’S ABUSIVE.
The abuser’s unfair and unrealistic expectations ensure
that his partner can never follow all of his rules or meet all
of his demands. The result is that he is frequently angry or
enraged. This dynamic was illustrated on a recent talk show
by a young man who was discussing his abuse of his
present wife. He said that his definition of a good
relationship was: “Never arguing and saying you love each
other every day.” He told the audience that his wife
“deserved” his mistreatment because she wasn’t living up
to this unrealistic image. It wouldn’t do any good to send
this young man, or any other abuser, to an anger-
management program, because his entitlements would just
keep producing more anger. His attitudes are what need to
change.
REALITY #3:
He twists things into their opposites.
Emile, a physically violent client with whom I worked,
gave me the following account of his worst assault on his
wife: “One day Tanya went way overboard with her
mouth, and I got so pissed off that I grabbed her by the
neck and put her up against the wall.” With his voice filled
with indignation, he said, “Then she tried to knee me in the
balls! How would you like it if a woman did that to you??
Of course I lashed out. And when I swung my hand down,
my fingernails made a long cut across her face. What the
hell did she expect?”
QUESTION 4:
WHY DOES HE SAY THAT I AM THE
O NE ABUSING HIM?
The abuser’s highly entitled perceptual system causes
him to mentally reverse aggression and self-defense. When
Tanya attempted to defend herself against Emile’s life-
threatening attack, he defined her actions as violence
toward him. When he then injured her further, he claimed
he was defending himself against her abuse. The lens of
entitlement the abuser holds over his eye stands everything
on its head, like the reflection in a spoon.
Another client, Wendell, described an incident in which
he stomped out of the house and slammed the door. “My
wife Aysha nags at me for hours. I can only take so much
of her complaining and telling me I’m no good. Yesterday
she went on for a half hour, and I finally called her a bitch
and took off.” I asked him what Aysha was upset about,
and he said he didn’t know. “When she goes on like that I
just tune her out.” A few days later I spoke with Aysha
about the incident, and she told me that she had indeed
been yelling at Wendell for five or ten minutes. However,
he had failed to tell me that he had launched a verbal assault
when she first woke up that morning and had continued
berating her all day: “He totally dominates arguments; he
repeats himself like a broken record; and I’m lucky if I can
get a word in. And his language is awful—he must have
called me a ‘bitch’ ten times that day.” She finally reached
her limit and began standing up for herself forcefully, and
that was when he stormed out for the evening.
Why does Wendell think that Aysha is the one who has
been doing all the yelling and complaining? Because in his
mind she’s supposed to be listening, not talking. If she
expresses herself at all, that’s too much.
When I challenge my clients to stop bullying their
partners, they twist my words around just as they do their
partners’. They accuse me of having said things that have
little connection to my actual words. An abuser says,
“You’re saying I should lie down and let her walk all over
me” because I told him that intimidating his partner is
unacceptable no matter how angry he is. He says, “So
you’re telling us that our partners can do anything they
want to us, and we aren’t allowed to lift a finger to defend
ourselves” because his partner told him that she was sick of
his friends trashing the house and that he should “clean up
his goddamned mess,” and I told him that was no excuse to
call her a disgusting name. He says, “Your approach is that
whatever she does is okay, because she’s a woman, but
because I’m the man, there’s much stricter rules for me”
because I pointed out his double standards and insisted that
he should live by the same rules he applies to her.
The abusive man has another reason to exaggerate and
ridicule his partner’s statements (and mine): He wants to
avoid having to think seriously about what she is saying
and struggle to digest it. He feels entitled to swat her down
like a fly instead.
REALITY #4:
He disrespects his partner and considers
himself superior to her.
Sheldon’s relationship with Kelly was over. He was
required to enter my program because he had violated a
restraining order but denied that he had ever been violent or
frightening to Kelly. Now he was attempting to get
custody of their three-year-old daughter, Ashley. He
claimed that Kelly had never looked after Ashley from the
time of her birth and had “never bonded with her.” He
added, “I don’t consider her Ashley’s mother. She’s just a
vessel, just a channel that Ashley came through to get into
this world.”
Sheldon had reduced Kelly to an inanimate object in his
mind, a baby-producing machine. When he spoke of her, he
twisted his face up in disgusted expressions of contempt.
At the same time, he never sounded upset; he considered
Kelly too far beneath him to raise his ire. He had the same
attitude you might have if an annoying but harmless little
dog were nipping at your heels. His tone of condescension
indicated how certain he was of his superiority to Kelly.
As memorable as Sheldon’s smug derision was, it was
only a few notches worse than the common thinking of
many abusive men. The abuser tends to see his partner as
less intelligent, less competent, less logical, and even less
sensitive than he is. He will tell me, for example, that she
isn’t the compassionate person he is. He often has
difficulty conceiving of her as a human being. This
tendency in abusers is known as objectification or
depersonalization. Most abusers verbally attack their
partners in degrading, revolting ways. They reach for the
words that they know are most disturbing to women, such
as bitch, whore, and cunt, often preceded by the word fat.
These words assault her humanity, reducing her to an
animal, a nonliving object, or a degraded sexual body part.
The partners of my clients tell me that these disgusting
words carry a force and an ugliness that feel like violence.
Through these carefully chosen epithets—and my clients
sometimes admit that they use the most degrading words
they can think of—abusers make their partners feel both
debased and unsafe.
Objectification is a critical reason why an abuser tends
to get worse over time. As his conscience adapts to one
level of cruelty—or violence—he builds to the next. By
depersonalizing his partner, the abuser protects himself
from the natural human emotions of guilt and empathy, so
that he can sleep at night with a clear conscience. He
distances himself so far from her humanity that her feelings
no longer count, or simply cease to exist. These walls tend
to grow over time, so that after a few years in a
relationship my clients can reach a point where they feel no
more guilt over degrading or threatening their partners than
you or I would feel after angrily kicking a stone in the
driveway.
Abuse and respect are diametric opposites: You do not
respect someone whom you abuse, and you do not abuse
someone whom you respect.
REALITY #5:
He confuses love and abuse.
Here are comments my clients commonly make to me:
“The reason I abuse her is because I have such strong
feelings for her. You hurt the ones you love the most.”
“No one can get me as upset as she can.”
“Yeah, I told her she’d better not ever try to leave me.
You have no idea how much I love this girl!”
I was sick of watching her ruining her life. I care too
much to sit back and do nothing about it.”
An abusive man often tries to convince his partner that
his mistreatment of her is proof of how deeply he cares,
but the reality is that abuse is the opposite of love. The
more a man abuses you, the more he is demonstrating that
he cares only about himself. He may feel a powerful desire
to receive your love and caretaking, but he only wants to
give love when it’s convenient.
So is he lying when he says he loves you? No, usually
not. Most of my clients do feel a powerful sensation inside
that they call love. For many of them it is the only kind of
feeling toward a female partner that they have ever had, so
they have no way of knowing that it isn’t love. When an
abusive man feels the powerful stirring inside that other
people call love, he is probably largely feeling:
The desire to have you devote your life to
keeping him happy with no outside
interference
The desire to have sexual access
The desire to impress others by having you
be his partner
The desire to possess and control you
These desires are important aspects of what romantic love
means to him. He may well be capable of feeling genuine
love for you, but first he will have to dramatically reorient
his outlook in order to separate abusive and possessive
desires from true caring, and become able to really see you.
The confusion of love with abuse is what allows abusers
who kill their partners to make the absurd claim that they
were driven by the depths of their loving feelings. The
news media regrettably often accept the aggressors’ view of
these acts, describing them as “crimes of passion.” But
what could more thoroughly prove that a man did not love
his partner? If a mother were to kill one of her children,
would we ever accept the claim that she did it because she
was overwhelmed by how much she cared? Not for an
instant. Nor should we. Genuine love means respecting the
humanity of the other person, wanting what is best for him
or her, and supporting the other person’s self-esteem and
independence. This kind of love is incompatible with abuse
and coercion.
REALITY #6:
He is manipulative.
Let’s examine the following interactions between an
abusive man named David and his partner Joanne:
David is yelling at Joanne, pointing his
finger and turning red in the face. Joanne
tells him he’s too angry and she doesn’t
like it. He yells even louder, saying, “I’m
not angry, I’m just trying to get my point
across and you’re not listening! Don’t tell
me what I’m feeling, I hate that! You’re not
inside me!”
One day Joanne tells David that his
outbursts are getting to her and she needs
to take some time off from their
relationship. David says, “What you are
saying is that you don’t love me anymore.
I’m not sure you ever loved me. You don’t
understand how strong my feelings are for
you,” and he looks close to tears. The
conversation shifts to Joanne reassuring
David that she isn’t abandoning him, and
her complaints about his behavior get lost
in the shuffle.
On another occasion, Joanne brings up the
fact that she would like to go back to
school. David responds negatively, saying,
“We can’t afford it,” and refuses to look
after the children while she’s at class.
Joanne proposes a number of strategies for
dealing with both money and child care, all
of which David finds something wrong
with. Joanne finally decides it’s impossible
to continue her education, but David then
insists that he wasn’t trying to talk her out
of it. She winds up feeling that the decision
not to go back to school is her own.
Few abusive men rely entirely on verbal abuse or
intimidation to control their partners. Being a nonstop
bully is too much work, and it makes the man look bad. If
he is abusive all the time, his partner starts to recognize
that she’s being abused, and the man may feel too guilty
about his behavior. The abuser therefore tends to switch
frequently to manipulating his partner to get what he
wants. He may also sometimes use these tactics just to get
her upset or confused.
There are some signs of manipulation by abusers that
you can watch for:
Changing his moods abruptly and
frequently, so that you find it difficult to
tell who he is or how he feels, keeping you
constantly off balance. His feelings toward
you are especially changeable.
Denying the obvious about what he is doing
or feeling. He’ll speak to you with his
voice trembling with anger, or he’ll blame a
difficulty on you, or he’ll sulk for two
hours, and then deny it to your face. You
know what he did—and so does he—but he
refuses to admit it, which can drive you
crazy with frustration. Then he may call
you irrational for getting so upset by his
denial.
Convincing you that what he wants you to
do is what is best for you. This way the
abuser can make his selfishness look like
generosity, which is a neat trick. A long
time may pass before you realize what his
real motives were.
Getting you to feel sorry for him, so that
you will be reluctant to push forward with
your complaints about what he does.
Getting you to blame yourself, or blame
other people, for what he does.
Using confusion tactics in arguments,
subtly or overtly changing the subject,
insisting that you are thinking or feeling
things that you aren’t, twisting your
words, and many other tactics that serve as
glue to pour into your brain. You may leave
arguments with him feeling like you are
losing your mind.
Lying or misleading you about his actions,
his desires, or his reasons for doing certain
things, in order to guide you into doing
what he wants you to do. One of the most
frequent complaints I get from abused
women is that their partners lie repeatedly,
a form of psychological abuse that in itself
can be highly destructive over time.
Getting you and the people you care about
turned against each other by betraying
confidences, being rude to your friends,
telling people lies about what you
supposedly said about them, charming
your friends and then telling them bad
things about you, and many other divisive
tactics.
In some ways manipulation is worse than overt abuse,
especially when the two are mixed together. When a
woman gets called “bitch,” or gets shoved or slapped, she
at least knows what her partner did to her. But after a
manipulative interaction she may have little idea what went
wrong; she just knows that she feels terrible, or crazy, and
that somehow it seems to be her own fault.
REALITY #7:
He strives to have a good public image.
If you are involved with an abusive man, you may spend a
lot of your time trying to figure out what is wrong with
you, rather than what is wrong with him. If he gets along
well with other people and impresses them with his
generosity, sense of humor, and friendliness, you may wind
up wondering, “What is it about me that sets him off?
Other people seem to think he’s great.”
QUESTION 5:
HO W CO ME EVERYO NE ELSE THINKS
HE’S W O NDERFUL?
Most abusive men put on a charming face for their
communities, creating a sharp split between their public
image and their private treatment of women and children.
He may be:
Enraged at home but calm and smiling
outside
Selfish and self-centered with you but
generous and supportive with others
Domineering at home but willing to
negotiate and compromise outside
Highly negative about females while on his
own turf but a vocal supporter of equality
when anyone else is listening
Assaultive toward his partner or children
but nonviolent and nonthreatening with
everyone else
Entitled at home but critical of other men
who disrespect or assault women
The pain of this contrast can eat away at a woman. In
the morning her partner cuts her to the quick by calling her
a “brainless fat cow,” but a few hours later she sees him
laughing with the people next door and helping them fix
their car. Later the neighbor says to her, “Your partner is
so nice. You’re lucky to be with him—a lot of men
wouldn’t do what he does.” She responds with a mumbled
“Yeah,” feeling confused and tongue-tied. Back at home,
she asks herself over and over again, “Why me?”
DO ABUSIVE MEN HAVE SPLIT PERSO NALITIES?
Not really. They are drawn to power and control, and part
of how they get it is by looking good in public. The abusive
man’s charm makes his partner reluctant to reach out for
support or assistance because she feels that people will
find her revelations hard to believe or will blame her. If
friends overhear him say something abusive, or police
arrest him for an assault, his previous people-pleasing lays
the groundwork to get him off the hook. The observers
think, He’s such a nice guy, he’s just not the type to be
abusive. She must have really hurt him.
The abuser’s nice-guy front helps him feel good about
himself. My clients say to me, “I get along fine with
everyone but her. You should ask around about what I’m
like; you’ll see. I’m a calm, reasonable person. People can
see that she’s the one who goes off.” Meanwhile, he uses
the difficulties that she is having in her relationships with
people—many of which may be caused by him—as further
proof that she is the one with the problem.
One of the most important challenges facing a counselor
of abusive men is to resist being drawn in by the men’s
charming persona. As they sit chatting and joking in their
group meeting, cruelty and selfishness seem faraway. I find
myself wondering the same thing the neighbors do: Could
this guy really get that mean? And even after he admits to
what he does, it’s still hard to believe. This contrast is a
key reason why abusers can get away with what they do.
Among my clients I have had: numerous doctors,
including two surgeons; many successful businesspeople,
including owners and directors of large companies; about a
dozen college professors; several lawyers; a prominent—
and very mellow-sounding—radio personality;
clergypeople; and two well-known professional athletes.
One of my violent clients had spent every Thanksgiving for
the past ten years volunteering at his local soup kitchen.
Another was a publicly visible staff member of a major
international human rights organization. The cruelty and
destructiveness that these men were capable of would have
stunned their communities had they known.
Although these men usually keep their abusive side well
hidden outside of the home, there is one situation in which
it slips out: when someone confronts them about their
abusiveness and sticks up for the abused woman, which
happens to be my job. Suddenly, the attitudes and tactics
they normally reserve for home come pouring out. The vast
majority of women who say that they are being abused are
telling the truth. I know this to be true because the abusers
let their guard down with me, belying their denial.
REALITY #8:
He feels justified.
Several years ago, I had a client who began his first group
session by declaring: “I am here because I’m a batterer.” I
was impressed with his ownership of his problem.
However, the next week he softened his words to, “I’m
here because I’m abusive,” and the third week he stated,
“I’m in the program because my wife thinks I’m abusive.”
Within a few more weeks he had quit coming, having
comfortably wrapped himself back up in his justifications.
Abusers externalize responsibility for their actions,
believing that their partners make them behave in abusive
ways. Each of my clients predictably uses some variation
of the following lines:
“She knows how to push my buttons.”
“She wanted me to go off, and she knows how to make it
happen.”
“She pushed me too far.”
“There’s only so much a man can take.”
“You expect me to just let her walk all over me. What
would you do?”
Many clients express guilt or remorse when they first
begin attending counseling, but as soon as I start to press
them to look at their histories of abusive behavior, they
switch back to defending their actions. They don’t mind
glibly saying, “I know what I did was wrong,” but when I
ask them to describe their verbal or physical assaults in
detail, they leap back to justifying.
Abusive men are masters of excuse making. In this
respect they are like substance abusers, who believe that
everyone and everything except them is responsible for
their actions. When they aren’t blaming their partners, they
blame stress, alcohol, their childhood, their children, their
bosses, or their insecurities. M ore important, they feel
entitled to make these excuses; when I point out that other
men under the same pressures choose not to be abusive,
they tend to become irate or contemptuous.
Does this mean that abusers are psychopaths who lack
any conscience that could cause them to feel guilt or
responsibility? Generally not, although I have had a small
number (perhaps 5 percent of my clients) who are. Most
abusers do have a conscience about their behavior outside
of the family. They may be willing to be answerable for
their actions at work, at the club, or on the street. At home,
however, their sense of entitlement takes over.
The abusive man commonly believes he can blame his
partner for anything that goes wrong, not just his
abusiveness. Did he just suffer a disappointment? She
caused it. Is he embarrassed by a mistake he made? She
should have prevented it. Is one of the children in a difficult
period? She’s a bad mother. Everything is someone else’s
fault, and “someone else” is usually her.
REALITY #9:
Abusers deny and minimize their abuse.
One of my areas of specialization is court-related work
involving abusers who are physically violent or who abuse
their children. I frequently encounter court personnel who
say: “Well, she accuses him of abusing her, but he denies
it.” They then drop the matter, as if the man’s denial closes
the case. They also tell me: “He says she does the same
things to him, so I guess they abuse each other.” This kind
of denial and cross-accusation tells us nothing about
whether the woman is telling the truth. If the man is
abusive, of course he is going to deny it, partly to protect
himself and partly because his perceptions are distorted. If
he were ready to accept responsibility for his actions in
relationships, he wouldn’t be abusive. Breaking through
denial and minimization is one of the main tasks facing an
abuse counselor. Most of the men in my groups admit to
some abusive behavior—although they don’t see it as
abusive, of course—but they acknowledge only a small
portion of what they have actually done, as I learn when I
interview the abused partners.
When an abuser denies an incident immediately after it
happens, he can set his partner’s head spinning. Picture a
woman who arises in the morning with her stomach still
tied in a knot from an ugly blowout the night before. Her
partner makes a face at her in the kitchen and says, “Why
are you so grumpy today?”
She replies, “Why the hell do you think? You called me
‘loser’ right in front of the children, and then you yanked
my towel off so they would laugh at me. Am I supposed to
come down the stairs whistling a happy tune?”
“What are you talking about?” he gasps. “You’re a
fucking drama junkie. I was clear across the room from you
when your towel fell off. You’re going to blame that on
me? You’re nuts.” And he walks off shaking his head.
A woman can feel that she is losing her mind—or
develop actual psychiatric symptoms—if the obvious
realities of her life, including abuse, are denied repeatedly
by her partner. The certainty and authority in his voice,
with his eyes twisted up to show how baffled he is, leave
her questioning herself. “Did that really happen? M aybe it
didn’t. Maybe I do overreact to innocent things.” The more
serious the incidents he denies, the more her grip on reality
can start to slip. And if outsiders start to notice her
instability, the abuser can use their observations to
persuade them that her revelations of abuse by him are
fantasies.
The partners of this style of abuser ask me: “After an
incident, it seems like he really believes the abuse didn’t
happen. Is he consciously lying?” The answer in most
cases is yes. M ost abusers do not have severe memory
problems. He probably remembers exactly what he did,
especially when only a short time has passed. He denies
his actions to close off discussion because he doesn’t want
to answer for what he did, and perhaps he even wants you
to feel frustrated and crazy. However, a small percentage of
abusers—perhaps one in twelve—may have psychological
conditions such as narcissistic or borderline personality
disorder, in which they literally block any bad behavior
from consciousness. One of the clues that your partner
may have such a disturbance is if you notice him doing
similar things to other people. If his denial and mind
messing are restricted to you, or to situations that are
related to you, he is probably simply abusive.
Denial and minimization are part of most destructive
behavior patterns, whether they be alcohol abuse, gambling,
or child abuse. Partner abuse is no exception.
REALITY #10:
Abusers are possessive.
New clients in my program sometimes look bewildered, as
if I were giving a seminar on edible plants and they had
wandered into the wrong room. They can hardly wait to
speak, rising out of their seats to sputter at me: “But these
are our wives and girlfriends you are talking about. Do you
really mean to say that someone else can dictate what we
do in our relationships?” They smile as they speak or
shake their heads lightly, as if they feel compassion for my
dull wits. They assume I somehow have failed to realize
that these women are theirs.
The sense of ownership is one reason why abuse tends
to get worse as relationships get more serious. The more
history and commitment that develop in the couple, the
more the abuser comes to think of his partner as a prized
object. Possessiveness is at the core of the abuser’s mind-
set, the spring from which all the other streams spout; on
some level he feels that he owns you and therefore has the
right to treat you as he sees fit.
QUESTION 6:
WHY IS HE SO INSANELY JEALO US?
For many abusers, possessiveness takes the form of sexual
jealousy. This style of man monitors his partner’s
associations carefully, expects her to account for her
whereabouts at all times, and periodically rips into her with
jealous accusations, as Fran did in Chapter 1. Ironically, the
most accusatory abusers are among the ones most likely to
be cheating themselves; possessiveness and entitlement
make the abuser feel that it is acceptable for him to have
affairs, but not her.
An equally important reason for the extreme jealousy
exhibited by so many abusive men is the desire to isolate
their partners. In Chapter 1 we met Marshall, who did not
believe his own hysterical accusations of infidelity against
his wife. So what was driving his behavior? An abusive
man who isolates his partner does so primarily for two
reasons:
1. He wants her life to be focused entirely on
his needs. He feels that other social
contacts will allow her less time for him,
and he doesn’t accept that she has that
right.
2. He doesn’t want her to develop sources of
strength that could contribute to her
independence. Although it is often largely
unconscious, abusive men are aware on
some level that a woman’s social contacts
can bring her strength and support that
could ultimately enable her to escape his
control (as we saw with Dale and
Maureen in Chapter 1). An abusive man
commonly attempts to keep his partner
completely dependent on him to increase
his power.
Because of this mind-set, an abusive man tends to
perceive any relationships that his partner develops,
whether with males or females, as threats to him. You may
try to manage this problem by giving him lots of
reassurance that you still love him and are not going to
cheat on him. But you will find that his efforts to isolate
you don’t lessen, because his fears that you might sleep
with another man are actually only a small part of why he
is trying to isolate you.
At the same time, jealous accusations and isolation are
only one form that ownership can take. There are abusive
men who do not try to control their partners’ associations,
but their underlying attitude of “You’re mine to do with as
I see fit” reveals itself in other ways. If your partner’s
sister criticizes him for bullying you, he may tell her:
“What I do with my girl is none of your business.” If you
have children, he may start to treat all family members as
his belongings. His anger may escalate dangerously when
you attempt to break away from him. Keep the word
ownership in mind, and you may begin to notice that many
of your partner’s behaviors are rooted in believing that you
belong to him.
ABUSIVE MEN COME in every personality type, arise
from good childhoods and bad ones, are macho men or
gentle, “liberated” men. No psychological test can
distinguish an abusive man from a respectful one.
Abusiveness is not a product of a man’s emotional injuries
or of deficits in his skills. In reality, abuse springs from a
man’s early cultural training, his key male role models, and
his peer influences. In other words, abuse is a problem of
values, not of psychology. When someone challenges an
abuser’s attitudes and beliefs, he tends to reveal the
contemptuous and insulting personality that normally
stays hidden, reserved for private attacks on his partner.
An abuser tries to keep everybody—his partner, his
therapist, his friends and relatives—focused on how he
feels, so that they won’t focus on how he thinks, perhaps
because on some level he is aware that if you grasp the true
nature of his problem, you will begin to escape his
domination.
KEY PO INTS TO REMEMBER
Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not
feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk
is entitlement, and the branches are control.
Abuse and respect are opposites. Abusers
cannot change unless they overcome their
core of disrespect toward their partners.
Abusers are far more conscious of what
they are doing than they appear to be.
However, even their less-conscious
behaviors are driven by their core attitudes.
Abusers are unwilling to be nonabusive, not
unable. They do not want to give up power
and control.
You are not crazy. Trust your perceptions
of how your abusive partner treats you and
thinks about you.
4
The Types of Abusive Men
I feel so bad for him; he’s had a really hard life.
I’m lucky to be with him; he could get any
woman he wants.
I’m really scared of what he may do to me some
day.
I shouldn’t argue with him, because I just come
out feeling like an idiot.
He’s very sensitive. I shouldn’t complain so
much; he’s doing the best he can.
He says the reason he cheats on me so much is
that he’s a sex addict.
THE QUALIT IES THAT MAKE UP an abusive man are
like the ingredients in a recipe: The basics are always
present, but the relative amounts vary greatly. One man
may be so severely controlling that his partner can’t make a
move without checking with him first, and yet, oddly, he
contributes substantially to the domestic work and child
care. Another man may allow his partner to come and go as
she pleases, even accepting her friendships with men, but
there is hell to pay if she fails to wait on him hand and
foot, or if she makes the mistake of asking him to clean up
after himself. Still other abusers are less overtly controlling
and entitled than either of these men but mind-twisting in
the severity of their manipulations.
The tactics and attitudes of abusers can vary from
country to country, from ethnic group to ethnic group,
from rich man to poor man. Abusers from each culture have
their special areas of control or cruelty. Middleclass white
abusers, for example, tend to have strict rules about how a
woman is allowed to argue. If she talks back to him, shows
anger, or doesn’t shut up when she is told to, he is likely to
make her pay. M y clients from Latin American cultures
typically permit their partners to be more forceful and
“mouthy” in a conflict than my white clients but can be
highly retaliatory if their partners give any attention to
another male. Abusers select the pieces of turf they wish to
stake out, influenced in those choices by their particular
culture and background. Each woman who is involved with
an abusive or controlling man has to deal with his unique
blend of tactics and attitudes, his particular rhythm of good
times and bad times, and his specific way of presenting
himself to the outside world. No one should ever tell an
abused woman, “I know just what you’re going through,”
because the experience of each woman is different.
Viewed from another angle, however, abuse doesn’t vary
that much. One man uses a little more of one ingredient and
a little less of the other, but the overall flavor of the
mistreatment has core similarities: assaults on the woman’s
self-esteem, controlling behavior, undermining her
independence, disrespect. Each abused woman has times of
feeling that a riptide is dragging her under the sea, and she
struggles for air. Confusion has been part of the experience
of almost every one of the hundreds of abused women I
have spoken with. Whether because of the abuser’s
manipulativeness, his popularity, or simply the mind-
bending contrast between his professions of love and his
vicious psychological or physical assaults, every abused
woman finds herself fighting to make sense out of what is
happening.
Recognizing the nature of the abusive man’s problem
can be a first step out of the fog. In this chapter I introduce
you to ten styles of abuse I have encountered among the
two thousand men I have worked with. One—or more—of
these profiles may jump out at you, so that you find
yourself feeling: “There he is!” On the other hand, you
might find instead that he does not fit neatly into any of
these “types” but seems rather to draw bits of himself
from each one. In that case, think of these profiles not as
different men, but as the varying faces of one man. Either
way, the descriptions can help you to put your finger on
what your partner is up to.
The sections below describe each style of man while he
is being abusive. I don’t mean that he is like this all the
time. In fact, men from any of the categories below can turn
kind and loving at any moment and stay in that mode for
days, weeks, or even months.
THE DEMAND MAN
The Demand Man is highly entitled. He expects his
partner’s life to revolve around meeting his needs and is
angry and blaming if anything gets in the way. He becomes
enraged if he isn’t catered to or if he is inconvenienced in
even a minor way. The partner of this man comes to feel
that nothing she does is ever good enough and that it is
impossible to make him happy. He criticizes her
frequently, usually about things that he thinks she should
have done—or done better—for him.
Is every highly demanding partner an abuser? No. There
are specific elements to the Demand Man’s style:
1. He has little sense of give and take. His
demands for emotional support, favors,
caretaking, or sexual attention are well out
of proportion to his contributions; he
constantly feels that you owe him things
that he has done nothing to earn.
2. He exaggerates and overvalues his own
contributions. If he was generous one day
back in 1997, you are probably still
hearing about it today as proof of how
wonderfully he treats you and how
ungrateful you are. He seems to keep a
mental list of any favors or kindnesses he
ever does and expects each one paid back
at a heavy interest rate. He thinks you
owe him tremendous gratitude for meeting
the ordinary responsibilities of daily life
—when he does—but takes your
contributions for granted.
3. When he doesn’t get what he feels is his
due, he punishes you for letting him
down.
4. When he is generous or supportive, it’s
because he feels like it. When he isn’t in
the mood to give anything, he doesn’t. He
is positive or loving toward you when he
feels the need to prove to himself or to
others that he is a good person, or when
there is something that he is about to
demand in return; in other words, it’s
about him, not you. The longer you have
been with him, the more his generous-
seeming actions appear self-serving.
5. If your needs ever conflict with his, he is
furious. At these times he attacks you as
self-centered or inflexible, turning reality
on its head with statements such as, “All
you care about is yourself!” He tends to
work hard to convince outsiders of how
selfish and ungrateful you are, speaking in
a hurt voice about all the things he does
for you.
At the same time, the Demand Man is likely to be
furious if anything is demanded of him. Not only are you
not supposed to demand any favors, you aren’t even
supposed to ask him to take care of his own obligations. If
you ask him to clean up a mess he’s left, he responds, “I’m
not your fucking servant.” If you ask him to pay money he
owes you or to work more hours to help out with the
household expenses, he says, “You’re a typical woman, all
you want from me is my money.” If you complain to him
of how rarely he is there for you, he’ll say, “You are a
needy, controlling bitch.” He keeps twisting things around
backward in these ways, so that any effort you make to
discuss your needs or his responsibilities switches
abruptly to being about his needs and your responsibilities.
The Demand Man is sometimes less controlling than
other abusers as long as he is getting his needs met on his
terms. He may allow you to have your own friendships or
support you in pursuing your own career. But the effects
on you of your partner’s extreme entitlement can be just as
destructive as severe control.
The central attitudes driving the Demand Man
are:
It’s your job to do things for me,
including taking care of my
responsibilities if I drop the ball
on them. If I’m unhappy about
any aspect of my life, whether it
has to do with our relationship or
not, it’s your fault.
You should not place demands
on me at all. You should be
grateful for whatever I choose to
give.
I am above criticism.
I am a very loving and giving
partner. You’re lucky to have
me.
MR. RIGHT
Mr. Right considers himself the ultimate authority on
every subject under the sun; you might call him “Mr.
Always Right.” He speaks with absolute certainty, brushing
your opinions aside like annoying gnats. He seems to see
the world as a huge classroom, in which he is the teacher
and you are his student. He finds little of value in your
thoughts or insights, so he seeks to empty out your head
and fill it up with his jewels of brilliance. When Mr. Right
sits in one of my groups for abusive men, he often speaks
of his partner as if she were in danger from her own idiocy
and he needs to save her from herself. Mr. Right has
difficulty speaking to his partner—or about her—without a
ring of condescension in his voice. And in a conflict his
arrogance gets even worse.
Mr. Right’s superiority is a convenient way for him to
get what he wants. When he and his partner are arguing
about their conflicting desires, he turns it into a clash
between Right and Wrong or between Intelligence and
Stupidity. He ridicules and discredits her perspective so
that he can escape dealing with it. Here is a conversation I
had with a M r. Right whom I worked with in one of my
abuser groups:
BANCROFT : Pat, do you have any abusive behaviors to
report from this past week?
PAT : Well, I did yell at Gwen once and called her “bitch.” We
were fighting about money, as usual.
BANCROFT : What was Gwen’s perspective in the argument?
PAT : She thinks money grows on trees.
BANCROFT : Gwen said that money grows on trees?
PAT : Well no, not just like that. But that’s how she acts.
BANCROFT : Let’s try again. What was she saying in the
argument?
PAT : She thinks we have enough money to get both of the
children whole new sets of clothes. But we just bought all
new stuff for them only a few weeks ago. And we just
don’t have it in the bank right now.
BANCROFT : Does Gwen agree that the last round of
shopping was only a few weeks ago?
PAT : No, she says it was four months ago, at the beginning of
the summer, which is a crock. I can remember that the
summer was more than half over.
BANCROFT : So her memory is different from yours. Did she
say why she thinks it was earlier?
PAT : Of course not, she’s…Well, maybe she said something
about how she remembers she paid the credit card bill for
those clothes while the children were still in school. But
she’s wrong.
BANCROFT : Now, you said that the money simply isn’t
there. Gwen obviously thinks differently. Where does she
think the money should come from?
PAT : I already told you, she wants me to be a magician who
can just make it appear.
BANCROFT : But she must have been making points about it.
What was she saying?
PAT : Oh, I don’t know…She says we should sell our car and
get a shit box, which would just end up costing us more in
the long run, plus I don’t want to deal with it.
BANCROFT : What do you drive now?
PAT : A Saab.
BANCROFT : Let me guess. She would like to trade the Saab in
on a reliable car that has lower monthly payments, cheaper
parts, and fewer repair bills.
PAT : Yeah, that’s what I said, a shit box.
What Pat revealed in this exchange was that each time
Gwen attempts to stand up for herself or put forth her
views, he twists her statements to make them sound
absurd. Notice how long it took me to drag out of him what
Gwen’s opinions actually were. Gwen naturally came out
feeling stifled by Pat, as there was nothing she could do to
get her views heard and taken seriously. Part of why Pat is
convinced that Gwen is stupid is that he is so exaggeratedly
certain of his own wisdom and clarity. Since she continues
to disagree with him, he takes that as proof of her
foolishness.
When M r. Right decides to take control of a
conversation, he switches into his Voice of Truth, giving
the definitive pronouncement on what is the correct answer
or the proper outlook. Abuse counselors call this tactic
defining reality. Over time, his tone of authority can cause
his partner to doubt her own judgment and come to see
herself as not very bright. I notice how often I am speaking
with the intelligent-sounding partner of one of my clients,
only to have her say to me: “I’m not that smart.” The
abuser wants her to doubt her mental abilities in this way,
so that he can control her better.
Besides knowing all about the world, Mr. Right is also
an expert on your life and how you should live it. He has
the answers to your conflicts at work, how you should
spend your time, and how you should raise your children.
He is especially knowledgeable about your faults, and he
likes to inventory what is wrong with you, as if tearing you
down were the way to improve you. He may seem to
enjoy periodically straightening you out in front of other
people to humiliate you, thereby establishing his
unquestionable intellectual superiority.
When M r. Right’s partner refuses to defer to his
sophisticated knowledge, he is likely to escalate to insulting
her, calling her names, or mocking her with imitation. If
he’s still not satisfied that he has brought her down low
enough, he may reach for bigger guns, such as ruining
evening plans, leaving places without her, or saying bad
things about her to other people. If he is physically
assaultive, then this is the time he may throw things, raise
fists, or attack violently. In short, Mr. Right finds some
way to ensure that his partner regrets her insistence on
having her own mind.
Mr. Right in some respects is a less violent and
frightening version of the Drill Sergeant (see p. 86), but Mr.
Right’s control tends to be especially focused on telling his
partner how to think. His partner feels suffocated by his
control, as if he were watching her every move under a
microscope.
Mr. Right tries to sanitize his bullying by telling me, “I
have strong opinions” or “I like debating ideas.” This is like
a bank robber saying, “I’m interested in financial issues.”
Mr. Right isn’t interested in debating ideas; he wants to
impose his own.
The central attitudes driving M r. Right are:
You should be in awe of my
intelligence and should look up to
me intellectually. I know better
than you do, even about what’s
good for you.
Your opinions aren’t worth
listening to carefully or taking
seriously.
The fact that you sometimes
disagree with me shows how
sloppy your thinking is.
If you would just accept that I
know what’s right, our
relationship would go much
better. Your own life would go
better, too.
When you disagree with me
about something, no matter how
respectfully or meekly, that’s
mistreatment of me.
If I put you down for long
enough, some day you’ll see.
THE WATER TO RTURER
The Water Torturer’s style proves that anger doesn’t
cause abuse. He can assault his partner psychologically
without even raising his voice. He tends to stay calm in
arguments, using his own evenness as a weapon to push
her over the edge. He often has a superior or contemptuous
grin on his face, smug and self-assured. He uses a repertoire
of aggressive conversational tactics at low volume,
including sarcasm, derision—such as openly laughing at her
—mimicking her voice, and cruel, cutting remarks. Like Mr.
Right, he tends to take things she has said and twist them
beyond recognition to make her appear absurd, perhaps
especially in front of other people. He gets to his partner
through a slow but steady stream of low-level emotional
assaults, and perhaps occasional shoves or other “minor”
acts of violence that don’t generally cause visible injury but
may do great psychological harm. He is relentless in his
quiet derision and meanness.
The impact on a woman of all these subtle tactics is that
either her blood temperature rises to a boil or she feels
stupid and inferior, or some combination of the two. In an
argument, she may end up yelling in frustration, leaving the
room crying, or sinking into silence. The Water Torturer
then says, “See, you’re the abusive one, not me. You’re the
one who’s yelling and refusing to talk things out rationally.
I wasn’t even raising my voice. It’s impossible to reason
with you.”
The psychological effects of living with the Water
Torturer can be severe. His tactics can be difficult to
identify, so they sink in deeply. Women can find it difficult
not to blame themselves for their reactions to what their
partner does if they don’t even know what to call it. When
someone slaps you in the face, you know you’ve been
slapped. But when a woman feels psychologically
assaulted, with little idea why, after an argument with The
Water Torturer, she may turn her frustration inward. How
do you seek support from a friend, for example, when you
don’t know how to describe what is going wrong?
The Water Torturer tends to genuinely believe that there
is nothing unusual about his behavior. When his partner
starts to confront him with his abusiveness—which she
usually does sooner or later—he looks at her as if she were
crazy and says, “What the hell are you talking about? I’ve
never done anything to you.” Friends and relatives who
have witnessed the couple’s interactions may back him up.
They shake their heads and say to each other, “I don’t
know what goes on with her. She just explodes at him
sometimes, and he’s so low-key.” Their children can
develop the impression that Mom “blows up over
nothing.” She herself may start to wonder if there is
something psychologically wrong with her.
The Water Torturer is payback-oriented like most
abusive men, but he may hide it better. If he is physically
abusive, his violence may take the form of cold-hearted
slaps “for your own good” or “to get you to wake up”
rather than explosive rage. His moves appear carefully
thought out, and he rarely makes obvious mistakes—such
as letting his abusiveness show in public—that could turn
other people against him or get him in legal trouble.
If you are involved with a Water Torturer, you may
struggle for years trying to figure out what is happening.
You may feel that you overreact to his behavior and that he
isn’t really so bad. But the effects of his control and
contempt have crept up on you over the years. If you
finally leave him, you may experience intense periods of
delayed rage, as you become conscious of how quietly but
deathly oppressive he was.
This style of man rarely lasts long in an abuser program
unless he has a court order. He is so accustomed to having
complete success with his tactics that he can’t tolerate an
environment where the counselors recognize and name his
maneuvers and don’t let him get away with them. He tends
to rapidly decide that his group leaders are as crazy as his
partner and heads for the door.
The central attitudes driving the Water Torturer
are:
You are crazy. You fly off the
handle over nothing.
I can easily convince other
people that you’re the one who
is messed up.
As long as I’m calm, you can’t
call anything I do abusive, no
matter how cruel.
I know exactly how to get under
your skin.
THE DRILL SERGEANT
The Drill Sergeant takes controlling behavior to its extreme,
running his partner’s life in every way that he can. He
criticizes her clothing, tells her whether she can go out or
not, interferes with her work. He wants her to have no one
close to her, so he ruins her relationships with friends and
relatives or simply forbids her to see them. He may listen
to her phone calls or read her mail, or require the children to
report on her activities any time he is away. If she isn’t
home by his appointed curfew at night, she is at risk for
abuse. She feels like a little girl living with a tyrannical
father, with no more freedom than an eight-year-old would
have.
The Drill Sergeant is often fanatically jealous. He
verbally assaults his partner with accusations that she is
cheating on him or checking out other men and tosses crass
and disturbing sexual terms into his tirades. He may
augment his hateful remarks about his partner with hideous
comments about females in general, such as, “All women
are whores.” The emotional experience of these verbal
attacks can be similar to that of a sexual assault: The
woman is left feeling violated, debased, and traumatized. At
the same time, this style of abuser more often than not is
out having affairs himself. It isn’t fidelity he cares about;
it’s possession.
The Drill Sergeant is, unfortunately, almost sure to be
physically violent sooner or later, probably beginning with
threats and then eventually escalating to assault. If his
partner stands up to him, such as by attempting to
preserve any of her rights to freedom, his violence and
threats are likely to escalate until she is hurt or terrified
enough that she submits to his control. He is a risk to beat
his partner up to the point of severe injury.
Getting away from the Drill Sergeant can be difficult.
Since he monitors the woman’s movements so closely, it is
a challenge for her to get to a support group for abused
women or to seek other kinds of support. Since he isolates
her from people, she has to draw entirely on her own
strength, and many days she may feel like she doesn’t have
much strength left. And since from time to time he is
probably openly violent, she is forced to consider what the
consequences of attempting to leave him could be, including
whether he might try to kill her.
If your partner is a Drill Sergeant, your situation is a
dangerous one. You may have to use some courage—as
well as careful vigilance—to even get the opportunity to
read this book. Perhaps you are hiding it under a mattress
or reading it at someone else’s house in quick bits. Don’t
give up. M any women have gone through this kind of
captivity and have found a way to escape, even if it takes
some time. The single most important thing to do is to seek
opportunities to phone a hotline for abused women (see
“Resources” in the back of this book). Call them to speak
for five minutes if that’s all you can safely do for now. Call
every day if you can. The hot line is the beginning of the
path to freedom.
You may be sorely tempted to have a secret affair, since
your partner shows you so little kindness or tenderness. A
positive sexual connection may be especially affirming for
you, because of how sexually degrading the Drill Sergeant
tends to be. But cheating on him can be deadly if he catches
you. Consider holding off on seeing other men until you
have gotten yourself safe.
The Drill Sergeant often has some psychological
problems. Although mental health issues do not cause
abusiveness, they can intensify a man’s violent tendencies.
If he sometimes seems to become convinced of things that
are obviously not true, has trouble getting along with
people in general, was severely abused or neglected as a
child, or has other indications of mental illness, you need to
take even greater caution.
To read more about dealing with dangerous abusers, see
“The Terrorist” later in this chapter (p. 99) and “Leaving
an Abuser Safely” in Chapter 9 (p. 225).
The central attitudes driving the Drill Sergeant
are:
I need to control your every
move or you will do it wrong.
I know the exact way that
everything should be done.
You shouldn’t have anyone else
—or any thing else—in your life
besides me.
I am going to watch you like a
hawk to keep you from
developing strength or
independence.
I love you more than anyone in
the world, but you disgust me.
(!!)
MR. SENSITIVE
Mr. Sensitive appears to be the diametric opposite of the
Drill Sergeant. He is soft-spoken, gentle, and supportive—
when he isn’t being abusive. He loves the language of
feelings, openly sharing his insecurities, his fears, and his
emotional injuries. He hugs other men. He may speak out
about the absurdity of war or the need for men to “get in
touch with their feminine side.” Perhaps he attends a men’s
group or goes on men’s retreats. Often he has participated
extensively in therapy or twelve-step programs, or reads all
the big self-help books, so he speaks the language of
popular psychology and introspection. His vocabulary is
sprinkled with jargon like developing closeness, working
out our issues, and facing up to hard things about myself.
He presents himself to women as an ally in the struggle
against sex-role limitations. To some women, he seems like
a dream come true.
So what’s wrong with this picture? Nothing obvious
yet. But this is exactly the problem: Mr. Sensitive wraps
himself in one of the most persuasive covers a man can
have. If you start to feel chronically mistreated by him,
you are likely to assume that something is wrong with you,
and if you complain about him to other people, they may
think you must be spoiled: “You have the New Age man,
what more do you want?”
The following dynamics are typical of a relationship
with M r. Sensitive and may help explain your feeling that
something has gone awry:
1. You seem to be hurting his feelings
constantly, though you aren’t sure why,
and he expects your attention to be
focused endlessly on his emotional
injuries. If you are in a bad mood one day
and say something unfair or insensitive, it
won’t be enough for you to give him a
sincere apology and accept responsibility.
He’ll go on and on about it, expecting you
to grovel as if you had treated him with
profound cruelty. (Notice the twist here:
This is just what an abuser accuses his
partner of doing to him, when all she is
really looking for is a heartfelt “I’m
sorry.”)
2. When your feelings are hurt, on the other
hand, he will insist on brushing over it
quickly. He may give you a stream of
pop-psychology language (“Just let the
feelings go through you, don’t hold on to
them so much,” or “It’s all in the attitude
you take toward life,” or “No one can hurt
you unless you let them”) to substitute
for genuine support for your feelings,
especially if you are upset about
something he did. None of these
philosophies applies when you upset
him, however.
3. With the passing of time, he increasingly
casts the blame on to you for anything he
is dissatisfied with in his own life; your
burden of guilt keeps growing.
4. He starts to exhibit a mean side that no
one else ever sees and may even become
threatening or intimidating.
Mr. Sensitive has the potential to turn physically
frightening, as any style of abuser can, no matter how much
he may preach nonviolence. After an aggressive incident, he
will speak of his actions as “anger” rather than as “abuse,”
as though there were no difference between the two. He
blames his assaultive behavior on you or on his emotional
“issues,” saying that his feelings were so deeply wounded
that he had no other choice.
Many people reject the possibility that Mr. Sensitive
could be an abuser. I ran into this disbelief one weekend
when I was leading a training course on emotional recovery,
as I periodically do. M y workshops focus partly on the
healing effects of crying and so tend to be attended by more
women than men. The males who do come have included
many of the most wonderful men it has been my good
fortune to know, as well as a handful of the biggest
manipulators. A few years ago, a participant named
Deanna approached me anxiously before a workshop. She
explained that an ex-partner of hers named Brad had called
her a few days ahead of the workshop to tell her he was
attending the same weekend. She was uncomfortable and
told him that if he showed up she would leave. He
promised not to bother her, though, and said he would not
bring up their relationship in any way. He was coming with
his new girlfriend, which eased Deanna’s worries.
I spent some time talking with Brad as the workshop
was starting, without mentioning Deanna, and he seemed
likeable, kind, and—what can I say?—sensitive. However,
I observed within a few hours that he was in fact speaking
to other people about his past with Deanna and getting
them riled up about her “running away from” their
unresolved issues. On Sunday morning, he finally provoked
a scene about their relationship in front of the full
workshop, which was humiliating to Deanna.
The story does not end there. I called a break, and took
Brad aside. I told him that it was my understanding that he
had agreed not to raise these issues and that it had become
obvious to me that he had come for the weekend with the
intention of doing precisely what he had promised not to. I
went on to point out that he had taken Deanna’s weekend
away from her and that I considered this kind of power
move to be abuse, especially since it was directed at an ex-
partner.
Saying the word abuse to an abusive person can be like
lighting a tinderbox: When you name the unmentionable
secret, he goes wild. Brad got loud, rolled his eyes at what a
hysterical exaggerator he considered me to be, and adopted
a victim stance, saying, “I beg you to stop this.” Then
came the most important part: He said in a screeching
whine, “I have only put a hand on a partner once in my
life, many years ago, and I just barely pushed her away
from me like this”—and he shoved me hard by the shoulder
—“after she called my mother a sick woman.”
Well, why was Brad denying a history of assault (while
actually admitting to one) when I hadn’t said anything
about violence? The possibility that he might be physically
abusive had never occurred to me before, but it certainly
did now. The signs were all there: bullying Deanna that
weekend and then insisting it was for her own good; feeling
entitled to ignore an important agreement; blaming his
earlier girlfriend for his assault of her and minimizing it—
the strength of the shove he gave me would have shaken up
most women. I now doubted that the assaultive incident he
had described was his only occasion of physically
intimidating a woman.
At this point I required Brad to leave the workshop. I
then had to deal with a mini-insurrection from some of the
other workshop participants, who couldn’t believe I was
ejecting this gentle man who was so in touch with his
feelings. He cries after all; how could he be abusive?
This “gentle man” style of abuser tends to be highly
self-centered and demanding of emotional catering. He may
not be the man who has a fit because dinner is late but
rather erupts because of some way his partner failed to
sacrifice her own needs or interests to keep him content.
He plays up how fragile he is to divert attention from the
swath of destruction he leaves behind him.
The central attitudes driving M r. Sensitive are:
I’m against the macho men, so I
couldn’t be abusive.
As long as I use a lot of
“psychobabble,” no one is going
to believe that I am mistreating
you.
I can control you by analyzing
how your mind and emotions
work, and what your issues are
from childhood.
I can get inside your head
whether you want me there or
not.
Nothing in the world is more
important than my feelings.
Women should be grateful to me
for not being like those other
men.
THE PLAYER
The Player is usually good looking and often sexy. (But
sometimes he just thinks he is.) In the early part of a
relationship he seems head over heels in love and wants to
spend as much time as possible in bed together. He is a
pretty good lover. You may feel lucky that you have
caught someone who knows how to turn you on and feel
proud to be seen with him. Your self-opinion gets a nice
boost.
After a while, though, a few things start to bother you.
You notice that apart from sex his interest in you is
waning, and even his sexual energy is dropping off a little.
He seems to lock his eyes pretty hard onto women that
walk by. He flirts with waitresses, clerks, or even friends
of yours. Sexual undertones seem to run through most of
his interactions with females, except for ones he finds
completely unattractive. Rumors start to come back to you
that he’s been seen with this woman, that he is sleeping
with that one, that he is pursuing another one but she isn’t
interested yet. At first you discount these rumors as
hurtful gossip, but after a while you start to wonder.
The Player often starts to stall on moving in together or
agreeing to be exclusive, even though earlier he couldn’t
wait to get serious. He may say that he’s been hurt or has a
fear of commitment (“I’m just not ready”), but the real
issue is that he doesn’t want restrictions on his freedom.
Much of his satisfaction in life comes from exploiting
women and feeling like a sexual animal. Women around the
Player seem to get angry at each other a lot, rather than at
him, and sometimes get into physical confrontations. These
tensions work out well for him, diverting attention from his
infidelity and dishonesty. He sets up this dynamic with
some combination of the following tactics:
1. He knows how to make each woman feel
that she’s the special one and yet at the
same time keep her off balance, so that
she never feels quite sure of where she
stands with him.
2. He tells each one that the others are lying
about their involvements with him
because they are jealous of her, or because
he turned them down, or because he used
to be involved with them but isn’t
anymore.
3. He tells each one stories about how other
women have mistreated him, or shares
other bits of information—largely
invented—to make previous, or current,
women in his life sound conniving,
vindictive, or addicted to substances.
4. He breaks up with women and gets back
together with them, so that no one can
keep track of what’s going on.
5. He includes one or two women in his
circle who feel unattractive, because he
knows he can have more power over
them, and manipulates them into hating
the women who are seen as more
attractive.
If this is your partner’s style, you won’t necessarily
ever be sure whether he is really having sex with other
women or if he just flirts because he enjoys the attention
and likes you to feel threatened. He may hotly deny that he
ever cheats and try to turn the tables by accusing you of
being too suspicious. But even if he’s telling the truth—
which he probably isn’t—his constant flirtatious behavior
can be as damaging as actual affairs. Either way, he will
damage your other relationships, because you will start to
perceive any woman as a potential threat to you. If he has
a history of hitting on women who are close to you, such
as your sister or best friend, you can end up isolated from
the women you care about most, because you’re afraid he
will have affairs with them unless you keep them away.
Chronic infidelity is abusive in itself, but the Player
doesn’t stop there. He is irresponsible, callous in dealing
with his partner’s feelings, and periodically verbally
abusive. As the relationship progresses, he may start to go
for long periods giving his partner next to no attention and
barely speaking to her, so she feels shelved. He probably
refuses to take responsibility for safe sex (such as using a
condom), and he may have fathered children who he is not
supporting. His abusiveness can escalate abruptly if he is
confronted or caught in his infidelities, and he may turn
physically frightening at this point. In a strange but
dangerous twist, the Player sometimes hits his partner for
catching him cheating rather than the reverse.
The Player’s constant flirting and cheating help him to
get away with other forms of mistreatment. His partner is
likely to focus on her hurt feelings about his infidelities and
pour effort into stopping him from straying and, in the
process, lose sight of his pattern of abuse. When she asks
me whether I think her partner will ever settle down and be
faithful to her—if they get married, for example—I answer,
“He may some day, but what you will have then is a
faithful abuser.” His promiscuity is a symptom of a deeper
problem: He is incapable of taking women seriously as
human beings rather than as playthings. With that mind-
set, he’ll be a destructive partner whether he cheats or not.
The Players I have worked with sometimes claim to
suffer from “sex addiction,” and join Sex and Love Addicts
Anonymous (which they may discover is a good place to
pick up women). But sex addiction doesn’t cause
dishonesty, verbal abusiveness, or intimidating behavior.
The Player is not a sex addict at all. If he is addicted to
anything, it’s to the thrill of using women without regard
for the effects on them.
The central attitudes driving the Player are:
Women were put on this earth to
have sex with men—especially
me.
Women who want sex are too
loose, and women who refuse sex
are too uptight. (!)
It’s not my fault that women
find me irresistible. (This is a
word-for-word quotation from a
number of my clients.) It’s not
fair to expect me to refuse
temptation when it’s all around
me; women seduce me
sometimes, and I can’t help it.
If you act like you need anything
from me, I am going to ignore
you. I’m in this relationship
when it’s convenient for me and
when I feel like it.
Women who want the nonsexual
aspects of themselves
appreciated are bitches.
If you could meet my sexual
needs, I wouldn’t have to turn to
other women.
RAMBO
Rambo is aggressive with everybody, not just his partner.
He gets a thrill out of the sensation of intimidating people
and strives to handle all life situations by subtly or overtly
creating fear. He has an exaggerated, stereotypical view of
what a man is supposed to be, which goes hand in hand
with seeing women as delicate, inferior, and in need of
protection. Rambo often comes from a home or
neighborhood where he was the target of violence himself
and learned that the only way to feel safe is to be stronger,
tougher, and less caring than everybody else. He has little
patience for weakness, fragility, or indecision. Often he has
a criminal record for violence, theft, drunk driving, or drug
dealing.
Early in a relationship, Rambo is likely to be loving and
kind to his partner, like most abusers. Because he lacks fear
—or pretends to—he can make a woman feel safe and
protected. This style of abuser can therefore be particularly
appealing to a woman who comes from a violent home
herself or to one who is in the process of leaving another
abusive relationship. Rambo can make you feel as though
his aggressiveness would never be directed toward you,
because he loves you; he wishes to look after your safety
as if you were his daughter. He enjoys the role of
protector, feeling like a gallant knight. However, he lacks
respect for women, and this disrespect, combined with his
general violent tendencies, means that it is only a matter of
time before he will be the one you need protection from.
Many highly “masculine” men are not Rambo. The
notion that all macho men are likely to abuse women is
based largely on class and ethnic prejudices, the same
misconceptions that allow M r. Sensitive or Mr. Right to
skate by undetected. There are plenty of “tough guys” out
there who are friendly to everyone and avoid aggressive
interactions whenever possible but enjoy lifting weights,
playing rough sports, hunting, and other aspects of
stereotypical masculinity. They may be good fighters, but
only in self-defense. It isn’t macho that women need to
watch out for. The danger signs are violence and
intimidation toward anyone, and disrespect and superiority
toward women.
Sometimes Rambo is a psychopath or sociopath, which
can make him all the more emotionally abusive and in some
cases physically abusive as well. Later we will take a look
at psychopaths and other mentally disordered abusers.
The central attitudes driving Rambo are:
Strength and aggressiveness are
good; compassion and conflict
resolution are bad.
Anything that could be even
remotely associated with
homosexuality, including walking
away from possible violence or
showing any fear or grief, has to
be avoided at any cost.
Femaleness and femininity
(which he associates with
homosexuality) are inferior.
Women are here to serve men and
be protected by them.
Men should never hit women,
because it is unmanly to do so.
However, exceptions to this rule
can be made for my own partner
if her behavior is bad enough.
Men need to keep their women
in line.
You are a thing that belongs to
me, akin to a trophy.
THE VICTIM
Life has been hard and unfair for the Victim. To hear him
tell it, his intelligence has been chronically underestimated;
he has been burned by people he trusted; and his good
intentions have been misunderstood. The Victim appeals to
a woman’s compassion and desire to feel that she can make
a difference in his life. He often tells persuasive and heart-
rending stories about how he was abused by his former
partner, sometimes adding the tragic element that she is
now restricting or preventing his contact with his children.
He maneuvers the woman into hating his ex-partner and
may succeed in enlisting her in a campaign of harassment,
rumor spreading, or battling for custody.
As a counselor of abusive men, I have dozens of times
been in the position of interviewing a man’s former partner
and then speaking with the new one. The new partner
usually speaks at length about what a wicked witch the
woman before her was. I can’t tell her what I know, much
as I wish I could, because of my responsibility to protect
the confidentiality and safety of the former partner. All I
can say is: “I always recommend, whenever there are
claims of emotional or physical abuse, that women talk to
each other directly and not just accept the man’s denial.”
Women sometimes ask me: “But what if a man I am
dating really was victimized by his former girlfriend? How
can I tell the difference?” Here are some things to watch
for:
1. If you listen carefully, you often can hear
the difference between anger toward an
ex-partner, which would not be worrisome
in itself, and disrespect or contempt, which
should raise warning flags. A man who has
left a relationship with bitterness should
nonetheless be able to talk about his ex-
partner as a human being, with some
understanding of what her side of the
conflicts was and some ways he might
have contributed to what went wrong. If
he speaks in degrading or superior ways
about her, or makes everything that went
wrong in the relationship her fault, be
careful, because it is likely that he was the
abusive one.
2. Try to get him to talk about his own
conduct in the relationship, especially
around the time of the breakup. If he
blames his own behavior on her, that’s a
bad sign.
3. Be particularly careful with a man who
claims to have been the victim of physical
violence by a previous female partner.
The great majority of men who make such
claims are physical abusers. Ask him for
as much detail as you can about the
violent incidents, and then try to talk to
her or seek out anyone else who could
give you a different perspective on what
happened. Watch for warning signs of
abusiveness (see Chapter 5).
4. Pay attention to how he talks and thinks
about abused women. A genuine male
victim tends to feel sympathy for abused
women and support their cause. The
Victim, on the other hand, often says that
women exaggerate or fabricate their claims
of abuse or insists that men are abused
just as much as women are.
The Victim may adopt the language of abuse victims,
claiming, for example, that his ex-partner was “focused on
power and control,” disrespected him, and always had to
have her own way. In a few years, he will be using similar
reality-inversion language about you—unless, of course,
you kowtow to him to his satisfaction.
The Victim is highly self-centered in relationships.
Everything seems to revolve around his wounds, and he
keeps himself at the center of attention. If you have
children, he tries to get them to feel sorry for him as well.
He seems forever to be telling you: “You don’t understand
me, you don’t appreciate me, you hold my mistakes over
my head.” Yet you sense that the dynamic is actually the
other way around. If you stand up to him about these
distortions, he tells you that you are abusing him or says,
“You just can’t tolerate my standing up to your bullying.”
This recurring inversion of reality is similar to what
happens with Mr. Sensitive, but without the introspective
psychology, gentle man, or recovering alcoholic routines. If
you leave him, you risk his seeking custody of your
children, presenting himself to the court as the victim of
your abuse and of your efforts to turn the children against
him.
Often the Victim claims to be victimized not only by
you but also by his boss, his parents, the neighbors, his
friends, and strangers on the street. Everyone is always
wronging him, and he is always blameless.
When the Victim joins an abuser group, his story tends
to go like this: “I put up with my partner’s mistreatment
of me for years, and I never fought back or even tried to
defend myself. But I finally couldn’t take it anymore, and I
started to give her back a little taste of what she was doing
to me. So now I’ve been labeled abusive. Women are
allowed to do those things and nobody cares, but as soon
as a man does it he’s a pariah.”
This line of reasoning many times develops into a
discussion of how men are the victims of women overall in
society, because women run the world. This is a startling
distortion, given which gender actually dominates almost all
legislatures, police departments, judgeships, businesses,
and so on ad nauseam. When I point out this reality to the
Victim, he describes a kind of paranoid fantasy in which
women are behind the scenes secretly pulling the strings,
largely by getting men to feel sorry for them. His capacity
for turning things into their opposites in this way is a
central cause of his abusiveness.
If you are involved with the Victim and want to escape
his abuse, you may find that you feel guilty toward him,
despite his treatment of you, and have difficulty ending the
relationship as a result. You may feel that because his life
has been so hard, you are reluctant to add to his pain by
abandoning him. You may worry that he won’t take care of
himself if you leave, that he will wither away from
depression, won’t eat or sleep, or might even try to kill
himself. The Victim knows how to present himself as
helpless and pathetic so that you will find it harder to take
your own life back.
The central attitudes driving the Victim are:
Everybody has done me wrong,
especially the women
I’ve been involved with. Poor
me.
When you accuse me of being
abusive, you are joining the
parade of people who have been
cruel and unfair to me. It proves
you’re just like the rest.
It’s justifiable for me to do to
you whatever I feel you are doing
to me, and even to make it quite a
bit worse to make sure you get
the message.
Women who complain of
mistreatment by men, such as
relationship abuse or sexual
harassment, are anti-male and out
for blood.
I’ve had it so hard that I’m not
responsible for my actions.
THE TERRO RIST
I worked for a few months with an abused woman named
Gloria who was wondering how much longer she would be
alive. Her husband, Gerald, would glare at her, drum his
fingers methodically on the table, and say: “You have six
months left. Things better shape up around here. Six
months.” Her head would swim and her heart would race
with fear, and she would plead with him to tell what
exactly he planned to do to her at the end of that period.
And he would answer, with maybe just a hint of a cold
smile: “Just wait and see, just wait and see. Six months,
Gloria.” Gerald had never laid a hand on Gloria in the five
years they had been together, but she was terrified. She
started working with me on making an escape plan to run
away with their two-year-old son.
The Terrorist tends to be both highly controlling and
extremely demanding. His worst aspect, however, is that he
frequently reminds his partner that he could physically rip
her to pieces or even kill her. He doesn’t necessarily beat
her, however; some abusers know how to terrorize their
partners with threats, strange veiled statements, and bizarre
behaviors. One of my violent clients cut an article out of
the newspaper about a woman who had been murdered by
her husband, and he taped it up on the refrigerator. Another
man responded to his partner’s announcement that she was
leaving him by spilling the blood of an animal in front of
the house. Another client would take out his gun when he
was angry at his partner but would insist that he was just
going to clean it and that it had nothing to do with her.
Unlike most other abusers, the Terrorist often seems to
be sadistic: He gets enjoyment out of causing pain and fear
and seems to find cruelty thrilling. He is likely to have been
severely abused as a child, which generally is not true of
other abusers. However, you cannot help him to heal. This
may be difficult to accept, since the hope of helping him
overcome his problems may be what gets you through the
terror of living with him. The Terrorist’s problems are
much too deep for a partner to solve, as they involve a
complex weave of serious psychological problems with the
typical destructive nature of an abuser. You need to focus
instead on getting yourself safe. The Terrorist’s top goal is
to paralyze you with fear so that you won’t dare think of
leaving him or cheating on him. The great majority of
abusers who make lethal threats against their partners never
carry them out, but that still leaves many who do. The
trauma of living with this kind of terror can be profound
and can make it extremely difficult for you to think clearly
about strategies for escaping to safety. However, most
women do manage to get out. The critical first step is to
seek confidential help as soon as possible. Begin by calling
an abuse hotline as soon as you safely can (see
“Resources”). There are more suggestions in Chapter 9.
When a woman does leave the Terrorist, he may stalk or
threaten her, and this dangerous harassment can continue
for a long time. If the couple has children, he may attempt
to get custody or unsupervised visitation, so that he can
terrorize or control her through the children. He also may
use information he has about her, such as where she works
or where her parents live, to track her and to threaten her
loved ones. It is essential that friends, relatives, courts, and
communities understand the realities of these risks and give
the woman the most complete support and protection
possible, while simultaneously taking steps to hold the
abuser accountable. It may be possible to stop the
Terrorist from escalating to murder, but only if he gets a
strong message that stalking and threatening an ex-partner
is unacceptable, that he is responsible for his own actions,
and that the community is prepared to jail him if his
threatening behavior does not stop immediately. Actions
short of these are often insufficient.
Chapter 10 contains more information for a woman who
is involved in a custody or visitation battle with an abuser
or for those who are concerned that one may start.
The central attitudes driving the Terrorist are:
You have no right to defy me or
leave me. Your life is in my
hands.
Women are evil and have to be
kept terrorized to prevent that
evil from coming forth.
I would rather die than accept
your right to independence.
The children are one of the best
tools I can use to make you
fearful.
Seeing you terrified is exciting
and satisfying.
THE MENTALLY ILL O R ADDICTED ABUSER
This last category is not actually separate from the others;
an abusive man of any of the aforementioned styles can
also have psychiatric or substance-abuse problems,
although the majority do not. Even when mental illness or
addiction is a factor, it is not the cause of a man’s abuse of
his partner, but it can contribute to the severity of his
problem and his resistance to change. When these
additional problems are present, it is important to be aware
of the following points:
1. Certain mental illnesses can increase the
chance that an abuser will be dangerous
and use physical violence. These include
paranoia, severe depression, delusions or
hallucinations (psychosis), obsessive-
compulsive disorder, and antisocial
personality disorder known as
psychopathy or sociopathy). These
psychiatric conditions also make it next to
impossible for an abuser to change, at
least until the mental illness has been
brought under control through therapy
and/or medication, which can take years.
Even if the mental illness is properly
treated, his abusiveness won’t necessarily
change.
2. An abuser’s reactions to going on or off
medication are unpredictable. A woman
should take extra precautions for her
safety at such a time. Abusers tend to go
off medication before long—I have had
few clients who were consistent and
responsible about taking their meds in the
long term. They don’t like the side effects,
and they are too selfish to care about the
implications of the mental illness for their
partners or children.
3. The potential danger of a mentally ill
abuser has to be assessed by looking at
the severity of his psychiatric symptoms
in combination with the severity of his
abuse characteristics. Looking at his
psychiatric symptoms alone can lead to
underestimating how dangerous he is.
4. Antisocial personality disorder is present
in only a small percentage of abusers but
can be important. Those who suffer from
this condition lack a conscience and thus
are repeatedly involved in behaviors that
are harmful to others. Some signs of this
condition include: (a) He started getting
into illegal behavior when he was still a
teenager; (b) his dishonest or aggressive
behavior involves situations unrelated to
his partner, rather than being restricted to
her; (c) he periodically gets into trouble at
workplaces or in other contexts for
stealing, threatening, or refusing to follow
instructions and is likely to have a
considerable criminal record by about age
thirty, though the offenses may be largely
minor ones; (d) he is severely and
chronically irresponsible in a way that
disrupts the lives of others or creates
danger; and (e) he tends to cheat on
women a lot, turn them against each other,
and maintain shallow relationships with
them. The psychopath’s physical
violence is not necessarily severe,
contrary to the popular image, but he may
be very dangerous nonetheless. Antisocial
personality disorder is very difficult to
change through therapy, and there is no
effective medication for treating it. It is
highly compatible with abusiveness
toward women.
5. Those who suffer from narcissistic
personality disorder have a highly
distorted self-image. They are unable to
accept that they might have faults and
therefore are unable to imagine how other
people perceive them. This condition is
highly compatible with abusiveness,
though it is present in only a small
percentage of abusive men. Clues to the
presence of this disorder include: (a) Your
partner’s self-centeredness is severe, and
it carries over into situations that don’t
involve you; (b) he seems to relate
everything back to himself; and (c) he is
outraged whenever anyone criticizes him
and is incapable of considering that he
could ever be anything other than kind and
generous. This disorder is highly resistant
to therapy and is not treatable with
medication. The abuser with this disorder
is not able to change substantially through
an abuser program either, although he
sometimes makes some minor
improvements.
6. Many abusers who are not mentally ill
want women to think that they are, in
order to avoid responsibility for their
attitudes and behavior.
Substance abuse, like mental illness, does not cause
partner abuse but can increase the risk of violence. Like the
mentally ill abuser, the addicted abuser doesn’t change
unless he deals with his addiction, and even that is only the
first step. Chapter 8 examines the role that substances play
in partner abuse.
The attitudes driving the mentally ill or addicted batterer
are the same as those of other abusers and will likely follow
the pattern of one of the nine styles described above. In
addition, the following attitudes tend to be present:
I am not responsible for my
actions because of my
psychological or substance
problems.
If you challenge me about my
abusiveness, you are being mean
to me, considering these other
problems I have. It also shows
that you don’t understand my
other problems.
I’m not abusive, I’m just———
(alcoholic, drug addicted, manic-
depressive, an adult child of
alcoholics, or whatever his
condition may be).
If you challenge me, it will trigger
my addiction or mental illness,
and you’ll be responsible for
what I do.
Although I have focused on the emotionally abusive
styles of these different kinds of abusers, any of them may
also use physical violence, including sexual assault.
Although the Terrorist and the Drill Sergeant are especially
likely to become dangerous, they are not the only ones who
may do so. Many abusers occasionally use physical
violence or threats as a way to intimidate you when they
feel that their power or control over you is slipping;
violence for them is a kind of “trump card” they use when
their normal patterns of psychological abuse are not getting
them the degree of control they feel entitled to. If you are
concerned about how dangerous your partner may be, see
“Is He Going to Get Violent?” in Chapter 6 and “Leaving
an Abuser Safely” in Chapter 9.
KEY PO INTS TO REMEMBER
Tremendous variation exists among abusive
styles. Your abusive partner may be of a
type I haven’t encountered yet, but that
doesn’t make him any less real. Many men
are mixtures of different aspects.
An abuser may change so much from day
to day that he couldn’t belong to any type.
This style of abuser is so unpredictable
that his partner can never make sense out
of what she is living with.
An abuser of any type can have days when
he turns loving, attentive, and thoughtful.
At these times, you may feel that his
problem has finally gone away and that the
relationship will return to its rosy
beginning. However, abuse always comes
back eventually unless the abuser has dealt
with his abusiveness.
PART II
The Abusive Man in
Relationships
5
How Abuse Begins
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 M et 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 PO WER O F THO SE WO NDERFUL EARLY
MO NTHS
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 GO O D EARLY O N, 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 MO NSTER NO R 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
MO NSTER, BUT HE HAS A PRO FO UNDLY C O MPLEX
AND DESTRUC TIVE PRO BLEM THAT SHOULD NO T
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
CO NSCIOUS—HE AC TS DELIBERATELY RATHER
THAN BY ACCIDENT O R BY LO SING CO NTRO L O F
HIMSELF—BUT THE UNDERLYING THINKING THAT
DRIVES HIS BEHAVIO R IS LARGELY NO T
CO NSCIOUS.
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:
HO W CAN I TELL IF A MAN I’M
SEEING WILL BECO ME 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 S IGNS O F 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. M any 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 W AY 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:
CLAIRE: I still feel like you don’t understand why I was
upset by what you did. You haven’t even apologized.
DANNY (Angry and loud): All right, all right! I’m sorry, I’M
SORRY!!
CLAIRE (Shaking her head): You don’t get it.
DANNY: What the fuck do you want from me?? I apologized
already! What, you won’t be satisfied until you have your
pound of flesh??
CLAIRE: Your apology doesn’t mean anything to me when
you obviously aren’t sorry.
DANNY: 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 SO RRY?
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 SO RRY?
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 S O RRY AFTER AN INC IDENT DO ESN’T
HELP, WHAT WO ULD
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-PRO TECTIVE STEPS Q UICKLY
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 PO INTS 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.
6
The Abusive Man in Everyday
Life
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 T HE 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. M y 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.
BEA: What’s going on with you? I don’t understand what
you’re upset about.
JESSE: 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.
BEA: I don’t talk, talk, talk all the time. What do you mean by
that? I just want to know what’s bothering you.
JESSE: 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.
BEA: 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.
JESSE: 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.
BEA: I don’t believe this. That dinner was almost two weeks
ago. Have you been brewing about it all this time?
JESSE: 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.
BEA: In the mood for what shit?? I haven’t done anything!
You’ve had it in for me since I arrived to meet you!
JESSE: 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.
BEA: Where are you going?
JESSE: I’ll walk home, thank you. You can take the car. I’d
rather be alone.
BEA: It’s going to take you more than a half hour to walk
home, and it’s freezing today.
JESSE: 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 GO ING 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 PRO BLEM IS NO T THAT HE
RESPONDS INAPPRO PRIATELY TO C O NFLICT. HIS
ABUSIVENESS IS OPERATING PRIOR TO THE
CO NFLICT: IT USUALLY CREATES THE C O NFLIC T,
AND IT DETERMINES THE SHAPE THE CO NFLIC T
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 M r. 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.
FO UR C RITICAL C HARACTERISTICS O F 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 CYC LES
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 C LO SER LO O K AT THE GO O D PERIO DS
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 REASO NS 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. M om 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. M any 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 GO ING TO GET VIO LENT?
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 WO MAN’S
INTUITIVE SENSE O F WHETHER O R NO T HER
PARTNER W ILL BE VIO LENT TO WARD HER IS A
SUBSTANTIALLY MO RE ACCURATE PREDICTO R OF
FUTURE VIO LENC E THAN ANY O THER 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:
Is 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.
Is 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.
I 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?
If 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 C ULTURAL DIFFERENC ES 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. M y 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. M en 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 WO MEN AC C EPTABLE IN SO ME
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.
SO ME S PECIFIC CULTURAL EXC USES AND
JUSTIFICATIO NS
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 M arie 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. M any 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 PO INTS 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.
7
Abusive Men and Sex
He’s not attracted to me anymore, which really
hurts me.
It’s easier sometimes to just give in.
He never hits me, but he did force me to have
sex once.
We both have an infection now, and he says it
must have come from me, but I haven’t had any
affairs, so I know it’s him.
It seems like the only time we feel close is when
we’re making love.
LIBBY SCOWLED, the muscles in her face and neck
tightening, as she described an abusive boyfriend she had
left three years earlier. “Arnaldo never hit me, but he
seemed to get a thrill out of being mysterious and
terrifying. One day he described in graphic detail how he
was going to torture and kill my cat, because he knew how
precious my pets are to me. Another time he was giving me
a massage, talking in this hypnotic, faraway tone, and he
said, ‘When I was in Green Beret training, I learned about a
certain spot in a person’s neck where, if you poke them
hard and fast, you can paralyze them permanently.’” Libby
found out later that Arnaldo had never been in the military.
He had told other lies, too, like the one about his terminally
ill grandmother who was going to leave him thirty thousand
dollars. But his stories had all sounded so convincing. “He
got me to support him for a year and to lend him a lot of
money besides. I’m out five or six thousand dollars because
of him.” Resentment rang through her voice as she gained
momentum. “I would be in such a different financial
position right now if it hadn’t been for him. And I bought it
when he promised to pay me back any day, always saying
that the money was just about to arrive. What a con artist!”
And she told me how Arnaldo would harangue her about
being too skinny, so that she became shameful of her body.
I couldn’t tell which was more potent inside of her, rage or
grief.
Then, abruptly, Libby’s face softened. A hint of a smile
formed at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes shined
lightly as she focused on an image inside her mind. “But
there was one thing that wasn’t like the rest with Arnaldo.
Sex. Lovemaking with him was great. He was so
completely into it. He would light candles and build the
mood for a while. It would last a long time. He was so
intense, and passionate. There was this drama around it
that was so transporting. I have never experienced anything
like it before. Or since, really. I wish I could capture just
that one part of the relationship. The rest was awful.”
Libby’s story is not as unusual as you might think.
When I interview partners of my clients, I always ask
whether there has been any sexual mistreatment. It is not
uncommon for me to hear the woman’s voice lose its
tension, as Libby’s facial expression had, and hear her say
with a certain lilt, “Oh, well, we’ve never had any problem
in that area,” followed by a contented and slightly
embarrassed chuckle. In fact, memories of the better
aspects of their sexual relationship can be part of why a
woman who has left an abusive partner feels so tempted to
give him another chance.
But there is also the other extreme. I have had clients
whose only interest in sex was for domination and
degradation. For the woman, being in bed with this style of
abuser can be a nightmare. He wants sex when he wants it,
the way he likes it, and with little attention to how she
may feel or what her needs might be. Sexual episodes with
him may feel like sexual assaults to her. As the partner of
one of my clients said to me, “I don’t even want to go into
it. It’s just ugly.”
The sexually abusive man won’t necessarily rape his
partner in the literal sense of using physical force or threats
of harm—though some do. Instead he may insult her when
she declines his advances, call her names like “frigid” or
“lesbian,” or snarl accusingly, “You must be getting it
somewhere else, since you never want to make it with me
anymore.” He may make her feel guilty about his sexual
frustration, tell her that he feels like she doesn’t love him
anymore, or say that a man must have his needs met. He
may threaten infidelity: “Well, if you won’t have sex with
me, I can find plenty of women who will.” And he may
carry that threat out; many clients of mine have used affairs
to punish their partners.
A woman named Cynthia recounted how her partner
coerced her by using relentlessness: “If I don’t want to
have sex with Ernie, he just goes on and on, and he won’t
stop until I change my mind. He’ll beg me, then he’ll get
crude and say I’m fucking someone else. Then it’s nonstop
insults. If I go to sleep, he wakes me up. Some nights I’m
just exhausted after a while. So what do I do? Usually I
finally give in. I can’t stand to go through it. It ends up
being better to just get it over with, even though it’s awful,
because then at least he lets me sleep.”
When people think about forced sex, they picture
physical assault. So when an abuser forces sex through
pressure or manipulation or sleep deprivation, a woman
doesn’t know what to call it and may blame herself.
Dozens of partners of my clients, including Cynthia, have
said: “It’s my own fault. I shouldn’t give in to him.” A
woman can need some time and distance before she can
come to realize that she was not responsibile for her
partner’s sexual mistreatment of her, before she can even
name what he did. An ex-partner of one of my clients said
to me, about two years after she and the abuser divorced,
“Looking back on it now, I can see that I was raped over
and over again for more than ten years.” And she was
realizing how destructive his actions had been to her soul.
Studies show that women whose partners abuse them
sexually can have some of the greatest emotional difficulties,
including depression, of any abused women.
HOW MANY ABUSIVE MEN LO O K AT SEX
Arnaldo, the sexually amazing abuser, and Ernie, the
sexually degrading abuser, are not as different as they may
seem. Their underlying orientation toward sex is similar.
One style of abusive man may behave in a sexually
appropriate manner for the early period of a relationship,
and then one night from hell he may broadside his partner
with aggressive, degrading sex or even force her outright.
The woman is left in shock, heartbroken and betrayed,
feeling that her life has been turned upside down. A few of
the women I’ve worked with have even told me of the
anguish of being sexually assaulted on the night of their
wedding or within a few days thereafter. With other
abusive men the change may be gradual rather than abrupt,
the early months of exciting and loving sexuality blending
slowly into arm-twisting and ugliness. When we look inside
the abuser’s mind, we often find that dazzling lovemaking
and spirit-murdering sexual aggression can actually be two
aspects of the same mind-set.
Before I take you through the details and subtleties of
how abusive men typically approach a range of sexual
issues, I want to emphasize the underpinnings of the sexual
mentality of many abusers, the foundation that often
supports the rest of the structure.
1. IT’S FO R HIM
The abuser’s orientation toward sex is likely to be self-
involved. Sex to him is primarily about meeting his needs.
He may put some effort into creating pleasure for his
partner, but probably not because her satisfaction, or
sharing a mutual experience, is important to him. He is
invested in having her reach orgasm so that he can see
himself as a great lover. He wants to be erotic because he
believes that his sexual prowess will enable him to
dominate women. Of course, any lover gets some pride out
of bringing pleasure to a partner. But to many abusive men,
that’s the only reason why the woman’s satisfaction
matters. Everything refers back to him.
An abusive man commonly rolls all of his emotional
needs into one tremendous bundle, which he expects sex to
be able to carry. He tends to have little real heart-to-heart
connection with his partner, since a man cannot be truly
close to a woman he is abusing. (Although his partner may
feel very attached to him through traumatic bonding, and he
may feel very attached to having her meet his various
needs, attachment and closeness are two different things.)
So he compensates for the lack of genuine intimacy by
elevating sex to the highest plane, burdening it with the
responsibility of providing for him all the emotional
satisfaction that he is not receiving elsewhere in his
relationship.
2. SHE O WES HIM SEX.
My clients commonly believe that a woman gives up her
right to decline sex once she becomes seriously involved
with a man. It’s her responsibility to have sex with him to
make him feel loved, to meet his sexual needs, or simply
because that’s her job. The specific point at which she
loses her right to say no varies from abuser to abuser. For
some, the gateway to sexual domination is the first time
they have sex. In other words, she has the right to say no
as long as she always says no, but the first time they
actually make love, she forfeits her option to turn him
down from that day forward. I find this particularly true of
my younger clients. To other abusers, marriage is the
moment when her body is transferred to his ownership. To
still others, moving in together is the demarcation line.
A majority of my clients seem to believe that the
woman loses her right to refuse him if the man determines
that it has been “too long” since they have had sex. The
definition of how many days without sex is too many
differs for each abuser, but he watches his internal clock
and expects access when the alarm goes off. Her decision
not to have sex may be respected up to that moment, but
then his entitlement tends to take over.
In a typical abusive inversion, my clients often attempt
to convince me that they are the sexual victims in their
relationships. As one man said: “My partner uses sex to
control me, that’s how women jerk men around. Women
are the ones that really have the power over men because
they know they have what we want the most, and they
have the power to shut us out. M y wife wants me to be
her little puppy dog, begging and drooling and wagging my
tail, that’s the only way I’ll get sex.” The underlying
attitude comes bursting out of his words: He believes his
wife is keeping something of his away from him when she
doesn’t want intimate contact. He sees sexual rights to a
woman as akin to mineral rights to land—and he owns
them.
3. SEX IS A WAY TO ESTABLISH POWER AND
DO MINANCE.
We have been looking at the abusive attitude that says:
“We have sex because I have power over you.” On the flip
side of that outlook is an equally prevalent aspect of
abusive thinking: “I have power over you because we have
sex.” In this respect his sexual actions are like those of a
tomcat marking territory. Once he has “gone all the way”
with a woman, he feels that he owns her, or at least owns a
piece of her. Both the kinder and more cruel aspects of the
sexuality of abusive men can spring from the use of sex to
establish dominance.
One quarter or more of my clients cheat on their
partners repeatedly. These men seem to get excitement
from establishing their power over women in general, by
demonstrating their ability to get sexual access. An abuser
may get all this sex by creating an image of himself as a
stupendous lover; by telling woman after woman that he is
in love with her and that he is planning to leave his partner
for her “as soon as I can break the news to her, but I just
need a little time to let her down easy”; by using drugs or
alcohol to impair a woman’s ability to resist, or by force
and intimidation. This man is heavily focused on “scoring,”
and the actual effect he has on the lives of these women,
from broken promises to sexually transmitted infections,
never seems to hit home for him.
Sexual access to lots of different women may not only
make him feel powerful vis-à-vis women but also in
relation to other men. If he feels competitive with men, he
can demonstrate his superiority by having more notches in
his belt, “bagging” women like deer. He may surround
himself with men who share his view that high status in the
pecking order accrues to those who can control or exploit
the most women. (See “The Player” in Chapter 4.) For
those abusers who are not chronically unfaithful to their
partners, this competition with men may still exist,
perhaps taking the form of desiring to have the most
beautiful or sexy partner and wanting other men to see how
he owns and controls her. His partner may be flattered by
his pride in her at first, but gradually she comes to feel that
she is being used as a showpiece, with her humanity
ignored.
4. HE SEES HER AS A SEX O BJEC T.
An abuser who exhibits any one of the sexual attitudes
described above—or all three—has to distance himself from
his partner’s thoughts and feelings in order to avoid guilty
feelings about how he is using and wounding her sexually.
One way he may do this is by seeing his partner as a sex
object, as if she were a pornographic photo rather than a
person, devoid of emotions or ambitions, free of any need
for personal integrity or safety. This style of abusive man
looks at his partner as a machine to be used for his sexual
use. This depersonalizing of his partner can, in the long
term, be as psychologically injurious to her as any of his
other abusive behaviors. Partners of my clients sometimes
tell me:
“He just makes me feel gross.”
“I feel dirty and slimed on.”
“He makes me feel cheap.”
“The sexual stuff he does is what has really ruined my
self-esteem.”
“It’s been years since I’ve had sex that really felt loving
or voluntary. With him it seems more like he thinks he’s
winning a war or something. It’s like an invasion. I hate
it.”
Dehumanization can be a sickening, horrible experience
for the person at whom it is directed. If you are involved
with a sexually exploitative partner, you may find that sex
is sometimes, or perhaps always, a nightmare. Exploitative,
rough, coercive, uncaring sex is similar to physical violence
in its effects, and can be worse in many ways. And part of
why it feels so degrading is that a woman can sense the fact
that in her partner’s mind she has ceased to exist as a
human being.
Abusive men who have these kinds of attitudes of sexual
ownership sometimes refuse to use birth control or to
practice safe sex. I have had numerous clients, for example,
who have conceived children through sexual assaults on
their partners. The implications of these kinds of sexual
abuse for a woman—and for her children—are very serious.
BACK TO MISTER AMAZING
Having laid out the worst aspects of the sexual mind-set of
many abusive men, we now can go back to reexamine
Arnaldo, the sexually exciting and engaging abuser.
Ironically, part of why he is so sexually dynamic is that he
is profoundly self-involved. He can create a vibrantly
sensual lovemaking experience because of how engrossed he
is in seeing himself as an awe-inspiring person. (This is
connected to why severely self-centered people in general,
not just abusive men, can often be charismatic and
seductive.) When Mr. Amazing is lighting the candles,
choosing the music, and using his soft, smooth voice to
conjure the sexual mood, you may be thinking, “Wow, this
is so amazingly deep, and here we are going through this
together.” But in reality the abuser is secretly off in a world
by himself, engaged more with his fantasy than with you.
Mr. Amazing is enraptured for another reason: He finds
possession enthralling. He feels like he is entering a magical
realm where you belong to him totally, where he can be the
ultimate master and you his unquestioning and contented
slave. He craves, in short, a sexual partner with no mind or
will of her own.
Finally, on some level he hopes that his ability to
transport you sexually will tie you to him, so that he can
have power over you in other, nonsexual ways. And, in
some relationships, the abuser’s belief in the power of his
sexuality is self-fulfilling: if much of the rest of the time he
acts cold or mean, the episodes of lovemaking can become
the only experience you have of loving attention from him,
and their addictive pull thus becomes greater. In this way
he can draw you into being as dependent on sex as he is,
although for a very different reason.
THE ABUSER W HO ISN’T INTERESTED IN SEX (AT
LEAST NO T ANYMO RE)
Not every abusive man is pressuring or demanding with
respect to sex. In fact, a substantial number of the partners
of my clients complain of the opposite problem: The man
has lost sexual interest almost completely, and the woman
is feeling rejected and hungry for sex and affection. His
drop in sexual energy can be propelled by several forces,
including:
A substantial proportion of abusive men
are sexually shallow and so are only
attracted to women with whom they have
not had sex or to those they have been with
only a few times. Your partner may not be
interested in the kind of deep connection
needed to sustain a lively sexual
relationship over time and instead is off
pursuing his latest fantasy of a great sexual
relationship. His body may not be cheating
yet, but his mind is.
Similarly, he may be incapable of sustained
sexual attraction to any woman who
doesn’t meet his exaggerated ideal. He may
want a woman with perfect features and a
flawless body, like the airbrushed models in
magazines. He may lose interest rapidly in
a real-life woman whose body changes over
time (from childbearing, for example, or
simply from age) or one who, on close
examination, is revealed to have blemishes
or imperfections, as any real human being
does. He’ll never find his dream girl because
she doesn’t exist, but he may pour a lot of
his time and mental energy into the search
—and into punishing you for not being her.
He may be attracted primarily to sex
involving domination, referred to by some
researchers as the sexualization of
subordination. As your relationship
progresses, he may feel disappointed to
discover that you don’t fit his fantasy of a
concubine—submissive and servile. There
may be ways in which you stand up to
him, refusing to relinquish certain aspects
of your life or thoughts to his control.
Some abusive men unfortunately have
difficulty in achieving sexual arousal once
they discover that a woman is determined
to be her own person.
He may be punishing you for some way
you have challenged him, or for times when
you have not felt like having sex with him.
It is common for abusive men to withhold
sex as a control tactic.
If he is indeed having an affair, his energy
for sex at home is bound to be siphoned off
some. The chances that he is carrying a
dangerous infection are also rising. If you
have any concerns that your partner may
be cheating on you, be sure to insist on
safer sex practices. If requiring him to use
safe sex feels dangerous to you because of
how he may react, call a hotline for help
right away.
He may be addicted to drugs or alcohol.
Some substance abusers lose their sex drive.
He may be gay. A small number of my
clients have eventually admitted to their
partners, or to me, that they are primarily
attracted to men. In a slightly larger but still
small number of cases, the man never
admits that he is gay, but the woman either
catches him with a man or realizes that he
spends most of his time at gay hangouts or
with gay friends. Just because a man is gay
doesn’t mean that he can’t be abusive to
women. He may, for example, use a female
partner as a window dressing to give him
social respectability, diverting attention
from his homosexuality. This is simply
another example of how abusive men,
straight or gay, tend to use women for
selfish purposes.
He may ration out sex as a way to gain
power, sensing that you will try extra hard
to keep him happy in hopes of getting him
interested in lovemaking.
As I have discussed, abusive men tend to move between
extremes, from loving and attentive to hateful and
intimidating, from being overly involved in the minute
details of your life to expressing no interest, from showing
exclusive concern with what is good for you to being
unboundedly selfish. The swing from electric sexual charge
to loss of all sexual desire can increase his power just as the
other highs and lows do.
SEX AS A CURE-ALL
A baffling question arises over and over again among the
female partners of my clients: “Why does he want to have
sex right after an incident in which he has been horrible to
me? Sex is the last thing on my mind at that moment.”
QUESTION 12:
WHY DOES HE WANT SEX AFTER
ABUSING ME?
Contrary to what some abusive men seem to believe,
women do not find abuse sexy. When a woman’s partner
calls her “bitch” or “whore,” mocks her, or physically
intimidates her, the image of entwining herself intimately
with him recedes far from her mind. How can you “make
love” after someone has just treated you in a way that feels
more like hatred? Abusive men do not grasp how ugly they
appear when acting cruel.
So why are his feelings so different? Does abuse turn
him on? Perhaps. Some men do appear to find abuse
arousing, probably because they associate sexuality with
domination. But other reasons why he might want sex after
mistreating you are more common, including:
He is seeking a quick-fix for his abusive
behavior. He feels that if you have sex
together, it proves that his verbal
degradation or his violence is not that
serious, that you aren’t hurt by what he
did, and that everything is forgiven and
forgotten.
He wants to reassure himself that his abuse
isn’t going to cause you to pull away from
him emotionally or sexually. In fact,
pursuing sex after abuse can be an
expression of the man’s entitlement, as if to
say, “Even if I’m mean to you, I should
still get to have sexual access.”
An incident of abuse leaves the abusive man with a bad
taste in his mouth, which he wants to chase away quickly,
and sex helps him do that. But the woman can’t drive her
anguish off so easily, as it runs much too deep.
Unfortunately, the abuser’s self-focus makes him unwilling
to understand that difference.
SEX AS A WAY TO KEEP WO MEN DIVIDED
Some of my clients are the focal points of swirling wars
among females who hate each other passionately. The man
creates and feeds these battles by being sexually unfaithful,
making promises to various women that he’s going to
pursue a long-term relationship with each one of them, bad-
mouthing women to each other, getting women pregnant,
and making them feel sorry for him. (See “The Player” in
Chapter 4.) By getting women to channel their energy into
fighting with each other, he escapes confrontation or
accountability for his own actions and gets women to focus
on meeting his needs and keeping him happy. Here are a
couple of the approaches that clients of mine have used:
Chris and Donna Chris makes his partner, Donna, insecure
by frequently looking hard at other women or speaking
flirtatiously with them and by spending a lot of time on
phone calls for which he has odd explanations. He likes
Donna to be aware that a lot of women are interested in
him, so he drops suggestive comments from time to time.
He pretends that he feels hostile toward these women,
whom he accuses of “trying to tear us apart because they
want to be with me.” When Donna starts to hear rumors
that he is sleeping around, and when one woman finally
tells her outright that she has been having an affair with
Chris, he tells Donna that these are lies designed to drive
wedges between them. Donna spends a lot of time
wondering whether Chris is really telling the truth and
hating the women who are trying to take her man away
from her.
Sam and Nancy A few years into his relationship with
Nancy, Sam has a secret affair for a couple of months with
a woman named Zoe. He finally cuts off the affair and
confesses to Nancy. He claims that Zoe seduced him and
that he knew all along they shouldn’t have been seeing each
other, but he was afraid of hurting her because she seemed
deeply depressed, so he kept postponing the decision to
end it. “Zoe kept saying that she and I are right for each
other, but I always knew it was just a fling and that I
belong with you. She just wouldn’t listen, though.” He
says that what finally prompted him to break things off
with Zoe was her unkind comments about Nancy, which he
quotes to her. Nancy becomes furious at Zoe upon hearing
about her insults.
A year or so later, Nancy senses that Sam is drifting
from her, including losing interest in sex. She snoops
around a little and discovers that he is involved with Zoe
again. She demands that Sam stop seeing her and he
reluctantly agrees, but two months later he is involved with
her again. “I don’t know how to explain it,” Sam says,
“because I don’t have feelings for her like I have for you.
She just has some hold over me. It’s a sexual thing I guess. I
just can’t seem to say no.” Nancy comes increasingly to
hate Zoe for ruining her relationship.
Meanwhile, Sam uses his tortured feelings about being
“caught between two women” as an excuse for mounting
abuse. For example, Nancy confronts him one day about
lying to her and stealing her money. Sam responds by
apologizing and explaining that he feels guilty and torn
about his relationship with Zoe. He says that he stole the
money to buy something for Zoe because she was so
depressed that he was afraid she might try to hurt herself.
Years go by, and he is still putting off making a clear choice
between the two women, so their mutual bitterness is deep.
Over this period Sam’s treatment of Nancy gets
progressively worse, including one incident in which he
knocks a table over onto her leg. He doesn’t show any
signs of using his abusive behaviors with Zoe, which makes
Nancy hate her all the more. Zoe, meanwhile, goes around
telling people: “Nancy treats Sam so badly; he is so hurt
by her. He’s told me all about how mean she is to him, and
that’s why he wants to be with me. The reason he has
trouble divorcing her is that they go back a lot of years
together and their families are friends of each other, but
he’s almost ready.”
Both of the above scenarios involve an abusive man who
keeps getting women to focus on each other’s behavior
rather than his. He relies partly on popular negative
stereotypes of women, from which women themselves are
not immune. Women are conditioned, for example, to see
one another as catty, conniving, and eager to steal men from
other women. M eanwhile he gets to remain a player, which
is what he wants. On a couple of occasions, my colleagues
and I have overheard clients in the waiting area joking and
laughing about ways in which women fall for these
machinations, as if their ability to get away with it
reinforced their masculinity.
HO W TO STO P THIS RO UTINE
Women can interfere with these manipulations if they keep
the following principles in mind:
1. An abusive man lies a lot. Don’t believe
what he tells you about what is happening
in his relationships with other women,
including what those women have
supposedly said about you.
2. Communicate directly with other women
as much as possible to compare stories
about what he is saying and doing, so that
he can’t play you off against each other.
3. If a man cheats, that is 100 percent his
own responsibility. Don’t let him channel
your anger toward the other woman as if
he were the helpless victim of a seduction.
Abusive men love to portray themselves
as unable to control their hormonal urges,
which is nonsense.
4. Apply the principle of “no third
chances.” When a man, especially an
abusive one, cheats for the second time,
that means that more affairs will follow,
no matter what promises he may make.
5. Many women want to have a sexually
intense partner, which is fine; men don’t
have to cheat to be sexy. Abusive men
love to create the impression that their
sexual wandering is a product of how
passionate they are. But the reality is that
sexual passion and faithfulness are
entirely compatible. The reason he cheats
is because he is a manipulator, not because
he’s sexy.
THE RO LE OF PO RNOGRAPHY
In pornography that is geared toward heterosexual men,
women are portrayed as very simple. They are always in
the mood for sex, and they never say no. They have no
sexual needs—or needs of any kind—of their own; all they
seem to care about is the man’s pleasure. They require no
commitment, no sacrifice, and little money. When a man is
finished with them, he turns off the video or closes the
magazine, and they’re gone. What could be easier?
Most pornographic images regrettably fit well with the
abusive mind-set. The woman is available and submissive.
Reduced to a body, and usually further reduced to just her
sexual organs, she is depersonalized. The man owns her,
literally, because he owns the video or magazine or
computer image. The woman is sometimes even depicted as
being sexually excited by verbal abuse, roughness, violence,
or even torture. Cartoons and jokes in pornography often
insult or degrade women and their anatomy, or even make
rape appear funny, feeding anti-female ways of thinking.
For many abusive men, pornography has shaped their
sexuality since they were teenagers or even younger. It has
helped to form their view of what women are like and what
they ought to be. When a graduate of what I call “The
Pornography School of Sexuality” discovers, for example,
that his partner does not find a slap in the face arousing, he
thinks that’s evidence of something wrong with her
sexually, not him. His mind-set is: The women in the
magazines and videos all like it, so why don’t you? A large
percentage of abused women report that they have been
pressured one or more times to behave like the women in
pornography, often to the point of acting out a specific
scenario that the man finds enticing but that she
experiences as repulsive, frightening, or violent. Abusers
thus sometimes directly model their sexual interests on
stories or images from pornography.
Partners of my clients report to me on their efforts to
set limits regarding the presence of pornography in the
house, especially where children might get access to it.
These women have good instincts. Abusive men absolutely
need to be kept away from pornography, as it feeds the
precise thinking that drives their abusiveness. Women who
like to use pornography themselves should try to avoid
doing so with an abusive partner.
I have received numerous reports over the years from
women who have told me that they were being pressured
or required by their abusive partners to watch
pornography. This seems largely to be a strategy to break
down the woman’s resistance to performing certain sexual
acts the man wants, although the actual effect is often to
increase her repulsion rather than to create desire.
Pornography tends to be filled with abuse of women, so his
drive to make her watch it can also come from wanting to
prove to her that his degrading treatment is normal.
WHAT ABOUT SEX THAT INVOLVES GAMES OF
FO RCE O R VIO LENC E?
Is all sex play that involves adopting roles of domination or
force abusive, even if it’s consensual? This is a highly
controversial question among heterosexuals as well as
lesbians and gay men. M y opinion is that the answer is no.
The key words, however, are consensual and play. For
example, couples who play sex games involving force need
to have a mutually established signal that means “I want
you to stop for real,” and that signal must be respected. If
one partner gives the “stop” signal and the force doesn’t
immediately cease, what is occurring is sexual assault, not
lovemaking.
Here is another critical point: The meaning of what
happens during sexual play is determined by the context of
the relationship. If partners are consistently kind to and
respectful of each other in daily life, they can probably
share kinky lovemaking without making either person feel
unsafe or degraded. But in an abusive relationship these
lines are too blurry. It’s a stretch to call any sexual contact
fully consensual when it takes place in an atmosphere of
abuse; the woman is always having to gauge whether her
partner will react abusively if she says no to a particular
sex act, so her choices rarely feel truly free. Many abusers
get a thrill out of taking sex play too far, to where it isn’t
play any more and causes genuine pain or fear. When the
woman tells him later that she felt assaulted or raped, he
may respond disparagingly, “We always play games like
that. Come off it.” When she tries to explain why the sex
felt so bad, he isn’t willing to listen, mostly because he
knows it was not consensual this time, and he got a charge
out of that.
When you are being mistreated in a relationship, stay
away from force scenarios during lovemaking, even if the
times when your partner does stay within appropriate
limits are fun. Other times it isn’t going to be fun at all. If
you can say no to those games without running the risk of
being attacked, do so. These kinds of games can only be
played safely in a nonabusive relationship.
SEX AND DOUBLE STANDARDS
The double standards that are endemic to abusers can stand
out sharply in the sexual arena. The most obvious one
involves outside relationships. The abuser who has
frequent affairs is often the same one who interrogates his
partner about her movements and social contacts and goes
ballistic when he has the slightest suspicion that she is
developing any kind of connection—sexual or otherwise—
to another man. He may enjoy looking over other women
from head to toe as he and his partner walk down the
street, but if she gives so much as a sidelong glance at a
male, he screams at her and calls her a “slut.”
A popular justification for this double standard is that
men have an inherent need to be with many different
women, whereas women want to be monogamous. Over the
years I have had many clients use such sociobiological
arguments with me, saying that from a genetics standpoint
males have reason to desire sex with as many different
females as possible, while females succeed best—in
evolutionary terms—if they choose their partners
carefully. You might call this the “human beings are
basically baboons” argument. In reality, there are plenty of
examples of stable monogamy in nature. But these
arguments are ultimately beside the point; there is simply
no excuse for double standards or for any other aspect of
abuse. (I sometimes ask my clients, when they attempt to
lead me into this theoretical quagmire, “Do you cook your
meat before you eat it?” When they answer that of course
they do, I say, “Isn’t that awfully unnatural? I’ve never
seen any other animal doing such a peculiar thing.” Human
behavior can only be measured by human standards.) M y
clients sometimes pressure their partners with the myth
that men can suffer physical pain or damage if they become
sexually aroused and are not satisfied. Of course, I have
never heard them claim that this risk applies to unsatisfied
women.
A fair number of my clients have imposed an additional
double standard, according to which the woman is expected
to consent to sex any time the man is in the mood, but she
is never supposed to initiate sex herself. As one partner of
a client said to me: “If I’m in the mood, I have to make sure
not to let it show too much, because he shuts it off real fast
if it’s coming from me.” Nothing could better illustrate the
way in which an abuser’s approach to sex reflects his
overall orientation toward power and control. He wants to
run the couple’s sex life, and he doesn’t want her needs
interfering with his fantasy in any way. He prefers the
two-dimensional women in the magazines, who never come
to him asking for anything.
SEX AND VULNERABILITY
For most women (and perhaps for most nonabusive men as
well) sex is an area of emotional vulnerability. An abuser’s
charm during the better periods of a relationship can lead
his partner to open up to him about deeply personal and
potentially painful issues. Sexual relations then add an
additional layer of vulnerability, as the abuser learns about
the woman’s sexual likes and dislikes and about her
previous sexual experiences. She may confide in him about
some sexual victimization she suffered earlier in life, or
about a period of promiscuity she went through, or about
“hang-ups” or sexual difficulties that she has. The abusive
man tends to make mental note of the highly personal
knowledge he gains. At another phase in the relationship,
when things turn ugly, his partner may find that her
vulnerabilities are being thrown back on her. If she revealed
to him earlier that she sometimes has difficulty reaching
orgasm, he now may be throwing words like frigid and cold
fish in her face. If she shared any discomfort regarding sex,
he now will call her uptight and repressed, especially when
she doesn’t happen to like what he likes. (To the abuser,
sexual liberation means the freedom to do whatever he
wants.) If she told him about suffering child sexual abuse or
previous experiences of rape, he now will characterize her
as being permanently damaged by those violations or use
her past to discredit her current grievances: “That’s why
you think I don’t treat you well, because you were abused
before. It’s not me.” In some of my cases the abuser has
even spread private sexual information about his partner in
public, including her sources of shame, thereby humiliating
her and making it difficult for her to continue being around
other people. Other clients of mine have been careless or
insensitive regarding the risk of pregnancy or of
communicating sexually transmitted diseases, increasing the
woman’s sense of violation.
The shock to a woman of having her deepest
vulnerabilities thrown back in her face by someone she has
loved and trusted can cause a burning pain unlike any other.
This is intimate psychological cruelty in one of its worst
forms.
SEXUAL ASSAULT IS VIO LENC E
Over the years I occasionally have had clients who do not
punch, slap, or physically hurt their partners but have
repeatedly forced them to have sex through threats,
intimidation, or physical force, including holding the
woman down. The partner of this style of abuser
sometimes says, “He was never violent to me,” despite
describing a degrading and debilitating history of coerced
sex. But sexual assault is violence. An abuser who forces
his partner to have any form of sexual relations against her
will is physically battering her. There is a societal tendency
not to recognize the violence present in sexual assault,
which can make it more difficult for a woman to understand
her own reactions and reach out for help. If you feel like
you have been sexually violated by your abusive partner,
trust your own perceptions and call an abuse or rape
hotline (see “Resources”).
Repeated studies have demonstrated that men who
embrace certain key myths about rape are more likely to
carry out a sexual assault. The misconceptions include the
belief that women find rape arousing, that they provoke
sexual assault with their style of dress or behavior, and that
rapists lose control of themselves. These myths are easy
for many abusive men to accept, because they are
consistent with the other characteristics of an abusive
outlook on female partners. It is not surprising, then, that
the risk to an abused woman of being sexually assaulted by
her partner is high. I also have had clients who use sexual
assault to punish their partners, sometimes because of
anger directly related to sex and sometimes not, including
some who have raped their ex-partners for leaving them.
The impact of such assaults can be devastating.
SEXUALITY IS a central arena in which the abuser’s
relationship to power is played out, including power over
his partner’s reproductive process. Although he may
appear to keep his abusiveness separate from your sex life,
closer examination of the dynamics of his conduct may
persuade you that he carries his core attitude problems
right into the bedroom with him. The subtle undercurrent
of “sexualization of subordination” can take some time to
identify. It is rare, unfortunately, for any aspect of an
abuser’s relationship with his partner to remain untouched
by his entitlement and disrespect.
KEY PO INTS TO REMEMBER
The abuser often believes that the ultimate
decision-making authority regarding sex
rests with him. He may see his partner as
his sexual possession.
Sex with an abuser can be especially good,
but it can also be a horror show. The two
extremes actually result from similar
attitudes in the abuser’s mind-set regarding
sex.
The majority of abusers sexualize power,
including some who find violence sexually
exciting.
Since sexuality is an area of particular
vulnerability for most women, an abuser
may use any of your sensitivities against
you.
If you feel uncomfortable about sexual
interactions with your partner, listen
carefully to your inner voice regarding what
is good for you. An abusive man will try to
tell you that your discomfort is your own
problem rather than a product of his
coercive, disrespectful, or humiliating
sexual behavior.
Women (and men) can heal from injurious
sexual experiences, but healing is not likely
to happen while abuse continues in the
present. Attaining an abuse-free life is thus
the first step to sexual wellness.
8
Abusive Men and Addiction
If I could just get him to stop drinking and
smoking pot, the abuse would stop.
He’s completely different when he’s drinking—
he turns mean.
He has stopped drinking, and now he says that I
have a problem with alcohol.
I try really hard not to upset him, because when
he gets mad he drinks.
He can be a terror when he doesn’t have pot.
He’s a lot easier to deal with when he’s stoned.
THE ROLE T HAT ALCOHOL, drugs, and other addictions
play in abusiveness has been greatly misunderstood. A
majority of abusers are not addicts, and even those who do
abuse substances mistreat their partners even when they
are not under the influence. Abusive men who succeed in
recovering from an addiction continue to abuse their
partners, although sometimes there is a short break in their
worst behaviors. Physically violent abusers sometimes
refrain from violence for a substantial period of time when
they get sober, but their psychologically abusive treatment
continues or even worsens. Addiction does not cause
partner abuse, and recovery from addiction does not
“cure” partner abuse.
At the same time, a man’s addictions can contribute in
important ways to his cruelty or volatility. A drunk or
drugged abuser tends to make his partner’s life even more
miserable than a sober one does. The trick is to separate
fact from fiction, including the myths perpetrated by
abusers themselves, regarding how addiction affects the
abusive man and his partner.
NO T ALL SUBSTANCE ABUSERS ARE ABUSIVE
PARTNERS
Part of how we know that partner abuse is not caused by
substances is that many alcoholics and drug addicts are
neither mean to nor controlling of their partners. Some
alcoholics drink only late at night, or they drink away from
home and return only to pass out. Some become passive
and pathetic, not belligerent or domineering. A certain
number even provide fairly responsibly for their families
and take good care of their children, at least during the early
years of their addiction. In such cases the man’s substance
abuse certainly causes serious problems for his partner and
children, but the atmosphere differs sharply from that of a
home where a partner abuser lives. And while substance
abusers can be male or female, abusive partners are
overwhelmingly male.
NO T ALL ABUSIVE PARTNERS ARE SUBSTANC E
ABUSERS
We can further uncouple addiction from partner abuse by
observing that a clear majority of partner abusers do not
abuse alcohol or drugs or show other signs of addiction.
Even if we restrict our discussion to physically violent
abusers, I still find addiction present less than half of the
time, and most researchers report similar observations.
In short, partner abuse and substance abuse are two
separate problems. Both are rampant in the world today,
so it is no surprise that they often turn up in the same
person, along with dandruff, acne, college degrees, and
various other noncausal factors.
ISN’T PARTNER ABUSE ITSELF A TYPE O F
ADDICTIO N?
No. Partner abuse has its own causes and dynamics that are
unrelated to addiction, although it also shares some
features. In recent years some counseling programs have
sprung up that claim to address substance addiction and
partner abuse at the same time, but they are selling false
hopes. A doctor theoretically may be able to develop
specialties in both brain surgery and pelvic reconstruction
—although it would be very difficult, given the
complexities involved—but if he or she claims to perform
one procedure that can solve a problem in both areas, you
shouldn’t buy it. The differences between abusing women
and abusing substances are great enough that they have to
be addressed in separate ways.
HO W PARTNER ABUSE AND ADDICTIO N ARE
SIMILAR
The ways in which partner abuse resembles addiction
include the following: • Escalation Alcoholics tend to find
that they are drinking increasing amounts, or with
increasing frequency, or both. This escalation is caused
partly by tolerance, which means that the body adapts to
the substance, so that more is required to have the same
effect. “I can handle my alcohol” is essentially a short form
for saying, “I have been drinking too much for a long time
now, so it takes a lot to get me drunk.” (Some addicts
experience the opposite effect, so that smaller and smaller
amounts can intoxicate them over time.) Substance abuse
also escalates for other reasons, including the addict’s
increasing fear of facing reality the more time he or she has
spent escaping it, and the mounting life problems that the
addiction itself is creating, which gives the addict more
things to need to escape from.
Partner abuse also tends to escalate, at least for the first
few years of a relationship. One of the causes of mounting
abuse is that the abuser gets frustrated by the effects of his
own abusiveness, which he then uses as an excuse for more
abuse. For example, you as the partner of an abuser may
have become increasingly depressed over time (because
chronic mistreatment is depressing), and now he gets angry
about the ways in which your decreased energy make you
cater to him less enthusiastically. Similarly, abuse may
diminish your drive for sex, and then he is hurt and enraged
about your lack of desire for him.
The concept of tolerance can also be applied to partner
abuse, but with different implications. As an abusive man
adapts to a certain degree of mistreatment of his partner,
his feelings of guilt nag at him less and less, so he is then
able to graduate to more serious acts. He becomes
accustomed to a level of cruelty or aggression that would
have been out of the question for him a few years earlier. In
some cases the concept of tolerance also applies to the
abused woman, when she becomes inured to his
abusiveness and starts to stand up to him more. He then
increases his abusiveness because he sees that it takes more
to frighten or control her than it used to. This escalation is
similar to the style of crowd control used by a military
dictatorship, which shoots rubber bullets as long as they
are adequate to disperse protestors but switches to live
ammunition when the crowds stop running away from the
rubber bullets.
However, many women (and their children) respond to
the trauma of abuse by becoming easier to frighten rather
than harder. A recent study of physical batterers found, for
example, that about one-third of the men decreased their
violence over time, because the women had become so
frightened that the men could control them with scary
words and glances, making actual assaults unnecessary.
• Denial, minimization, and blaming Addicts and partner
abusers share a capacity for convincing themselves that
they don’t have any problem and for hotly denying the
problem to other people. An alcoholic may say that he
drank “a couple of frosties” on a night when he had three
forty-ounce beers and two shots, or insist that alcohol is
not a problem for him because he never drinks liquor,
although he throws back two cases of beer each weekend.
The addict also follows the partner abuser’s pattern in
externalizing responsibility. In the world of substance
abuse treatment, the expression people, places, and things
is used to describe the addict’s way of always finding
someone or something to blame for drinking or drugging.
• Choosing approving peers Substance abusers prefer to
spend their time with other people who abuse substances
or with those who at least accept the addiction without
making an issue of it, and who will listen sympathetically
to the addict’s excuses for his behavior. Partner abusers
make similar choices regarding their social circle. Their male
friends tend to either abuse their own wives or girlfriends
or else make comments about abuse that buy into excuse
making and victim blaming. (In research terminology this is
called providing informational support for abuse.) Their
female friends may be mostly people who will accept their
poor-me stories about being the victims of hysterical or
mentally ill women.
• Lying and manipulating Both partner abusers and addicts
can have chronic problems with lying to cover up their
problem, escape accountability, and get other people to
clean up the messes they make. Partner abusers, however,
use dishonesty and manipulation for the additional purpose
of gaining power and control over their partners, which is a
separate dynamic.
• Lack of predictability Both partner abusers and substance
abusers tend to keep their partners and children walking on
eggshells, never knowing what is going to happen next.
This dynamic helps to hook family members into hoping
that he will change.
• Defining roles for family members Both abusive men and
addicts can set up family members to be cast in roles that
serve the abuse scenario. One person may become the
confronter, another the protector, and another the family
scapegoat, whom the abuser uses as a place to lay all the
blame for the problems that he himself is actually causing
in the family.
• High rates of returning to abuse after periods of apparent
change Both groups have rampant problems with dropping
out of treatment programs or with continuing to abuse even
after “successful” completion of a program. Deep and
lasting change comes only through an extended and
painstaking series of steps, although the process of change
for substance abusers is quite different from that for
partner abusers.
HO W PARTNER ABUSE AND ADDICTIO N ARE
DIFFERENT
The ways in which partner abuse differs from addiction
include the following: • Partner abusers don’t “hit
bottom.”
Substance abuse is self-destructive. Over time, the addict’s
life becomes increasingly unmanageable. He tends to have
difficulty keeping jobs; his finances slide into disarray
(partly due to the expense of his habit); his friendships
decline. He may alienate himself from his relatives unless
they are substance abusers themselves. This downward
spiral can lead the addict to reach a nadir where his life is
finally such a mess that he can no longer deny his problem.
Alcoholics commonly attribute their entrance into recovery
to such an experience of “hitting bottom.”
Partner abuse, on the other hand, is not especially self-
destructive, although it is profoundly destructive to others.
A man can abuse women for twenty or thirty years and
still have a stable job or professional career, keep his
finances in good order, and remain popular with his friends
and relatives. His self-esteem, his ability to sleep at night,
his self-confidence, his physical health, all tend to hold just
as steady as they would for a nonabusive man. One of the
great sources of pain in the life of an abused woman is her
sense of isolation and frustration because no one else seems
to notice that anything is awry in her partner. Her life and
her freedom may slide down the tubes because of what he
is doing to her mind, but his life usually doesn’t.
It is true that partner abusers lose intimacy because of
their abuse, since true closeness and abuse are mutually
exclusive. However, they rarely experience this as much of
a loss. Either they find their intimacy through close
emotional connections with friends or relatives, as many of
my clients do, or they are people for whom intimacy is
neither a goal nor a value (as is also true of many
nonabusers). You can’t miss something that you aren’t
interested in having.
In recent years, physically assaultive abusers are for the
first time hitting bottom in one sense: They are
occasionally experiencing unpleasant legal consequences for
their actions. Unfortunately, most court systems still treat
domestic abusers with special leniency (see Chapter 12), so
the bottom seems to be a long way down.
• Short-term versus long-term rewards Substance abuse
can be highly rewarding. It brings quick, easy pleasure and
relief from emotional distresses. It often provides
camaraderie through entrance to a circle of friends whose
social life revolves around seeking and enjoying
intoxication. However, these rewards are usually short-
lived. Over time, substance abuse causes the addict
emotional distresses that are as great as the ones he or she
was attempting to escape in the first place. Friendships
based on substance abuse are shallow and are prone to
tensions and ruptures due to financial resentments,
paranoia, mutual irresponsibility, and many other factors.
An alcoholic tends to drink more and more, not because of
how well it is working but because of how poorly.
Partner abuse, on the other hand, can be rewarding to the
abuser for many years, and potentially for a lifetime. In
Chapter 6, we examined the multiple benefits that abusers
gain through their behavior, none of which necessarily
decreases over time. It is impossible to get partner abusers
to change by trying to persuade them to look at the damage
they are doing to their own lives (as I tried to do in my
early years as an abuse counselor) because they perceive
the gains as vastly outweighing the losses. Change in an
abuser is primarily brought about when society succeeds in
pressuring him into caring about the damage he is doing to
others.
• Societal approval for partner abuse is greater.
Social supports for both substance abuse and partner abuse
are regrettably high, but they are even stronger for the
latter, as discussed in Chapter 13. Substance abuse receives
the active promotion of alcohol advertising, which domestic
abuse does not. But there is an array of writers and
organizations that actively opposes improvements in legal
and institutional responses to domestic abuse, whereas
there are no parallel organized efforts to defend substance
abuse. Television, movies, music videos, and other cultural
outlets are replete with messages condoning partner abuse.
Because of these critical distinctions between partner
abuse and addiction, programs and books that have
attempted to address abusiveness based on an addiction
model have failed badly. Batterers Anonymous groups, for
example, are notorious for acting as support circles for
abusers’ excuses and justifications rather than as launching
pads for change. Recovery programs generally address few
or none of the central attitudes and habits that cause
partner abuse.
PARTNER ABUSE DO ESN’T GO AWAY WHEN AN
ADDICT RECO VERS
QUESTION 13:
IF HE STO PS DRINKING, WILL HE
STO P ABUSING ME?
Over the years, dozens of my clients have gone into
recovery from addiction while they were participating in
my program, sometimes because of pressure from me. No
significant improvement has occurred as a result, except in
those men who also worked seriously on their partner
abuse issues. During the first several months of recovery, a
man’s harsh daily criticism and control sometimes soften,
and any physical violence he was using may lessen or cease
for a period, raising the hopes of the abused woman. She
interprets this respite as confirmation that the addiction did
indeed cause his abusiveness, but his behavior toward her
gradually, or abruptly, reverts to being as destructive as it
was while he was drinking, or nearly so.
Ironically, the man’s backsliding tends to begin precisely
as his recovery from addiction starts to take solid hold. The
early period of recovery is all-consuming: The compulsion
to drink is intense, so the alcoholic fights a daily internal
battle, often holding on by a thread. He may be attending
one or more substance abuse meetings per day, which
occupy his time and maintain his focus. One result of this
Herculean effort is that the man has little time, energy, or
mental space to devote to controlling or manipulating his
partner. He is entirely self-focused and absorbed. But when
he starts to come out the other end of this white-knuckle
process of early recovery, his energy and attention are
redirected toward his partner, and his desire to bully her
reemerges.
It is not uncommon for abusers to actually get worse
when they are in recovery, partly because they may
become irritable from not drinking and take it out on family
members. Other abusers become more controlling when
sober than they were while drunk, standing guard with eyes
that are no longer clouded by alcohol.
Perhaps even more important is that an abuser’s
recovery program tends itself to become a weapon to use
against his partner. Once he stops drinking, for example, he
may turn around and insist that she is alcoholic too, even if
she actually drinks moderately. He starts to criticize her for
being “in denial” about her own drinking, a concept he has
learned at his meetings and about which he now considers
himself an expert. Insulting comments about her drinking
habits and pressure on her to give up alcohol and join AA
are likely to follow.
The abuser also can use specific concepts from AA
against his partner. For example, AA encourages
participants to review their own faults and misdeeds and
make an inventory of them and discourages criticizing or
focusing on the shortcomings of others, which is known as
“taking someone else’s inventory.” The abuser turns this
concept against his partner, so that any time she attempts
to complain about his abusive behavior and how it affects
her, he says to her, “You should work on your own issues
instead of taking my inventory.” Similarly, he uses the
danger that he might drink as an excuse to control her. For
example, when he is bothered by something she does, such
as confront him about his bullying, he says, “You’re getting
me stressed, and you know I might drink if I get under too
much stress.” The accusation “You’re threatening my
sobriety!” becomes a new tool that the abuser uses to
hammer and silence his partner. Abusers thus develop new
excuses for abuse to make up for the fact that they no
longer can blame it on being drunk.
The philosophy of twelve-step programs includes
elements that could be valuable to abusers, but I find that
my clients tend to ignore the principles that could help. For
example, according to AA the alcoholic has a responsibility
to make amends for all the damage he has done to other
people while he was drinking. Abusers choose instead to
take an almost opposite view, arguing that their partners
should not raise grievances about past abuse, “because that
was when I was drinking and I’m not like that anymore, so
she should let go of the past.” They think of recovery from
addiction as a gigantic, self-awarded amnesty program that
should cause their partners’ resentments and mistrust to
simply vanish.
Abusers in recovery can be just as committed to blaming
their behavior on alcohol as they were while drinking. They
choose to misinterpret the AA philosophy to mean that
they were not responsible for their actions while they were
drinking—which is not what AA proposes—and that
therefore alcohol is a full and adequate explanation for all
the cruelty and selfishness to which they have subjected
women. Some of my clients use their recovery to try to
escape their responsibilities, saying that they can’t help
with the children, get a job, or contribute in other ways,
“because the program says I need to keep my focus on
myself.” In this way recovery can feed an abusive man’s
self-centeredness and excuse making. A woman who hears
the abuser express these attitudes may find herself
doubting that he is really changing, and her skepticism is
well advised. Her partner may tell her, “You just have no
faith in people” or “You don’t believe anyone can change”
(as if putting her down were the way to persuade her that
he is no longer abusive!), but her instincts are correctly
telling her that he is very much the same.
I have had clients who made significant changes from a
combination of recovery from alcoholism and working
seriously on taking responsibility for their abusiveness.
Only then does an abuser’s recovery from addiction
become a significant step.
ALCO HOL HAS NO BIO LO GICAL CO NNECTIO N
TO ABUSE O R VIO LENC E
Alcohol does not directly make people belligerent,
aggressive, or violent. There is evidence that certain
chemicals can cause violent behavior—anabolic steroids, for
example, or crack cocaine—but alcohol is not among them.
In the human body, alcohol is actually a depressant, a
substance that rarely causes aggression. Marijuana similarly
has no biological action connected to abusiveness.
Alcohol and other substances thus contribute to partner
abuse in two ways:
1. A man’s beliefs about the effects of the
substance will largely be borne out. If he
believes that alcohol can make him
aggressive, it will, as research has shown.
On the other hand, if he doesn’t attribute
violence-causing powers to substances, he
is unlikely to become aggressive even
when severely intoxicated.
2. Alcohol provides an abuser with an excuse
to freely act on his desires. After a few
drinks, he turns himself loose to be as
insulting or intimidating as he feels
inclined to be, knowing that the next day
he can say, “Hey, sorry about last night, I
was really trashed,” or even claim to have
completely forgotten the incident, and his
partner, his family, or even a judge will let
him off the hook. (Courts tend to be
especially lenient with abusers who blame
their violence on a drinking problem.) And
the alcohol is an excuse that he accepts, so
he isn’t kept awake at night with gnawing
guilt about having hurt his partner.
I have had several physically violent clients admit that
they made the decision to assault their partners before they
had any alcohol in their systems. They went out, as a few
of the men have put it, “to grease the wheels,” drinking for
a couple of hours before coming home to start a vicious,
scary fight. The alcohol arms the abuser with an excuse and
helps him to overcome any shame or embarrassment that
might hold him back. Beware of the man who believes that
drugging or drinking makes him violent. If he thinks it will,
he’ll be right.
WHAT ABOUT THE MAN WHO IS ABUSIVE ONLY
WHEN HE DRINKS?
I could count on one hand the number of clients I have had
whose abusiveness is entirely restricted to times of
intoxication. However, I have worked with dozens of men
whose worst incidents are accompanied by alcohol use but
whose controlling and disrespectful behaviors are a pattern
even when they are sober. These abusers tend to fit into
one of the following categories:
1. The verbally abusive man who escalates
to physical violence or threats only when
intoxicated: When I ask the partner of
such a man to describe his day-to-day
behavior, she usually reports that he gets
meaner and scarier when he’s drinking but
that his name-calling, disrespect, and
selfishness are the same, whether he is
drunk or sober. She tends to feel that his
physically scary behaviors would stop if
she could get him into recovery and that
she could manage the rest of his abusive
behaviors. This soothing hope is a false
one for two reasons: (a) When this style
of abuser gets sober, he gradually
accustoms himself to using violence
without the assistance of alcohol, usually
over a period of one or two years; and (b)
even if he is among the small number of
exceptions to this rule, the woman usually
discovers that his psychological abuse can
be as destructive to her as his violence
was, which tosses her back into having to
figure out what to do.
2. The verbal abuser who becomes even
more cruel and degrading when drinking
but doesn’t escalate to violence: He is
doing the same thing that the physically
assaultive abuser does: using alcohol as an
excuse. If he gets sober, he gradually
comes up with new excuses, including
learning to use his recovery as an excuse,
and life goes on more or less as before.
3. The assaultive abuser who becomes even
more violent when intoxicated: I find this
style the most common among substance-
addicted partner abusers. When this
abuser is not intoxicated, he mostly
refrains from his scariest forms of
violence, like punching, kicking, choking,
or threatening to kill her. His partner may
say, “He is only violent when he drinks,”
but she then goes on to tell me that he
shoves or grabs her, walks toward her in
menacing ways, is sexually rough, or uses
other forms of physical intimidation or
assault even when sober—behaviors that
the abuser has succeeded in convincing her
not to define as violence.
If your partner’s behavior becomes much worse when
he’s intoxicated, you may tend to focus your attention on
trying to manage his drinking, so that you never fully
realize how abusive he is when he’s sober. His substance-
abuse problem can thereby create a huge diversion from
critical issues.
Alcohol does not a change a person’s fundamental value
system. People’s personalities when intoxicated, even
though somewhat altered, still bear some relationship to
who they are when sober. When you are drunk you may
behave in ways that are silly or embarrassing; you might be
overly familiar or tactlessly honest, or perhaps careless or
forgetful. But do you knock over little old ladies for a
laugh? Probably not. Do you sexually assault the clerk at
the convenience store? Unlikely. People’s conduct while
intoxicated continues to be governed by their core
foundation of beliefs and attitudes, even though there is
some loosening of the structure. Alcohol encourages people
to let loose what they have simmering below the surface.
ABUSERS MAKE C O NSCIO US CHO ICES EVEN
WHILE INTO XICATED
One of my first abusive clients, almost fifteen years ago
now, was a physically assaultive husband named Max who
worked for a utility company. He had gone out drinking
after work one evening, and by the time he arrived at his
front door he was “trashed.” He told me that as soon as he
came in the house, his wife, Lynn, began “nagging” him. He
“saw red” and started to scream at her and soon was tearing
into her with his fists. M ax sheepishly recounted this event
to me, going on to admit that he had torn off some of
Lynn’s clothes and had “partly” tied her to a chair. (I’m
not sure how you “partly” tie someone to a chair; they are
either tied or they’re not.) As Max sat in my office, he
seemed to be a likable, mild-mannered line worker. It was
not easy to imagine what he must have looked like through
Lynn’s eyes that night.
I asked him to describe Lynn’s injuries, and he told me
that she had black-and-blue marks and welts up and down
both of her legs. I inquired about any other injuries, and he
said there were none. I was surprised, given the brutality of
the attack. “Lynn had no bruises on her arms, or on her
face? Why not?” Max’s face changed shape, suddenly
peering at me as if I must not be very bright, and he
sputtered, “Oh, well, of course I wasn’t going to do
anything that would show.”
Lynn confirmed to me later that Max had indeed been
stumbling drunk that night. But had his inebriation caused
him to lose control? Clearly not. He had remained focused
on his desire to protect his own reputation and to avoid
putting himself at risk of arrest, and so he had restricted
Lynn’s injuries to places where they would be covered by
clothing the next day. He could scarcely be termed “out of
control.”
I could provide countless similar examples of the
consciousness and decision making that my clients exhibit
while drunk or on drugs. They may not choose their words
quite as carefully, and they may not have perfect
coordination of their movements, but they protect their
self-interest: They avoid damaging their own prized
belongings and usually don’t let their friends and relatives
see their most overt and cruel forms of verbal or physical
abuse or anything that they feel wouldn’t be adequately
covered by the “I was drunk” excuse.
When I criticize my clients about their drunken
abusiveness, they sometimes respond: “But I was in a
blackout.” However, a blackout is a memory disconnection
that happens after a drunk person passes out, causing the
person to no longer know what occurred upon awakening.
The person was still conscious during the event. If you ask
an extremely drunk but still-awake person what happened
earlier that evening, he or she can tell you. Thus there is no
such thing as being “in” a blackout; the loss of memory
happens later.
Finally, even if substances could cause people to “lose
control,” the abusive man would still be responsible for his
actions while intoxicated because he made the choice to
impair himself with alcohol or drugs. A man’s claim that he
is not fully responsible for his mistreatment of his partner
because he was drunk is simply another manifestation of
the abusive mentality.
SUBSTANCES AS WEAPO NS O F ABUSE
Oscar and Ellen Oscar and Ellen were dining in a
restaurant. Tension was mounting during the meal because
of several relationship issues, mostly related to Ellen’s
complaints of mistreatment by Oscar. Oscar, on the other
hand, insisted that Ellen’s complaints were all caused by
her own hypersensitivity and desire to control him. Ellen
was pinning her hopes for their relationship on persuading
Oscar to deal with his alcohol problem. He had agreed at
one point earlier in their relationship that he was indeed
drinking too much, and he had maintained sobriety for nine
months. His abusiveness toward her actually hadn’t
improved during that time, but she didn’t see any other
strategy to get him to change.
The argument at dinner that night focused on his
economic abuse of her. Specifically, he had withdrawn
$4,000—virtually the entirety of their savings—from their
joint bank account and had bought an old BM W “for her.”
Ellen was angry that she hadn’t been consulted, all the
more so because she was pregnant with their first child and
wanted the security of having some savings. Oscar
responded by outdoing her anger, snapping through
clenched teeth, “You never appreciate anything I do for
you! Nothing is ever good enough for you! You just bitch,
bitch, bitch!” He immediately proceeded to order a cocktail,
which he knew would bother her. As soon as the waitress
brought his drink, he looked Ellen in the eye, downed it in
three gulps, and quickly ordered another. He set out to
make himself rapidly drunk, and did. Ellen was then afraid
to leave the restaurant with him, because she had been
through numerous occasions on which he had combined
alcohol and rage in a volatile mix that led to raised fists,
pounded walls, thrown objects, and threats, leaving her
cowering and trembling.
Among my clients, I have encountered numerous other
ways that they have used substances as weapons,
including:
Stomping out to go driving while drunk,
because he knows it will cause her to be
upset and worried. This type of maneuver
is particularly powerful if the couple has
children and the family is dependent on the
man’s income for survival.
Forcing her to assist him in running or
dealing drugs, thereby putting her at risk of
serious legal consequences, which he can
use to control her further. (A large
percentage of women who are in prison for
drug-or alcohol-related charges, or for minor
economic crimes such as forging checks, are
serving time for crimes that either directly
or indirectly were instigated by their
abusive partners.)
During periods when he is sober or clean,
threatening to return to alcohol or drug use
if she does not meet his demands or obey
his orders, or claiming that her challenges of
him are “threatening his sobriety.”
Blaming her for problems in his life that are
really caused by his addiction.
Pressuring and manipulating his partner
into becoming substance-involved herself.
He then uses her addiction to increase his
power over her and to get other people to
disbelieve her reports that he is abusive.
This tactic is particularly common when
the abuser has a substance-abuse problem
himself, since he doesn’t want his partner
to be able to hold anything over him. But I
have also had clients who kept their
partners substance-involved while staying
sober or using substances only moderately
themselves.
Shane and Amanda In one of my cases, an alcoholic woman
named Amanda had entered sobriety several times, but her
husband, Shane, would sabotage her progress each time by
ridiculing her for being “dependent” on AA, telling her she
was weak for not being able to stay away from alcohol on
her own, “without a crutch.” He would also go out and buy
beer, telling her, “I just want to have a few on hand in case
friends come over,” but he never seemed to drink them.
They would just sit in the refrigerator and in cabinets
tempting her, and finally she would succumb.
Amanda eventually went into a detox center and didn’t
tell Shane where she was going, knowing that if she spoke
with him she was likely to give in to the temptation to get
back together with him. Shane left no stone unturned in his
efforts to find out where she was and get a message to her.
As of my last contact with the case, she had succeeded in
staying away from him and as a result had regained custody
of her children, which his abuse and her drinking had caused
her to lose.
MUTUAL REINFO RCEMENT O F ADDICTION AND
PARTNER ABUSE
Notice that when a man uses substances as a weapon, he
ends up contributing to his own problem with substances.
Thus partner abuse can feed the problem of addiction, and
not just vice versa. They are two separate issues, neither of
which causes the other but which do help to keep each
other stuck. A man’s abusiveness strengthens his denial of
his substance-abuse problem, as he can blame all of his life
difficulties on his partner. His negative attitudes toward her
allow him to easily dismiss concerns that she raises about
his addiction. At the same time, the addiction fortifies his
denial of his abusiveness, as he uses the substance as an
excuse and as a weapon.
O THER ADDICTIONS
I have worked with clients who have been addicted to
gambling, cocaine, heroin, and prescription medications.
Several have also claimed to be “sex addicts,” but I don’t
buy this self-diagnosis from abusive men (for reasons that I
covered in Chapter 4, under “The Player”). Any addiction
can be a financial drain on a couple, contribute to the man’s
secretiveness, and encourage him to use his partner as a
scapegoat. An abuser’s addiction doesn’t cause his abuse,
but it does make his partner’s life even more painful and
complicated.
ENTITLEMENT AND ADDICTIO N
An abusive man typically believes that his use or abuse of
substances is none of his partner’s business. No matter
how his addiction may lead him to abuse his partner
economically (because he pours money into the substance
and/or has trouble holding down a job) no matter how
burdened she is with household responsibilities because he
is out partying, no matter how much worse he may treat
her while intoxicated, he nonetheless feels entitled to use
substances as he chooses. If she criticizes him for his
selfishness or confronts him with the effects that his
partying has on her life, he feels justified in calling her a
“nag” or a “bitch” or labeling her “controlling.” In short,
irresponsible use of alcohol or drugs is another one of the
privileges that the abusive man may award himself, and he
may use psychological or physical assaults to punish his
partner for challenging it.
SUBSTANCE ABUSE BLO C KS SELF-EXAMINATIO N
While substance addiction does not cause a man to become
abusive, it does ensure that the abusiveness remains. I have
yet to see a substance-abusing client make significant and
lasting improvements in his treatment of his partner unless
he simultaneously deals with his addiction. In fact, I only
give an alcoholic or drug addict about two months to get
himself into recovery, and if he doesn’t, I dismiss him from
the abuser program; I don’t want to give his partner false
hopes, nor do I want to waste my program’s time. Facing
up to a problem with partner abuse, and changing it, is a
profoundly complex and uncomfortable process that
requires consistent commitment over a long period of time.
It takes tremendous courage for a man to be honest with
himself, to reevaluate his ways of thinking about his
partner, and to accept how much emotional injury he has
caused her. No active substance abuser is willing or able to
take on this task.
Thus, although recovery from addiction is not sufficient
to bring about change in a man’s abusiveness, it is a
necessary prerequisite. Only if he is willing to address both
problems—and I have had a number of clients who have
gotten serious about becoming both sober and respectful—
can he stop being a source of pain and distress to his
partner.
KEY PO INTS TO REMEMBER
Alcohol or drugs cannot make an abuser out
of a man who is not abusive.
Even while intoxicated, abusers continue to
make choices about their actions based on
their habits, attitudes, and self-interest.
The primary role that addiction plays in
partner abuse is as an excuse.
Abusiveness and addiction are two distinct
problems requiring separate solutions.
9
The Abusive Man and Breaking
Up
Friends tell me that he’s really not doing well
since we split up.
I’m worried about him.
Last time I tried to leave him he scared me half
to death.
Sometimes it seems like he could kill me.
I don’t want to take the children away from him;
he’s their father.
He was okay with our breakup until he found
out I was dating somebody.
VAN SPOKE WITH A RASPY, modulated voice that
complemented his sadly expressive blue eyes. His reddish-
blond hair was always wrapped in a bandanna which,
combined with his thick neck and upper arms, created a
biker image. But his language did not fit the tough-guy
stereotype. He spoke of his pain, of the need to face up to
oneself, of the process of denial and acceptance. He
appeared to be his own harshest critic, referring frequently
to his own selfishness, immaturity, and other “character
flaws.” He stated openly that he was alcoholic and was
attending at least one AA meeting per day. He had not had
a drink in almost eight months.
Van had, by his own description, nearly killed his
partner Gail in a beating nine months earlier. He would gaze
at the floor and speak slowly as he recalled this assault, the
picture of remorse. “It was bad,” he would say. “Real bad.
I’m lucky she’s alive.” He was arrested and spent that
night in jail, before his mother and brother bailed him out
the next day. “I drank nonstop for three weeks afterward,
trying to blot out what I had done, and then I woke up one
morning with bruises all over me from some fight I had
been in, I don’t even know where, and I haven’t had a drink
since. I finally accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to be
able to run from myself forever, and I was going to have to
deal with what I had done to Gail.” He did not join an
abuser program until several months later, however, when
he was required to do so by the court.
For weeks, Van was my star group member. He would
challenge other men about their denial, about their efforts to
blame their own behavior on their partners, about their
need to take an honest and painful look at themselves. I
pushed him a few times to stop using his alcoholism as an
excuse for abusiveness and to examine more seriously his
history of bullying of and violence toward Gail. He would
react to my challenges with momentary irritation but then
would soften and say, “I know I still have a lot of work left
to do.” In short, he seemed like an abusive man who was
interested in doing the hard work involved in making real
changes.
Van and Gail had been separated since the severe
beating. They were speaking from time to time but not
sleeping together. Van said he thought it would be a long
time before Gail would trust him again, and he would have
to give her space.
However, over a period of three or four months, Van
began to realize that Gail was not taking a break from their
relationship in order to rebuild her trust in him, as he had
believed. She was getting herself unhooked. As it dawned
on him that she was thinking seriously about closing the
door permanently, he started a rapid backslide before my
eyes. First, he surprised me one day by saying that Gail
“should really give our relationship another chance.” I was
stunned. “Why on earth should a woman stay with a
partner who gave her a beating that nearly killed her? I
certainly wouldn’t want to do it.”
Van said, “The pain in our relationship wasn’t all hers,
you know. She hurt me a lot too.” I asked if that somehow
justified battering her. “No,” he answered, “I’m not
justifying it. I’m just saying it isn’t like I was all bad and
she was all good.”
“And so that means she owes you another chance? How
many times do you get to beat a woman up before she
stops owing you?” To this, Van just muttered under his
breath and lightly shook his head.
At the next session I focused more time on Van, because
separation is a time when abusers can be particularly
destructive. Since the previous session, he had received the
definitive word from Gail that their relationship was over
and that she was going to start dating, making it
particularly important for us to try to influence his thought
process. He plunged quickly into a homily about how hard
he was working on himself in contrast to Gail, “who is
going nowhere and who isn’t dealing with her issues at all.”
I asked how Gail’s progress was going to be assisted by
getting back together with an abusive man. “Hey,” he said,
“I’m a lot better for her than those losers she’s hanging
around with now. Most of them are still drinking and acting
totally immature.”
Van’s group was alarmed by his reversion, and members
raced to try to get him back on track, pointing out to him
that (1) he was claiming to have made great changes, but his
entitled insistence that Gail owed him loyalty was evidence
of an abuser who wasn’t changing; (2) he was slipping back
into minimizing how destructive his abusiveness and
violence had been to Gail, to an extreme where he was
convincing himself that he was a more constructive
presence in her life than other people were; and(3) he was
failing to accept the reality that a woman does not have to
be “all good” in order to have the right to live free of abuse.
I kept an additional thought to myself, which was that
based on my conversation with her I was confident that
Gail’s life was not “going nowhere” and that her primary
goal at that point was to heal from what he had done to her.
When he made disparaging references to “her issues,” he
was ignoring the reality that her issues were 90 percent
him. I remained silent on this point because I was
concerned, given the state of mind he was in, that the better
he understood her healing process, the more effectively he
would take steps to sabotage it.
Van was not open to his group’s feedback the way he
had been in earlier months. His heels were dug in, as we
could see in the digusted shaking of his head and the
dismissive curl of his lip. The group had stumbled upon a
core aspect of Van’s entitlement—as tends to happen with
each client sooner or later—and we weren’t going to take it
apart in a few short weeks. We hoped that we could reach
him eventually though, for Van still had six months to go of
the eleven the court had ordered him to spend in our
program.
He never gave us the chance, unfortunately. Less than
three weeks later, overwhelmed by his outraged
entitlement, he approached Gail in a restaurant in front of
numerous witnesses, called her a “fucking bitch,” and
walked off flashing her the finger. His verbal assault
violated a restraining order barring him from approaching
her, and since he was already on probation for his grave
attack on her, he was jailed for a minimum of six months.
Gail had little desire to see Van behind bars, but in this case
his incarceration was a blessing, as it gave her an
uninterrupted opportunity to move on with her life, which
she did. (Later in this chapter we will look at strategies for
getting away from a frightening relationship safely.)
WHAT AN ABUSER DO ES IF YO U ARE LEAVING
HIM
Breaking up with an abuser can be very hard to do. In
fact, leaving a nonabusive partner is generally easier,
contrary to what many people believe. Few abusers readily
allow themselves to be left. When they feel a partner
starting to get stronger, beginning to think for herself more,
slipping out from under domination, abusers move to their
endgame. Some of their more common maneuvers include:
ABUSERS’ RESPO NSES TO A PO SSIBLE
BREAKUP
Promising to change
Entering therapy or an abuser program
Not drinking, attending AA
Making apologies
Telling you that you will be lost without him
Telling you that no one else will want to be
with you
Threatening suicide
Saying that you are abandoning him, making
you feel guilty
Threatening to kidnap or take custody of the
children
Threatening to leave you homeless or with
no financial resources
Turning very nice
Getting other people to pressure you into
giving him another chance
Taking care of things that you have been
complaining
about for a long time (e.g., finally fixing a
hazardous
situation in the house, getting a job, agreeing
that you
can go out with your friends)
Behaving in self-destructive ways so that you
will worry
or feel sorry for him (e.g., not eating, drinking
heavily,
skipping work, never talking to his friends)
Spreading rumors about you, trying to ruin
your friendships or reputation
Starting a new relationship/affair to make you
jealous or angry
Insisting that he already has changed
Spreading confidential information
about you to humiliate you
Threatening or assaulting anyone you try to
start a new
relationship with, or anyone who is helping
you
Getting you pregnant
Stalking you
Physically or sexually assaulting you
Trashing your house or car
Threatening to harm you or kill you
Each abuser uses a different mix of the above tactics, and
some let go somewhat more easily than others. Strategies of
control that appear contradictory may go hand in hand. For
example, he may insist adamantly one day, “You should be
able to tell that I’ve changed,” and then call the next night
to say, “If you don’t give this relationship another chance,
you’re going to find out what I’m really capable of.” One
day on the phone he may tell you that his love for you will
never die, but when his poetic language doesn’t succeed in
persuading you to meet him for a drink, he will abruptly
switch to yelling: “I don’t give a shit about you anyhow,
so just let your life continue down the stinking hole it’s
in!” He doesn’t care that these pieces don’t fit together,
because he is intently focused on a single desire: to get you
back under his control.
He knows he used to be able to control you with charm,
affection, and promises. He also remembers how well
intimidation or aggression worked at other times. Now both
of these tools are losing their effectiveness, so he tries to
increase the voltages. He may switch erratically back and
forth between the two like a doctor who cycles a patient
through a range of antibiotics, trying to find the one that
will get the infection under control. And the analogy is an
apt one, because an abuser sees his (ex-) partner’s growing
strength and independence as a sickness rather than as the
harbinger of health that it actually is.
Promises that an abuser makes during this period can be
persuasive, especially if they are combined with sincere-
sounding apologies or if he takes some concrete initiative
such as quitting drinking, locating a therapist, or joining an
abuser program. However, once he succeeds in getting you
to reunite with him, he gradually plows his way back into
the usual ruts, dropping counseling because he “can’t
afford it,” saying he will go back to “a little” drinking
because he can “handle it,” and so forth. Before long, daily
life has returned to its former contours.
My clients make flip-flopping statements during
breakups about who is responsible for the dissolution of
the relationship, bouncing between blaming everything on
themselves and casting all fault on to the woman. Making it
her fault is closer to their real thinking; the blaming of
themselves is largely a way to win sympathy from other
people, including abuse counselors, who can get drawn in
by a theatrical show of pained guilt. And in an ironic twist,
the more he says that the separation is his own fault, the
more friends and relatives are tempted to pressure the
woman to believe that he will change.
When one of my clients takes this mea culpa stance, I
ask him to describe in detail how exactly his behavior drove
his partner away. Eight times out of ten the man can give
me only two or three examples, or none. In other words, he
doesn’t really believe that he is abusive, and my request for
extensive specifics smokes him out. If he does manage to
list a few things he did wrong, they often are far afield from
the core of his destructiveness, as in comments like “I
should have made her a higher priority; we didn’t do things
together enough,” or they are actually backhanded remarks
to get more digs in against her, such as, “I used to walk
away from her because of the insane rages she goes into,
but I should have realized that my leaving just made her
feel even worse.”
The volatile, abusive, and sometimes dangerous
reactions that abusers can have when relationships draw to
a close have often been considered, especially by
psychologists, to be evidence of the man’s “fear of
abandonment.” But women have fears of abandonment that
are just as great as men’s, yet they rarely stalk or kill their
partners after a breakup. Not only that, but many abusers
are vicious to their ex-partners even when they do not desire
a reunion or when they initiated the breakup themselves.
The clue to how an abuser handles separation lies in the
same thinking that has been causing his controlling and
abusive behavior throughout the relationship and that has
driven his partner away from him.
HOW ABUSERS VIEW SEPARATIO N
Van’s internal process, and the destructive behavior it led
him to, captures the essence of how an abusive man
perceives the ending of a relationship. Let’s look at the
central elements of his outlook:
“ABUSE IS NO REASO N TO END A
RELATIO NSHIP.”
Van was unwilling to accept that his brutal mistreatment
of Gail was adequate reason for her to leave him. Why?
First, he believed that the pain Gail sometimes caused him
during their relationship outweighed his abuse of her. If
Van can convince himself that he has an even balance sheet,
despite his severe physical assault, imagine how easily a
purely psychological abuser can do so (even though the
reality is that emotional abuse can do just as much damage).
Second, Van believed that it was unreasonable to expect
a man to be nonabusive unless his partner never hurt his
feelings or failed to cater to him. He felt that we were being
unfair and unrealistic about a man’s inherent nature, as if
we were asking a tiger to be vegetarian. Without saying so
directly, he revealed his attitude that a woman needs to
accept the fact that a certain amount of abuse just comes
with the territory of being involved with a man, unless she
can be perfect.
“WHEN I PRO MISE TO BE KINDER IN THE FUTURE,
THAT SHO ULD BE ENO UGH.”
No matter how many times in the past Van had broken
his promises to change, he still believed that this time Gail
should see that he really meant it and should give him
another chance. There was no limit in his mind to how
many “other chances” he should get; he felt entitled to an
endless series.
To make matters worse, Van felt that Gail was
supposed to accept his rose-colored vision of the future
even though he was simultaneously blaring loud warning
signals that he hadn’t changed. My clients demand
forgiveness while continuing to insult, threaten, demand
immediate responses, attend only to their own needs, and
more. According to his mind-set, she should believe that his
abuse has stopped when he says it has stopped, regardless
of what she sees in front of her own eyes.
“THERE IS NO LIMIT TO HO W MUCH SHE
SHO ULD BE WILLING TO ‘WO RK ON’ O UR
RELATIO NSHIP.”
The abuser feels entitled to end a relationship any time
he feels like it, but he assigns no such privilege to his
partner. Around breakup time, my clients grouse bitterly to
me along the lines of:
“Nowadays, people just throw relationships in the trash
as soon as it gets difficult. There’s no commitment
anymore to sticking it out and making it work.”
“I guess our marriage vows didn’t mean anything to
her.”
“She says she cares so much about our children, but it’s
no big deal to her if they have a broken home.”
“She’s prepared to just throw away everything we had
because she’s found some other guy.”
No woman in any of my cases has ever left a man the
first time he behaved abusively (not that doing so would be
wrong). By the time she moves to end her relationship, she
has usually lived with years of verbal abuse and control and
has requested uncountable numbers of times that her
partner stop cutting her down or frightening her. In most
cases she has also requested that he stop drinking, or go to
counseling, or talk to a clergyperson, or take some other
step to get help. She has usually left him a few times, or at
least started to leave, and then gotten back together with
him. Don’t any of these actions on her part count as
demonstrating her commitment? Has she ever done enough,
and gained the right to protect herself? In the abuser’s
mind, the answer is no.
Once again, the abuser’s double standards rule the day.
He doesn’t consider his chronic verbal abuse, or even
violence, to constitute a failure to “love and cherish,” but
her decision to move away for safety does. His affairs
automatically deserve forgiveness, whereas any affairs she
may have he considers proof of her low moral character and
lack of caring. And his exposure of the children to his
degrading and bullying of their mother doesn’t keep him
from awarding himself the title of Children’s Protector, the
one who wants to give them a “stable family life” while
their “selfish” mother tries to split them apart.
“SHE IS STILL RESPO NSIBLE FO R MY FEELINGS
AND WELL-BEING.”
In the abusive man’s self-serving value system, the
woman may be responsible for his needs and feelings even
after she declares that she isn’t his partner anymore. So if
he loses his job, or his new fling doesn’t work out, or his
mother gets ill, he still feels entitled to have her take care of
him emotionally. In particular, he tends to make her
endlessly responsible for his hurt feelings from their
relationship or from their breakup.
“THE RELATIO NSHIP IS O VER WHEN I SAY IT’S
O VER.”
I repeatedly run into the following scenario: A new
client in the abuse program is describing his most serious
incident of abuse, as all participants are required to do, and
he excuses his actions by saying, “It happened because I
found out she was cheating on me.” When I contact the
woman, however, I find out that, although he may be right
about her seeing another man, she and my client were
broken up at the time. In other words, in the abuser’s mind
any relationship that she has is “an affair” if it happens
during a period when he still wishes they were back
together, because he feels entitled to determine when she
can be free to see other people.
“SHE BELONGS TO ME.”
The abuser’s dehumanizing view of his partner as a
personal possession can grow even uglier as a relationship
draws to a close. I sometimes find it extraordinarily
difficult to get a client to remember at this point that his
partner is a human being with rights and feelings rather than
an offending object to destroy. At worst, his efforts to
reestablish his ownership may include following her and
monitoring her movements, scaring people who try to
assist her, threatening men she is interested in dating,
kidnapping the children, and physically attacking her or
people close to her. For abused women separation is a time
of particularly high risk of homicide or attempted homicide,
which can sometimes involve murderous assaults on her
new boyfriend, her children, or on other people she cares
about.
Numerous studies have found that mistreatment of
women by abusers tends to continue for a substantial
period after separation and commonly escalates to levels
worse than those when the couple was together.
Particularly common in postseparation is rape or other
forms of sexual assault, which conveys a powerful message
of ownership: “You continue to be mine, and I retain my
rights to your body until I decide otherwise.”
If you are concerned that your partner may be capable
of extreme violence—even if he has not been violent in the
past—take careful safety precautions (see “Leaving an
Abuser Safely,” page 225).
TRAUMATIC BO NDING
One of the great tragedies of all forms of abuse is that the
abused person can become emotionally dependent on the
perpetrator through a process called traumatic bonding.
The assaults that an abuser makes on the woman’s self-
opinion, his undermining of her progress in life, the wedges
he drives between her and other people, the psychological
effects left on her when he turns scary—all can combine to
cause her to need him more and more. This is a bitter
psychological irony. Child abuse works in the same way; in
fact, children can become more strongly attached to abusive
parents than to nonabusive ones. Survivors of hostage-
taking situations or of torture can exhibit similar effects,
attempting to protect their tormentors from legal
consequences, insisting that the hostage takers actually had
their best interests at heart or even describing them as kind
and caring individuals—a phenomenon known as the
Stockholm syndrome. I saw these dynamics illustrated by a
young boy who got a shock from touching an electric fence
and was so frightened by it that he grabbed on to the fence
for security—and wouldn’t let go as each successive shock
increased his panic, until his sister was able to reach him
and pull him off.
Almost no abuser is mean or frightening all the time. At
least occasionally he is loving, gentle, and humorous and
perhaps even capable of compassion and empathy. This
intermittent, and usually unpredictable, kindness is critical
to forming traumatic attachments. When a person, male or
female, has suffered harsh, painful treatment over an
extended period of time, he or she naturally feels a flood of
love and gratitude toward anyone who brings relief, like the
surge of affection one might feel for the hand that offers a
glass of water on a scorching day. But in situations of
abuse, the rescuer and the tormentor are the very same
person. When a man stops screaming at his partner and
calling her a “useless piece of shit,” and instead offers to
take her on a vacation, the typical emotional response is to
feel grateful to him. When he keeps her awake badgering
her for sex in the middle of the night and then finally quiets
down and allows her to get some of the sleep that she so
desperately craves, she feels a soothing peace from the
relief of being left alone.
Your abusive partner’s cycles of moving in and out of
periods of cruelty can cause you to feel very close to him
during those times when he is finally kind and loving. You
can end up feeling that the nightmare of his abusiveness is
an experience the two of you have shared and are escaping
from together, a dangerous illusion that trauma can cause. I
commonly hear an abused woman say about her partner,
“He really knows me,” or “No one understands me the
way he does.” This may be true, but the reason he seems to
understand you well is that he has studied ways to
manipulate your emotions and control your reactions. At
times he may seem to grasp how badly he has hurt you,
which can make you feel close to him, but it’s another
illusion; if he could really be empathic about the pain he
has caused, he would stop abusing you for good.
Society has tended to label a woman “masochistic” or
“joining with him in his sickness” for feeling grateful or
attached to an abusive man. But, in fact, studies have
shown that there is little gender difference in the traumatic
bonding process and that males become as attached to their
captors as women do.
The trauma of chronic abuse can also make a woman
develop fears of being alone at night, anxiety about her
competence to manage her life on her own, and feelings of
isolation from other people, especially if the abuser has
driven her apart from her friends or family. All of these
effects of abuse can make it much more difficult to separate
from an abusive partner than from a nonabusive one. The
pull to reunify can therefore be great. Researchers have
found that most abused women leave the abuser multiple
times before finally being able to stay away for good. This
prolonged process is largely due to the abuser’s ongoing
coercion and manipulation but also is caused by the trauma
bonds he has engendered in his partner.
One exercise that can help you address this trap
involves making a list of all the ways, including emotional
ones, in which you feel dependent on your partner, then
making another list of big or small steps you might take to
begin to become more independent. These lists can guide
you in focusing your energy in the directions you need to
go.
WHY HE DOESN’T ACC EPT YOUR REQ UEST TO
“TAKE A BREATHER”
Have you ever attempted to take a brief period of
separation from your partner? Perhaps you had been
considering getting out of your relationship but were afraid
of your partner’s reaction, so you asked for “a little time
apart” instead of breaking up outright. Or maybe you
weren’t sure what you wanted to do and just craved some
time away to consider where to go from here without
having to deal daily with his bullying, criticism, and
watching over you. You may have attempted to reassure
him that the relationship wasn’t ending, that you still
wanted to “work on getting back together,” but that you
just needed a break. You probably requested that the two
of you stay in separate places for a period of a few weeks
or months and that you see each other little or not at all.
You may have made other specific requests, such as not to
speak at all, even by telephone, so that you could get a
complete break. You may have asked for an agreement that
you could each see other people during this period, or
specifically requested the opposite. The great majority of
the abused women I work with try at some point to get
time out of the pressure cooker.
My clients, however, rarely honor their partners’
requests. At the beginning the man presents himself as
supporting the plan, saying, “I agree with her that we need
some time apart to just let everything cool off, and then
talk it over with level heads.” But he doesn’t think so for
long. He soon starts cutting around the edges of the
agreement. If she asked that he not call for a while, he sends
a card. Then he calls on some pretext, perhaps a bill that
has to be paid or an invitation for her from his sister, and
throws in offhandedly, “So, how are you?” to try to get a
conversation started. He may keep showing up “by
coincidence” at places where she happens to be. He keeps
chipping away at her resolve as much as he can, until she
cracks and sees him. Once they are face-to-face, he pours
on the sweetness and charm, reminiscent of his romantic
persona in the early, glory days of the relationship, and
sees if he can cajole or manipulate her into bed; he may
sense that once they’ve had sex, she’ll be hooked in again, a
strategy that I have often seen my clients succeed with.
One way or another, the woman never seems to end up
getting the decompression time that she knew was
indispensable to her well-being.
Why doesn’t he allow the break to happen? On a
conscious level he may simply miss her, but down deep he
has other interests. He experiences the separation as a
declaration by his partner that she is capable of surviving
without him, that she is the best judge of what is good for
her, that her needs shouldn’t always take a backseat to his,
that her will has force. These messages represent a
powerful summary of everything that he does not want in
his relationship, and he feels driven to move quickly to
prove them false.
The abuser is afraid of what his partner may discover if
she succeeds in getting a respite from his control. She may
see how good it feels to live without put-downs and
pressure. She may notice that there are other people in the
world, both women and men, who respect her and treat her
well, and may even observe that some of her female friends
are treated as equals by their partners. She may start to
think her own thoughts, without him there to monitor her
reflections and channel them toward the views he wants her
to have. Above all, she might discover how much better off
she is without him. In short, he doesn’t tolerate the break
because on some level he senses that it is too healthy and
healing for the woman. He wants her to hear his voice and
see his face, because he believes he can destroy her resolve.
Does he think carefully through these concerns?
Probably not entirely. He reacts largely on automatic,
based on ruts in his thinking and behavior that have been
deepening for years. And yet, I also keep observing how
much more aware my clients are of their own strategies
than you might expect; when they are upset with me, as
they so often are, they often forget to keep their masks on,
and they blurt out their honest thoughts and plans.
THE ABUSER W HO WANTS THE RELATIO NSHIP TO
END
What if your partner is the one who breaks off the
relationship, or what if he’s in complete agreement that
you two don’t belong together? The good news is that, if
you don’t have children with him, he may stay largely out
of your hair. Perhaps he is interested in another woman or
just wants to return to pursuing his fantasy of the dream
girl who does everything for him and never challenges him.
Or maybe something else altogether is occupying his mind.
I regret to say that even then peace is not an entirely
sure thing (although I have not often heard of physical
assaults by an abuser postseparation if he accepts the
breakup, except in cases of ongoing conflicts over the
children). Even the abusive man who is ready to be single
again may still crave retaliation for all the ways he feels
you hurt him, which in his distorted perceptual system
may include all the times you defended yourself,
questioned the superiority of his knowledge and judgment,
or refused to simply be a carbon copy of him. So he may
spread distorted stories about the history of your
relationship or tell outright lies to try to turn people
against you. Since he has to see himself as the more
powerful one, he may declare that he broke things off while
you “begged” him for another chance and that you
“promised to change.” These kinds of aftershocks of
abusive behavior can be painful.
An abuser who accepts the end of the relationship, or
even desires it, may nonetheless continue to try to settle
old scores with you through the children, a matter we
explore further in Chapter 10.
There are cases, of course, where the woman genuinely
wants to continue the relationship and the abuser does not.
My clients sometimes leave a woman to punish her.
Women in this position can experience the abuser’s
departure as one final slap in the face following a long line
of previous ones—figuratively or literally—that leaves her
feeling even more humiliated and unlovable. Therefore it
does not help an abused woman when people say to her:
“What are you upset about? You’re lucky to be rid of
him.” Anyone who wants to support an abused woman’s
recovery and empowerment needs to have room for both
her sadness and her outrage about being left and to
understand that his exit was just one more way she was
walked on.
Abusers who take off often leave other damage in their
wake besides the emotional or physical injuries to the
woman. Debts, destroyed belongings, pregnancy, or
traumatized children may be dumped in her lap.
Communities that want to support abused women need to
recognize that the abuser can create difficulties that endure
long beyond his departure.
LEAVING AN ABUSER SAFELY
Attempting to determine the level of risk that a particular
abuser will become physically violent is a complex and
imprecise process. If you are concerned that your partner
may react destructively or violently to being left, listen
carefully to your intuitions even if he has not been violent,
or not extremely so, in the past. A recent study found that
women’s own predictions regarding future violence by their
abusive partners were far more accurate than assessments
based on any other factor.
Separation can be an especially risky time. I was close
to a case recently in which a woman left a psychological
abuser who became increasingly threatening and scary over
the months after she left him, to the point where she went
as far as making arrangements with relatives regarding who
should care for her two children in the event of her death.
And although he had never hit her during their relationship,
he tragically did in fact kill her, hiding a block away from
the courthouse to ambush her as she was leaving a hearing
where she had obtained a restraining order against him, after
which he committed suicide. (As a result of a brief speech I
gave about this homicide death, I have come to know her
heartbroken parents personally.)
ASSESSING THE PO TENTIAL VIO LENCE O F AN
ABUSER
The danger signs below can be useful whether or not you
are currently thinking of leaving your partner. Some
combination of these elements has been found to be present
frequently—though not always—in cases where abusers
have committed the most seriously violent acts. Pay
attention to your own inner voice as you consider these
indicators:
DANGER S IGNS IN ABUSIVE MEN
He is extremely jealous and
possessive.
His violent behavior and threats
have been escalating.
He follows you, monitors your
whereabouts, or stalks you in
other ways.
You are taking steps to end the
relationship or have already done
so.
He was violent toward you
during one or more of your
pregnancies.
He has been sexually violent
toward you.
He has threatened to kill you or
hurt you badly, has choked you,
or has threatened you with a
weapon.
He has access to weapons and is
familiar with their use.
He seems obsessed with you.
He is depressed, suicidal, or
shows signs of not caring what
happens to him.
He isn’t close to anyone.
He has a significant criminal
history.
He uses or threatens violence
against other people.
He abuses substances heavily.
He has been abusive to children.
His past violence toward you, or
toward other partners, has been
frequent or severe.
He has killed or abused pets, or
has used other terror tactics.
He uses pornography.
He exhibited extreme behaviors
when you made previous
attempts to leave.
He is familiar with your routines,
the addresses of your friends and
relatives, the location of your
workplace, or other personal
information he can use to locate
you.
There is, regrettably, no science to using these
indicators. It would be misleading for me to say, for
example, “Three to five ‘yes’ answers reflect moderate
danger, six and up mean ‘severe danger,’” or offer a similar
interpretation, because the reality is not that simple. Some
guides to assessing the risk of violence from abusers have
created such “low-, moderate-, and high-risk” categories
and by so doing can encourage women to underestimate the
danger they are in by causing them to ignore their intuition.
A small number of abusers who kill or severely injure their
partners do so with few or none of the above elements
known to be present, which is all the more reason to rely
ultimately on your own “gut” feelings of how dangerous he
is.
SAFETY PLANNING
The fact that you are even wondering how far your
partner’s abuse might go suggests to me that you have
already seen aspects of him that are disquietingly
mysterious or frightening. I urge you to seek assistance
from a program for abused women (see “Resources”) and
to create a strategic safety plan with an abuse specialist
through that program. Safety plans can involve two
different sets of steps, one for increasing your safety while
living with your partner and another for if and when you
decide to leave him. Bear in mind that the process of
leaving an abusive man can be risky, so if you are preparing
for a breakup put some extra thought into the kinds of
precautions that you can take. Specialists who work with
abused women report that those women who succeed in
leaving and staying away almost always have a plan before
they go.
A safety plan while you are living with your abusive
partner can include the following elements, among many
others:
Plan different escape routes from your
house in case your partner becomes violent,
and plan where you would go if you needed
to stay away overnight.
Hide spare car keys and important
documents (birth certificates, health cards,
bank cards) in places where they are safe
and where you could grab them and leave
quickly.
Try to get out of dangerous places during
arguments, such as leaving the kitchen
where there are knives and other sharp
objects the abuser could use to assault you.
Obtain a private post office box or some
other address you can use to receive
confidential mail.
Set code words with friends or relatives and
with your children that indicate an
emergency, and plan how they are to
respond if you say the code word in person
or over the telephone.
Open a secret bank account so that you
will have access to funds should you need
to flee.
Keep a working phone in a room with a
door that locks so that you will be able to
call for help in an emergency.
Carry a cell phone.
Obtain a firearm permit so that you can
carry pepper spray.
Stay away from drugs or alcohol yourself
to make sure that your judgment is never
impaired, and seek substance-abuse
treatment for yourself if necessary.
Call the abused women’s hotline if you are
afraid, and call the police if the danger is
immediate.
After you leave your abusive partner, there are
additional items you can add to your safety plan, a few of
which include:
Change the locks on your home.
Inform neighbors of the danger and give
them descriptions or photographs of the
abuser and his car.
Inform people at your workplace of the
potential danger to you.
Tell your children not to talk to the abuser
and to seek assistance immediately if they
see him.
Advise the local police department of the
risk to you, including any past threats or
violence by your ex-partner, and ask what
special services or protections might be
available.
Inform the children’s schoolteachers and
administrators of the risk, and provide
them with a photograph of the abuser and
other information, including a copy of your
restraining order if you have one.
Teach your children how to dial 911 from
home and cell phones.
Vary the routes that you and your children
travel.
If you plan to involve the court, such as by
seeking a restraining order, contact a court
advocate if one is available, and develop an
additional safety plan with the advocate
that specifically addresses how you can
most safely use the court process. If you
do obtain a restraining order, keep a copy
on your person at all times and leave
additional copies in your home, vehicles,
and workplace.
These are selected examples of plans you can make,
ideally with the assistance of an abuse specialist, to
increase your safety and protect your children. You can call
an abuse hotline and develop a safety plan without even
providing your name or telephone number, ensuring your
complete privacy. If you can go to the abused women’s
program and meet with an advocate face-to-face, all the
better. I also strongly recommend the books When Love
Goes Wrong and It’s My Life Now, both listed in the
“Resources” section, for any woman who is struggling to
get safe from a frightening partner.
If you are afraid of your abusive partner it is important
to make a safety plan even if you do not plan to leave him
at this point. If he has demonstrated that he has a capacity
for violence, or you suspect that he does, there is every
reason to start planning now for how you will keep
yourself and your children safe should a dangerous
situation arise in the future.
Some psychologically abused women feel confident that
their partners would never escalate to violence or threats.
However, my experience is that most abusive men—though
not all—do become physically frightening sooner or later,
even if they never follow through with using violence. It
makes sense for every abused woman to spend some time
considering how she will respond if the unexpected
happens.
If you are prepared to leave your relationship, safety
planning becomes even more important. If you are afraid of
your partner, don’t tell him that you are breaking up with
him until you have a clear plan and feel that you can inform
him in a safe way. Then break all contact with him. Staying
out of touch with an abusive ex-partner can be very
difficult. The more afraid you are of him, the more tempted
you may feel to check up on how he is doing, because in
the past your safety may have depended on your constant
awareness of his moods and readiness to respond to them.
But making contact with him can be very dangerous as he
may sound friendly and say that he just wants to see you
for one final talk or to say good-bye, and then use that
opportunity to attack you physically or sexually. I have
been aware of a few cases where the man made an innocent-
sounding excuse to get together “just once” and then
murdered the woman for having left him. It is natural to
have the hope of staying friends with an ex-partner, but
this is rarely possible with an abusive man and is
absolutely impossible with one who is physically
dangerous to you. And if he doesn’t choose to hurt you, he
may lure you into becoming reinvolved with him instead.
ABUSED WO MEN W ITH C HILDREN
Ending a relationship with an abusive man can be
considerably more complicated for a woman with children,
especially if the abuser is the children’s legal father
(biological or adoptive). The risk that the abuser will try to
harm the children, turn them against you, or attempt to win
custody of them through the legal system requires an
additional strategic planning process. These issues are
examined in detail in the next chapter.
If you do decide to flee abruptly, take your children with
you if you possibly can and take their birth certificates,
social security cards, and passports. Some women are in so
much danger that they are forced to leave their children
behind, but the abuser then may go to court for custody,
saying that she “abandoned” them.
KEY PO INTS TO REMEMBER
When a breakup happens against an
abuser’s will, he may define his ex-
partner’s decision as a provocative
declaration of independence and may go to
war to prove that she belongs to him.
Leaving an abuser is hard to do, but with
time and planning you can succeed.
As a relationship dissolves, and for a long
while thereafter, an abused woman should
be especially alert to her own safety and
take steps to protect herself.
After breaking up with an abusive man,
wait at least a few months before becoming
involved with a new partner. Taking time
to heal emotionally from the abuse you
have endured can be critical to helping you
choose a nonabusive partner next time.
Read It’s My Life Now (see “Resources”).
Your life belongs to no one but you.
PART III
The Abusive Man in the World
10
Abusive Men as Parents
He’s terrible to me, but he’s a really good
father.
He took no interest in the children until I left
him, and then right away he filed for custody.
My children are freaked out and don’t want to
go on visitation with him, but the court won’t
listen to me.
I couldn’t manage without him, because the
children don’t listen to me.
IT’S SAT URDAY AFTERNOON, and excitement is high in
the Turner family. Randy, who is eleven, and his big sister,
Alex, thirteen, are getting ready to go with their parents to
a big birthday bash for their twin cousins. Their mother,
Helen, is helping them get their presents wrapped and
choose what to wear, and periodically intervening to sort
out quarrels between the two of them, which seem to erupt
every few minutes. Tom, the father, is in the garage trying
to fix Randy’s dirt bike and is covered with grease. Helen’s
anxiety is mounting as the hour gets later, because Tom is
doing nothing about getting ready to leave and keeps
saying, “Get off my fucking back, I already told you I’d be
ready on time. I can’t drop this in the middle.” Tensions
between Randy and Alex are also escalating, and Randy
finally jumps on Alex and starts punching her. Helen hears
Alex screaming, goes running in to pull Randy off her, and
in the process gets punched twice by Alex herself. Randy
yells at her, “You always side with Alex, you bitch,” and
goes into his room and slams the door. Alex is crying hard
and says to her mother, “You have to do something about
him; I can’t take it anymore. I swear, if he hits me one more
time I’m going to kill him. He’s out of control!”
Helen stays with Alex for a few minutes, then starts to
put things into the car. The time to leave has passed. Tom
finally comes in from the garage and starts to scrub his
hands in a leisurely fashion. He then starts to look at the
newspaper, and Helen snaps at him, “What are you doing?
We need to go.” Tom cuts her with a glare that makes her
heart stop and says, “I was just seeing what time the game
is on tonight. But since you mention it, maybe I should
check out what else might be interesting.” Then, with a cold
sneer on his face, he takes the newspaper to the couch,
puts up his feet, and begins to peruse the pages in earnest.
Helen storms furiously upstairs. Ten minutes later Tom is
still sitting on the couch. Helen calls to him, “We’re already
going to be nearly a half hour late; the children are afraid of
missing the games.”
Tom’s lips form an icy smile, and he answers, “I guess
you should have thought of that before deciding to give me
a ration of your shit.”
Helen yells, “Oh, you asshole!”
At this point Randy emerges from his room and starts
down the stairs. “I see you’re hysterical, as usual,” he
tosses flippantly at his mother as he goes. When he gets
downstairs, he sees that his father is nowhere near ready to
go, and he looks at the clock. He considers saying
something but thinks better of it; he recognizes the signs of
his father’s anger, even when they are not outwardly
obvious, and he doesn’t want to make himself the target. So
he goes back upstairs, tells Alex what is happening, and
they both go looking for Helen, who is sitting crying on her
bed.
Alex says urgently, “Come on, M om, let’s just go
without Dad. The party’s already started, we’re missing
it.” Helen shakes her head no. Alex pleads, “Why not?
Why can’t we just go?”
Helen responds simply, “We’re not going without him,”
not wanting to explain to the children how their father
would make her pay if they did.
Randy then says, “Please go and apologize to him,
Mom. You know that’s all he’s looking for, and then he’ll
get up and we can go.”
Helen’s tears stop, and her voice gets a hard edge. “I
didn’t do anything to him, Randy. Why don’t you go ask
him to apologize to me? What did I do?”
Randy’s voice turns condescending, as if his mother is
being stupid. “Right, M om. When has Dad ever apologized
for anything? Don’t be ridiculous. I guess we can forget
going to the party—that’s basically what you’re saying.”
Then their father calls from downstairs, “Come on, let’s
get going.” He has quietly put away his paper and cleaned
himself up. Randy and Alex brighten and run off to grab
their things. Helen can barely lift herself to her feet, feeling
psychologically assaulted from all sides. She looks ashen
for an hour or more afterward.
When they are almost out the door, Tom sees for the
first time Alex’s outfit, which he considers too sexy, and he
barks at her, “You go right back upstairs, young lady, and
put on something decent. You aren’t going to the party
looking like a prostitute.”
Alex is on the verge of tears again, because she had been
excited about what she was going to wear. “But Mom and I
picked my clothes out together,” she protests, a helpless
whine in her voice. “She said I looked fine.”
Tom glares at Helen, and his voice lays down the law:
“If you aren’t changed in two minutes, we’re leaving and
you’re staying here!” Alex runs crying upstairs to throw on
a different outfit.
In the car on the way to the party, Tom snaps out of his
grumpiness, joking with the children. His humor includes
cutting references to Helen’s emotional outbursts and
overanxiety, which are cleverly funny in their viciousness.
The children can’t help laughing, although Alex feels
resentful toward both parents and guilty toward her mother
even as she giggles. Helen is silent.
At the party, Tom acts as if nothing is wrong. Helen
makes an excuse about being sick, since it is obvious to
people that she is not herself. Tom is entertaining to both
the adults and the children at the party, to the extent of
giving each child a twirl around in the yard. Helen can see
the impression that Tom makes on people and feels that it
would be futile to attempt to describe to anyone what
transpired before the party.
There are a few unfamiliar people at the party, to whom
Tom introduces Alex as his “girlfriend,” which he considers
a charming joke. At one point he comments to some
relatives on Alex’s appearance, saying, “She’s developing
into quite an attractive young lady, isn’t she?” Alex is
nearby and feels humiliated. Tom sees her discomfort and
says, “What, can’t you take a compliment?” and there is
laughter all around. He then gives her a hug, kisses her on
the head, and tells his amused audience, “She’s a great kid.”
Alex forces a smile.
When they get home from the party and the children are
upstairs, Helen mentions to Tom that Randy hit Alex again
that afternoon and that this time he hurt her. Tom
responds, “Helen, welcome to the world. Siblings fight,
okay? Or maybe you haven’t heard, maybe that hasn’t
been on Oprah yet. Alex is two years older than Randy,
and she’s bigger. She loves to really play up being hurt,
because she knows Mommy will come running and feel
sorry for her, and it will be Big Bad Randy who’s to blame,
while Alex is all innocence. You’re so naive.”
Helen smarts from the series of barbs but forces herself
to answer calmly, “I think we should talk to the school
psychologist about it and get some suggestions.”
Tom rises rapidly to his feet, instantly transformed as if
he had just caught fire. He takes two steps toward Helen,
pointing his finger and yelling, causing her heart to race.
“You get those people in our business and you’ll be sorry!
You have no fucking idea what you are doing. You should
use some damned judgment, you stupid idiot!” He stomps
out to the garage, turns on the light, and goes back to work
on Randy’s bike, listening to the game on the radio. He
does not come back in until after Helen has fallen asleep.
LIFE WIT H AN ABUSER in the home can be as stressful
and confusing for the children as it is for their mother.
They watch the arguments; they feel the tension. When
they hear screaming and name-calling, they worry about
their parents’ feelings. They have visions of the family
splitting up; if the abuser is their father or a father figure,
the prospect of separation is a dreaded one. If the abuser is
physically scary, sometimes punching walls, knocking over
chairs, or striking their mother, then a sharper kind of fear
grips the children and may preoccupy them even during the
calm periods in the home. Following incidents of abuse
they may be wracked with guilt, feeling that they either
caused their mother to be abused or should have found
some way to have prevented it.
Witnessing incidents of abuse is just the beginning of
what the children endure, however. Abuse sends out shock
waves that touch every aspect of family functioning.
Hostility creeps into mothers’ relationships with their
children, and siblings find themselves pitted against one
other. Factions form and shift. Children’s feelings about
each parent can swing to extremes, from times of hating the
abuser to periods of idealizing him and blaming the mother
for the fighting. M others struggle to keep their
relationships with their children strong in the face of the
wedges driven in by the abuser, and siblings find ways to
support one another and offer protection. These wild
cross-currents make family life turbulent.
(For simplicity, I refer in this chapter to the abuser as
the children’s “father,” but most of the themes I describe
can apply equally to a stepfather or to a mother’s live-in
partner.) WHY ABUSIVENESS SO OFTEN EXTENDS TO
PARENTING ISSUES
QUESTION 14:
WHAT ARE ABUSIVE MEN LIKE AS
FATHERS?
Although I have worked with some clients who draw sharp
lines around their mistreatment of their partners, so that
their children neither see the abusive dynamics nor get
pulled into them, most abusers exhibit aspects of their
abusive mentality in their role as parents. There are various
reasons why a man’s abusiveness tends to affect his
parenting choices, including the following:
1. Each important decision that parents
make has an impact on everyone in the
family. Consider, for example, the
decision that many parents grapple with
concerning whether a six-year-old is ready
to start first grade or should wait a year.
Delaying a year may mean another year
during which the mother can’t work many
hours outside the home, which affects the
family finances. The child may have to be
up and out early to catch the bus, which
affects how much sleep the parents get. A
younger sibling may suddenly not have
the first-grader at home as a playmate
anymore and so may be moody and
demanding of attention during the day.
How is an abuser likely to respond to this
complex picture? He is likely to continue
his usual tendency to consider his own
judgment superior to his partner’s and to
be selfishly focused on how any changes
will affect him, rather than on what works
best for the family as a whole. Just
because there are children involved, is his
entire approach to decision making going
to suddenly change? Not likely.
2. At the core of the abusive mind-set is the
man’s view of his partner as a personal
possession. And if he sees her as his
fiefdom, how likely is he to also see the
children as being subject to his ultimate
reign? Quite. If he is the children’s legal
father, he sees them as extensions of
himself; otherwise he tends to see them as
extensions of her. Either way, his
mentality of ownership is likely to shape
his parental actions.
3. It is next to impossible for the abuser to
keep his treatment of the mother a
complete secret from the children the way
he does with other people, because they
are almost always around. So he chooses
instead to hook them into the patterns and
dynamics of the abuse, manipulating their
perceptions and trying to win their
loyalty.
4. Children are a tempting weapon for an
abuser to use against the mother. Nothing
inflicts more pain on a caring parent, male
or female, than hurting one of his or her
children or causing damage to the parent-
child relationship. M any abusers sense
that they can gain more power by using
the children against their partners than by
any method other than the most overtly
terrorizing assaults or threats. To their
destructive mind-set, the children are just
too tempting a tool of abuse to pass up.
REVISITING THE ABUSIVE MIND-SET: PARENTING
IMPLICATIONS
I return now to the Turners, whom we met at the opening
of this chapter, to look piece by piece at the dynamics that
are being played out. The central elements of the abusive
mind-set act as our guide: CO NTRO L
From observing Tom’s behavior, we learn one of his
unspoken rules: “YO U DO NO T TELL ME TO HURRY
UP. I GET TO TAKE
AS LO NG AS I PLEASE. IF YO U PRESSURE ME,
I WILL PUNISH YO U BY TAKING A LO T LO NGER.”
Tom is not about to abandon his system of rules and
punishments—which are fundamental to an abusive
behavior pattern—just because the children are bearing the
brunt of it. In fact, he is somewhat pleased that the
punishment falls largely on them, because he knows that
makes Helen feel even worse.
We also see Tom control Alex directly, ruling
dictatorially over her clothing and overruling Helen’s
decision, thereby undermining her parental authority. He
also seizes power over a process to which he has
contributed nothing; if he wanted the right to have a say in
what the children wore, he should have involved himself in
the work of getting the family ready to go. The abuser does
not believe, however, that his level of authority over the
children should be in any way connected to his actual level
of effort or sacrifice on their behalf, or to how much
knowledge he actually has about who they are or what is
going on in their lives. He considers it his right to make the
ultimate determination of what is good for them even if he
doesn’t attend to their needs or even if he only contributes
to those aspects of child care that he enjoys or that make
him look like a great dad in public.
Like Tom, abusers tend to be authoritarian parents.
They may not be involved that much of the time, but when
they do step in, it’s their way or the highway. M y clients
defend authoritarian parenting even though a large
collection of psychological studies demonstrates that it’s
destructive: Children do best when parents are neither
overly strict nor overly permissive, providing firm
structure but also allowing for dialogue, respectful conflict,
and compromise.
The abuser’s coerciveness thus comes into his treatment
of the children and his behavior regarding the children,
including his bullying of decisions in which the mother
should have an equal voice.
ENTITLEMENT
Tom doesn’t accept that a couple’s choice to have children
requires major lifestyle changes and sacrifices. He’ll work
on Randy’s dirt bike because he enjoys it, but whatever
else needs to be done for the children is not his problem.
Yet at the party he goes to great lengths to present himself
as Mr. Dad, because he likes the image and status of
fatherhood.
The selfishness and self-centeredness that his
entitlement produces cause role reversal in his
relationships with his children, in that he considers it their
responsibility to meet his needs. Tom behaves flirtatiously
with his teenage daughter at the birthday party, introducing
her as his “girlfriend,” commenting obliquely on her sexual
development and kissing her in the midst of her
embarrassment. The discomfort he causes Alex is obvious,
but he can’t be bothered to pay attention to that fact. He
meets his own needs through the fantasy of having an
attractive young partner while simultaneously taking pride
as a parent in her attractiveness.
Children of abusers often find their father’s attention
and approval hard to come by. This scarcity has the effect
of increasing his value in their eyes, as any attention from
him feels special and exciting. Ironically, their mother can
come to seem less important to them because they know
they can count on her.
The abuser’s entitled attitude that he should be above
criticism makes it hard for his partner to intervene with him
on her children’s behalf. When Helen tries to get Tom to
hurry up for the children’s sake, he considers her efforts “a
ration of shit” and punishes them all by deliberately taking
even longer. Alex and Randy don’t realize the price that
their mother pays, and that they themselves pay, when she
tries to stand up for them against him, so they wind up
feeling that she doesn’t care.
EXTERNALIZATION OF RESPO NSIBILITY
Tom makes the children late for their party but then tells
Helen it’s her own fault. He also says that her overly
sympathetic responses to Alex are the reason why the
children’s fights become a big deal. It never enters his mind
that Randy’s behavior toward females might be related to
what he himself has modeled. Everything that goes wrong
in the family is someone else’s fault, usually Helen’s.
Children who are exposed to the abuse of their mother
often have trouble paying attention in school, get along
poorly with their peers, or act out aggressively. In fact,
they have been found to exhibit virtually every symptom
that appears in children who are being abused directly. The
abuser attributes all of these effects to the mother’s poor
parenting or to inherent weaknesses in the children.
When a family affected by partner abuse splits up, some
children discover how much more pleasant life is without
their father in the home and may choose to distance
themselves from him. This can be a sign of emotional health
and recovery. The abuser then often claims, predictably,
that the mother is turning the children against him; in his
mind, what else could it be?
MANIPULATIVENESS
As the Turner family drives off toward the party, Tom
abruptly shifts into good humor, joking with the children
and inducing them to bond with him against their mother. It
is hard to stay angry at him when he is being playful. The
children are ashamed of laughing at their mother—
consciously for Alex, less so for Randy—but they are also
drawn into an alliance with their father.
In certain ways children actually have an easier time
living with an abusive parent who is mean all the time—at
least then they know what they are dealing with and who is
at fault. But the typical abuser is constantly changing faces,
leaving his children confused and ambivalent and increasing
the likelihood that they will identify with him in hopes of
staying on his good side.
One critical category of manipulation involves the
various tactics an abusive man may use to keep children
from revealing to outsiders that their mother is being
abused. Your partner may reward the children for
maintaining secrecy or may make them feel that they would
bring shame on the family, including themselves, if anyone
were to find out. In some cases the man uses more overt
pressure, including threats to enforce secret-keeping.
Children who do disclose the abuse going on at home
sometimes suffer emotional or physical retaliation by the
abuser. (Some children are also pressured by their mother
not to tell, because she is afraid of what her partner will do
to her or to them if word leaks out.) It is important to take
steps to relieve any burden of secrecy that your children
may be carrying, as I discuss at the end of this chapter.
SUPERIO RITY, DISRESPECT
Tom openly ridicules Helen for being concerned with
Randy’s assaultiveness toward Alex. Her parenting is thus
one of the things about which he abuses her. Children
growing up in this atmosphere can gradually come to look
down on their mother as a parent, having absorbed the
abuser’s messages that she is immature, irrational, illogical,
and incompetent. Even those children who take their
mother’s side in most conflicts, as many daughters and
some sons of abused women do, nonetheless can come to
see her as inferior to other people and to themselves.
Randy’s behavior reveals this dynamic when he remarks
condescendingly to his mother: “I see you’re hysterical as
usual.” He has learned to see his mother through Tom’s
eyes.
POSSESSIVENESS
Tom treats Alex like an object that belongs to him. When
he makes her change before the party, we might think, “He
doesn’t want his daughter to get sexualized at such a young
age, which is good.” But what we discover at the party is
that he doesn’t object to her sexualization, he just wants to
be in control of it, and he wants it oriented toward his
gratification. His demand that she not show off her body is
not based on the viewpoint of a responsible parent but
rather is more like the attitude of a jealous boyfriend.
Not all abusers perceive their children as owned objects,
but many do. A man who already considers his partner a
possession can find it easy to see his children the same
way. But children are not things, and parents who see their
children in an objectified way are likely to cause
psychological harm because they don’t perceive children as
having rights.
PUBLIC IMAGE
It is confusing for children to see people responding to
their abusive father as if he were a charming and
entertaining person. What are Alex and Randy to make of
how popular Tom is at the party? They are left to assume
that his behavior at home is normal, which in turn means
that they, and their mother, must be at fault.
THE ABUSIVE MAN AS CHILD ABUSER
Multiple studies have demonstrated that men who abuse
their partners are far more likely than other men to abuse
children. The extent of the risk to children from a particular
abuser largely depends on the nature of his pattern of
mistreatment toward their mother, although other factors
such as his own childhood also can play an important role.
The increased risks include the following.
PHYSICAL ABUSE
The abuser who is most likely to hit children is the one
who is quite physically assaultive or threatening toward
the mother. A battering partner is seven times more likely
than a nonbattering man to physically abuse children, and
the risk increases with the frequency of his violence toward
the mother. However, there are also some abusers who hit
the children but not the mother. The man in this category
tends to be: (a) a particularly harsh and authoritarian
parent, (b) a controlling and dictatorial partner, and, (c) a
man who was physically abused by his own parents while
he was growing up.
SEXUAL ABUSE
Incest perpetrators are similar to partner abusers in both
their mentality and their tactics. They tend to be highly
entitled, self-centered, and manipulative men who use
children to meet their own emotional needs. Like Tom,
they are often controlling toward their daughters (or sons)
and view them as owned objects and tend to use seduction
and sweetness to lure their victims in. In fact, Tom exhibits
many of the warning signs of a sexually abusive father,
including his apparent jealousy toward Alex and his
penchant for giving a romantic and sexual tone to his
interactions with her.
As in cases of physical abuse of children, multiple
research studies have found that men who abuse their
partners perpetrate incest at a much higher rate than do
nonabusive men. These studies suggest that the incest
perpetrator is not necessarily severely violent to the
mother, but some degree of assault on her is common. The
mentality and tactics of the incest perpetrator are very
similar to those of the partner abuser, including self-
centeredness and demands that his needs be catered to,
manipulation, cultivation of a charming public persona,
requiring the victim to keep the abuse secret, and others.
Although the percentage of outright sexual abuse appears
to be fairly low, even among abusive men, partners of my
clients frequently raise concerns about subtler kinds of
boundary violations and other sexually inappropriate
behaviors along the lines of those exhibited by Tom at the
party. A man who perceives his child as an owned object,
as Tom did, is likely to disregard her rights to privacy or to
integrity in her own body.
Boys are at some risk of being violated by abusive men
as well, although most incest perpetrators choose to offend
against a girl if one is available. Boys appear to be at
particular risk when they are very young, while the
vulnerability of girls remains steady and may even increase
during adolescence.
PSYCHO LO GICAL ABUSE
Partners of my clients frequently share their distress with
me over the mental cruelty the abuser visits upon the
children. Name-calling, belittling, attacking their self-
confidence, humiliating them in front of other people,
shaming boys with regard to their masculinity, and
insulting—or inappropriately complimenting—girls on the
basis of their physical development and appearance are all
common parenting behaviors among the abusive men in my
groups. They tend to hurt their children’s feelings further
by failing to show up for important events, not following
through on promises to take them on outings, or by
showing no interest. Watching their children get rejected by
their fathers in these ways is a source of pain for many of
the abused women I speak with.
THE ABUSER AS ROLE MO DEL
What are Randy and Alex learning from Tom’s treatment of
Helen and from the messages he gives them about her?
Parents’ statements and behaviors are probably the single
greatest influence on the development of children’s values
and on how they perceive other people and themselves—at
least as powerful as their parents’ words (which sometimes
convey opposite messages). Children exposed to partner
abuse learn the following lessons from the dynamics they
are caught in the middle of: “THE TARGET OF ABUSE IS
AT FAULT, NO T THE ABUSER.”
Tom makes it clear to his children that Helen brings
abuse upon herself by being too emotional, by questioning
his decisions, or by being overly angry. Randy (and
perhaps Alex as well) is likely to exhibit problems in how
he treats other people, because he has been taught how to
blame others, especially females, for his actions. Alex may
believe that other people, especially males, have the right
to mistreat her and that it is her own fault if they do.
“SATISFACTIO N IN LIFE CO MES THRO UGH
CO NTRO LLING AND MANIPULATING O THERS.”
Tom’s behavior communicates to his children that
having power over other people is a desirable goal. The
possibility that sharing, equality, cooperation, and mutual
respect can lead to a fulfilling life may be beyond their
conceptual reach. When the sons of abusers reach
adolescence, for example, they commonly begin
manipulating girls into relationships that are sexually or
emotionally exploitative. They may lack empathy for their
victims, having been conditioned by their fathers to shut
themselves off to caring about the feelings of females.
“BO YS AND MEN SHO ULD BE IN CO NTRO L, AND
FEMALES SHO ULD SUBMIT TO THAT CO NTRO L.”
Unless they can find strong counter-examples among
their friends or relatives, Alex and Randy run the risk of
internalizing a rigid, abuse-prone view of what men and
women inherently are. Children’s parents are their first and
most important source of sex-role definition and
identification.
“WO MEN ARE W EAK, INCO MPETENT, AND
ILLO GICAL.”
Tom is teaching his children—whether intentionally or
not—to perceive women in the same degrading light that he
casts on Helen. He reinforces these messages by treating
Alex disrespectfully in public. Daughters of abusive men
often have profound self-esteem problems. Why wouldn’t
they? Look at what the abuser is teaching them about how
valuable and worthy of respect females are. Sons of abusive
men in turn tend to be disparaging of and superior to girls
and women, especially when the boys become old enough
to begin dating.
“MO MMIES DO THE HARD, CO NSTANT,
RESPONSIBLE DAILY WO RK O F PARENTING,
WHILE DADDIES STEP IN TO MAKE THE KEY
DECISIO NS AND SHARE THE FUN TIMES.”
Alex and Randy are led to regard their mother as the
brawn of the family operation and their father as the brains.
They associate Helen with routine and structure, whereas
they connect Tom with times that are special and exciting.
Despite how grumpy he often is, Dad still comes out
seeming like the fun parent; they notice how entertaining he
is at the party, for example, while their mother is sullen and
withdrawn.
“PEO PLE THAT LO VE YOU GET TO ABUSE YO U.”
Children who grow up exposed to an abusive man’s
behavior learn that abuse is the price people pay if they
want to receive love. This training can make it harder for
children to recognize when they are being mistreated and to
stand up for themselves.
As an abuser passes on his thinking to the next
generation, he, in effect recruits his sons to the ranks of
abusive men. He does not literally want his son to mistreat
women—he doesn’t believe he does so himself, after all—
but he wants his son to think as he thinks, including
adopting his same excuses and justifications, so the
outcome is the same. And to a lesser extent he also recruits
his daughters to join the ranks of abused women.
HOW ABUSERS AFFECT MOTHER-CHILD
RELATIO NSHIPS
QUESTION 15:
WHY IS EVERYO NE IN THE FAMILY
MAD AT EAC H O THER INSTEAD OF AT
HIM?
Tom’s behavior drives wedges between the members of
his family that expand over time. Many of the divisions he
has sown are already bearing their poisonous fruit. How is
he affecting Helen’s relationships with her children? And
how is he shaping—and distorting—how they view her?
UNDERMINING HER AUTHO RITY
It isn’t hard for Alex and Randy to figure out where
primary parental authority is vested in their family,
because they see that Helen’s decisions can be overruled.
Children who detect such an imbalance learn to play one
parent against the other and try to curry favor with the one
who has the ultimate say. They also learn to defy the
authority of the abused parent. Some abusive men further
undermine the mother’s authority by speaking badly about
the mother to the children, characterizing her as crazy,
alcoholic, or uncaring.
Even when a man does not directly undercut the
mother’s parenting as Tom does, his abuse undermines her
authority by its very nature. Children who see or hear their
father belittle their mother, silence her, walk away and
ignore her, or physically intimidate her, learn that such
behaviors toward her are both acceptable and effective.
Most children of abused women are aware that their father
does these things—even if the parents don’t think they
know—and they experiment with imitating his behaviors to
see if it will help them get their way.
Children may also hope to win their father’s approval
by joining him in the abuse of their mother. This effort
succeeds in some cases, but other abusers lay down the law
quickly to establish that the privilege of disrespecting
Mom belongs only to Dad. In this case the children may
repress what they are learning until M om and Dad split up;
then, with the abuser out of the house, they let loose, re-
creating his put-downs and intimidation of her, sometimes
rapidly making themselves unmanageable.
Children of abusers absorb his expectations of constant
catering from the mother. The son of an abused woman
tends, for example, to become enraged at her for not waiting
on him hand and foot, for pressing him to meet his
responsibilities, or for challenging his inappropriate
behaviors. His father is a direct model for his angry,
verbally abusive responses in these particular
circumstances.
INTERFERING W ITH HER PARENTING
The evening after the birthday party, Tom forbids Helen to
involve the school psychologist in addressing Randy’s
assaults on his sister. He doesn’t say exactly what her
punishment will be if she defies him, but she knows him
well enough to not want to find out. She is thus forbidden
to parent her children.
Dozens of abused women have complained to me of my
clients’ direct interference with their parenting. The most
common complaint is that of being prevented from
comforting a crying or frightened baby or young child. The
men sometimes admit the interference openly. A recent
client of mine, Jacob, told me that he was sick of the way
his partner, Patricia, would pick up their eleven-month-old
baby Willy when he cried and “fawn over him,” and he
blocked her from going into the baby’s room. That was just
the beginning. An older daughter of theirs was hospitalized
for weeks in a city that was nearly two hours away with
severe hepatitis. Patricia would rush to the hospital each
night as soon as she got off work, visit briefly with her
daughter, and then rush back home in hopes of seeing Willy
before he fell asleep. However, if Patricia didn’t make it
back home by the nightly deadline that Jacob had set, Jacob
would not permit her to go into Willy’s room to see him,
even if Willy was still awake. On at least one occasion the
boy realized that Patricia was home and started yelling,
“Mommy, M ommy!” and Jacob still blocked her from
entering. His excuse to me? “I didn’t set that deadline,” he
said. “We agreed to it mutually.” (This would have been an
unacceptable excuse even if it were true, but Patricia told
me she never agreed to such a deadline.) I think it is
important to mention that Jacob never hit Patricia in their
ten years together and that he was a college professor living
in an unusually luxurious neighborhood. He provides a
powerful illustration of the depth of the psychological
cruelty an abuser can perpetrate with little or no physical
violence and keep hidden behind the most impressive
facade.
I SPEAK WITH some mothers who have developed
psychiatric symptoms from being abused, such as
nightmares, severe anxiety, or depression. Research studies
have found that these conditions and related ones, including
posttraumatic stress disorder, are not uncommon in women
who have been abused by their partners. The abuser may
have indoctrinated his children to perceive their abused
mother as emotionally troubled, but he also may have
actually caused her to become somewhat unstable. In either
case, his behavior damages mother-child relationships, and
it can take both time and outside assistance for mothers and
children to reestablish a strong and trusting connection.
USING THE CHILDREN AS WEAPONS O F ABUSE
One of my clients many years ago was a mousy and mild-
mannered young father named Wayne who characterized
himself as a feminist. He was upset one morning about
some things his wife, Nancy, had said to him before leaving
the home, and he stormed around itching to make her really
regret her words. He was looking in the refrigerator for milk
for their ten-month-old baby when he came across a bottle
from a few days earlier that had spoiled. He recognized the
bottle immediately as the ultimate weapon and proceeded
to give the baby the spoiled milk to drink, making him
violently ill. Few other acts could have had an impact on
Nancy as devastating as this one. The controlling effect
was potent: Nancy was terrified for a long time after to
defy Wayne or upset him in any way. She was also filled
with anxiety as she left for work each morning.
Another client of mine described how he had told his
wife during an argument, “If you don’t shut up, you’re
going to be really sorry,” and when she continued yelling at
him, he went into their teenage daughter’s closet and cut
her prom dress to ribbons with a pair of scissors. The
daughter’s pain, I learned from the mother, was
indescribable. Fueling this type of cruelty to children is the
abuser’s awareness that the mother’s empathy for her
children’s emotional pain will hurt her more than anything
he could do to her directly.
SHAPING THE CHILD’S PERCEPTIONS O F THE
ABUSE
Many of my clients are skilled spin doctors, able to
distract children’s attention from what is before them and
get them confused about the obvious. Consider the
following scenario. A nasty argument breaks out between a
mother and a father, with yelling and name-calling on both
sides. Their children can barely follow what the fighting is
about, partly because their stomachs are tied in knots from
the tension. For the rest of the day, their mother is distant
and depressed, snapping at them over trivial frustrations.
Their father disappears for two or three hours, but when he
turns up again he is in a good mood, joking and laughing
with the children as if nothing had happened. (An abuser
can naturally snap out of the bad effects of an abusive
incident much more quickly than the abused woman can.)
So which parent will seem to these children to have been
responsible for shattering the calm of their home earlier?
Probably the grouchy one. It is therefore not surprising
that abusers are sometimes able to reverse their children’s
perceptions so that they see Mom as the volatile or
unreasonable one despite the abuse they witness.
PLAC ING THE MO THER IN A DO UBLE BIND
When Tom punishes Helen by deliberately making the
children late, Randy and Alex become upset with her for
not capitulating. They feel that if she would just cater to
their father and manage his emotions they would get what
they need, so they see her as the one who is hurting them.
They know it’s out of the question for him to do anything
different. The abuser gets rewarded for his bullying
behavior because the children give up on influencing his
side of the equation and pour their energy into getting their
mother to fix what’s wrong.
Yet this is only half of the problem. On some other
issue, Helen may give in to Tom precisely to avoid the kind
of abuse and retaliation that resulted this time, and then the
children will feel critical of her for that. They may say:
“Why do you let Dad push you around like that? Why do
you put up with that?” They may grumble: “When Dad is
being mean to us, M om doesn’t do anything about it.”
Children of abused women thus feel angry and upset with
their mother for standing up to the abuser and for not
standing up to him. Their reactions in this regard are
entirely understandable, but the mother can find herself in
an impossible bind that leads to more distance and tension
between her and her children.
Child protective services sometimes accuse an abused
woman of “failing to protect” her children from exposure to
an abusive man, without understanding the many efforts
she may have made to keep them safe and the many tactics
the abuser may have used to interfere with her parenting.
HOW ABUSIVE MEN SO W DIVISIONS IN FAMILIES
Randy and Alex are bitter adversaries one minute and loyal
allies the next. They are like pebbles at the edge of the sea,
with each wave of abuse toward their mother washing over
them and changing their position in relation to each other.
Randy’s violence toward Alex is no surprise; boys who are
exposed to the abuse of their mother are often disrespectful
of and aggressive toward their peers, targeting females in
particular for their hostility. Sons of abusers learn to look
down on females, so they feel superior to their sisters and
mothers and thus expect catering from them. Violence
among siblings occurs at much higher rates in homes where
there is partner abuse.
Abuse is inherently divisive; family members blame each
other for the abuser’s behavior because it is unsafe to blame
him. If an incident of abuse began with an argument over
one child’s misbehavior, then an older sibling might say,
“Daddy screamed at Mom and made her cry because he
was mad that you were making so much noise. You should
have listened to me when I told you to quiet down.”
Tom contributes further to divisiveness through his
favoritism: He treats Randy like a buddy and fixes his dirt
bike, while ignoring Alex except when showing her off in
public. Favoritism is rampant in the parenting of abusive
men. They may favor boys over girls because of their own
negative attitudes toward females. They favor children
whom they see as siding with them and are rejecting of
those who are sympathetic or protective of the mother.
Children experience powerful emotional rewards from the
abuser for distancing themselves from their mother and
from any siblings who are allied with her.
My clients exhibit a range of other divisive tactics,
including openly shaming children—especially boys—for
being close to their mother, telling family members lies
about each other, and making children feel like members of
a special and superior club when they are part of his team.
Finally, they use collective punishment, requiring all the
children to pay a price for one child’s behavior, which can
be devastating in its ability to turn children against each
other.
Why does an abuser sow divisions in these ways? One
reason is that his power is decreased if the family remains
unified. I have had a number of clients whose partners and
children have consistently supported each other, and the
client is always bitter about it, griping, “They’ve all turned
against me,” or, even more commonly, “She’s brainwashed
the children to be on her side.” Many abusers take steps to
avoid this outcome, using the principle of “divide and
conquer”: If people in the family are busy fighting with
each other, attention is diverted from the man’s cruelty or
control.
RESILIENCE IN MO THER-CHILD AND SIBLING
RELATIO NSHIPS
Almost miraculously, some family members of abusers
manage to stay close to each other and unified. Several
factors play a role in helping family relationships rebound
from the effects of the abuser’s behavior and grow strong:
1. Access to good information about abuse:
When a mother receives assistance from a
program for abused women, for example,
she has an easier time unraveling the
convoluted dynamics of abuse, and then
can assist her children to achieve greater
clarity. It also helps her not blame her
children for how they’ve been affected by
the abuse.
2. Access to children’s services: M any
programs for abused women now offer
free counseling for their children as well,
and specialized counseling for children
who have witnessed abuse is sometimes
available through other sources such as
hospitals or mental health centers. Family
relationships benefit greatly when children
get an opportunity to work through some
of the dynamics we have been examining.
3. Safety from the abuser: Family members
are more likely to stay by each other if
their community stays by them, helping
them to either leave the abuser or demand
that he change. For the violent abuser, the
police and courts can play a critical role in
supporting the family, or they can drop
the ball. The actions taken by family and
juvenile courts can also be pivotal in
protecting children from the effects of an
abuser’s behavior.
4. Access to supportive community
resources: I have observed, for example,
that children tend to do better simply by
having the good fortune to live in a
neighborhood where there are plenty of
children to play with. If children have the
opportunity to participate in sports,
drama, or other activities that give them
pleasure and help them feel good about
themselves, they are less likely to channel
their distress into hurting their siblings
and their mother. Adults outside the
family who devote attention to the
children and engage them in activities can
help them unhook themselves
psychologically from the abuser, even
without any direct mention of the abuse.
Support for the mother is as important as
support for the children. Seek out a
trustworthy friend or relative, and take
the leap of talking about how you are
being mistreated in your relationship.
Breaking your isolation is critical to
healing both you and your children.
5. A mother who works hard at her
parenting and gets help with it: It is
important for an abused mother to get
community support and not to try to be a
superhero. At the same time, there are
helpful steps you can take. Try as hard as
you can not to take your rage and
frustration out on your children. Look for
books or lectures about parenting and
discipline strategies. Seek support for
your parenting from friends and relatives,
and try to be open to suggestions or
constructive criticism from others. These
are all extraordinary challenges for an
abused mother; no one should blame you
if you can’t do all of these things,
especially all at once. But I find that many
abused women discover ways to be the
best mothers they can under the
circumstances, and their children feel the
difference in the long run.
6. An abuser who is a poor manipulator:
Some abusive men simply aren’t as clever
or persuasive in shaping the children’s
outlook, with the result that the children
don’t become as confused and ambivalent
and cast less blame on to their mothers,
their siblings, and themselves.
HOW C HILDREN LO O K AT THEIR ABUSIVE
FATHERS
In his children’s eyes, the abuser is simultaneously hated
and revered. They resent his bullying and selfishness but
are attracted to his charm and power. They soak up the
delicious moments when he is kind and attentive, partly
because they may be so few. They may have an active
fantasy life about getting big enough to stand up to him,
and often dream of hurting him. If he is depressed or
alcoholic, they worry about him. They observe that when
their father is happy peace reigns in the family and that
when he is unhappy he makes everyone else miserable, too,
so they invest themselves in keeping him content. These
many powerful mixed feelings are confusing and
uncomfortable for children.
Children also are subject to traumatic bonding with the
abuser, just as their mothers are, even if he does not abuse
them directly. When child protective workers or custody
evaluators assess a family in which there is partner abuse,
they commonly conclude that the children are highly
bonded to their father—as I find in their written reports—
without examining whether or not that attachment is the
result of trauma and manipulation rather than of extensive
positive time spent together.
The abuser shapes how the children and the mother see
him as a parent. It is common for a partner of one of my
clients to say: “He treats me terribly, but he’s a good
father.” But when I then ask detailed questions about the
kinds of behaviors I have reviewed in this chapter, three
times out of four the woman reports multiple important
problems; she just hadn’t been able to sort them out. You
therefore may be finding that uncomfortable questions are
arising for you about your own partner’s parenting as you
read along. When you are already struggling with how you
are being treated yourself, it can be painful to consider that
your children may be at risk of mistreatment as well. In the
pages ahead, you will find suggestions for helping your
children meet their own challenges.
THE ABUSER AS PARENT PO STSEPARATIO N
What happens to the parenting of abusers when couples
split up? Some abusive men simply vanish from their
children’s lives, taking the attitude, “The children are her
problem. If she wanted help with them, she should have
treated me better. I don’t want restrictions on my
freedom.” He thinks of having children as a reversible
process, reminiscent of jokes about recovering one’s
virginity. He may pay little or no child support, and the
children may not even receive birthday cards from him.
Children may actually fare better in the long term from
having the abuser drop out of their lives rather than having
him continue his manipulations and divisiveness for years,
but these are both poor choices. When an abusive father
disappears, children feel rejected and abandoned. In one of
my current cases, the child keeps insisting that the reason
for the disappearance of the father is “because he didn’t
like me,” although the mother tells him that isn’t so.
Depending on their neighborhood or community, children
also may suffer from the stigma of having a father who “ran
off.”
When abusive fathers stay involved, a different set of
problems typically arise. First, the mother is generally the
one who ended the relationship, and abusers do not take
well to being left. They may use the children as weapons to
retaliate against the mother or as pawns to try to get her
back. I had a client named Nate, for example, who moved
into an apartment when he and his wife separated and kept
his new place as dingy and depressing as possible. He
threw a bare mattress on the floor, put no pictures on the
walls or rugs on the floors, and acquired little other
furniture, although he could have afforded to make the
place look decent. When the children came to visit him on
weekends, they were shocked by his living conditions. He
cried in front of them about how much he missed them and
their mother and how bad it felt to be alone and outside of
the family. He dressed sloppily, barely combed his hair,
and rarely shaved, giving himself a pathetic mien. The
children were crushed and could think of nothing other than
their father’s pain and loneliness. Naturally they began
pressuring their mother to let him come back home.
Children can be used even more directly as weapons. A
partner of one of my clients told me that she had left him
about a year earlier but then got back together with him,
“because he told me if I didn’t let him back in the house he
was going to sexually abuse our daughter.” She had not
reported this threat to a family court, because she assumed
she would not be believed—family courts are widely
reputed to treat women’s sexual abuse allegations with
strong disbelief.
Abused women have reported to me countless ways in
which their ex-partners try to hurt or control them through
the children, including:
Pumping them for information about the
mother’s life, especially about new
partners
Returning them from visits dirty, unfed, or
sleep-deprived
Discussing with them the possibility of
coming to live with him instead
Continuing to drive wedges between them
and their mother
Undermining her authority by making his
house a place where there are no rules or
limits, permitting the children to eat
whatever junk food they want, watch
movies that are inappropriately violent or
sexual, and ignore their homework, so that
they chafe against normal discipline when
they get back to her house
Hurting the children psychologically,
physically, or sexually in order to upset the
mother
Threatening to take the children away from
her
Seeking custody or increased visitation
through the courts
Insisting on taking the children for
visitation only to leave them most of the
time in someone else’s care, usually his
mother’s or new partner’s
WHY HE USES THE CHILDREN AS WEAPO NS
POSTSEPARATIO N
What is going on in the abuser’s mind as he hurts his ex-
partner through the children?
1. He wants her to fail.
The last thing an abuser wants is for his partner to thrive
after they split up, since that would prove that he was the
problem. So he tries to make her parenting life as difficult
as possible so that her life will stay stuck. She ends up
feeling like she was never really permitted to leave him,
feeling his presence around her all the time through his
maneuvers involving the children. Many abusers cause
more damage to mother-child relationships after separation
than they did before.
2. He is losing most of his other avenues for getting at her.
Separation means that the abuser doesn’t get his daily
opportunities to control the woman and cut her down. He
may still be able to get at her through various financial
dealings, and he can stalk or assault her if he is willing to
risk arrest. But the children become one of his only vehicles
to keep a hook into her for the long term.
3. He considers the children his personal possessions.
While the abuser may believe that the work of raising
children is his partner’s responsibility, he assigns the rights
regarding them to himself. He feels outraged postseparation
that he is losing control not only of his ex-partner but of
the children as well. This ownership mentality was
illustrated neatly by a client of mine who went to court
seeking sole legal custody but requesting that the mother
retain physical custody; in other words, he wanted her to
look after the child, but the right to make the decisions
would be his. (Fortunately, his request was denied.) An
abusive father may go ballistic if his ex-partner begins a
new relationship because, as clients often say to me: “I
don’t want another man around my children.” In my
experience, abused women often get involved with a more
respectful man on the next go round, because their painful
experience has taught them some signs of abuse to watch
out for. Her children may then gravitate to the new man as
if toward a magnet, thrilled to discover that they can get
caring and appropriate male attention, a situation to which
an abusive man may have a hostile reaction.
4. His perceptions of his ex-partner are highly distorted.
Many of my clients genuinely believe that they are doing
what is best for their children by driving them away from
their mother, because they have swallowed their own
propaganda about how bad she is. An abuser strives to
prove that his ex-partner is a poor mother by pointing to
symptoms that are actually the effects that his cruelty has
had on her: her depression, her emotional volatility, her
difficulty managing the children’s disrespect of her. He
feels that he needs to save them from her, a stark and
disturbing distortion.
DO ALL ABUSERS HARM THEIR CHILDREN
EMO TIO NALLY PO STSEPARATION?
Fortunately not. I have worked with abusers who have
substantially more compassion for the children than they
have for their partners and who do not use them as
weapons postseparation. These men tend to be:
1. The ones who behaved the most
responsibly toward the children prior to
separation: The divorced or separated
abuser who is kind to the children, cares
for them responsibly, and does not try to
damage their relationships with their
mother is a man who was also operating
this way while the couple was together.
He generally didn’t degrade her right in
front of the children and didn’t abuse her
during a pregnancy. He is usually less
selfish and self-centered than the average
abuser.
The parenting of abusive men rarely
improves postseparation, unlike that of
some nonabusive fathers. I have had
clients who put on a big show of being
nicer to their children and spending more
time with them because they were seeking
custody, or because they were trying to
turn the children against their mother.
These are not genuine improvements in
parenting; once their campaign is over,
win or lose, they revert to their old ways.
The only question about an abuser’s
treatment of his children postseparation is
“Will it stay the same or will it get
worse?”
2. The ones who are not intent upon settling
old scores: If he is willing to move on
with life without having to punish you—
or get back together with you—the
picture for the children can brighten
somewhat.
3. The ones who do not use the legal system
to pursue custody or increased visitation:
For a variety of reasons, many abusive
men do not choose to use family courts as
a venue for taking power over the woman
and her children. Once the court becomes
involved, the road to peace can be a long
and painful one.
THE ABUSER IN FAMILY CO URT
I have frequently served as a custody evaluator, or
guardian ad litem. A custody evaluator is appointed by a
court to investigate the children’s circumstances in cases of
divorce or separation and to make recommendations to the
judge regarding custody and visitation. In my first case of
this kind several years ago, a man named Kent was seeking
to win custody of his three-year-old daughter from his ex-
partner, Renée. Kent was in the military, so he did not have
“flex-time” options; he told me that if he gained custody,
his parenting plan was to put Tracy in day care forty hours
a week. Tracy was currently in the full-time care of her
mother. Kent was not critical of Renée’s parenting; he said
simply that he wanted Tracy to live with him because he
could care for her even better. More important, he was
offering to allow Renée liberal visitation, whereas Renée
was restricting his contact with Tracy to a set schedule.
“That way Tracy could have both parents,” he said.
Kent informed me with audible outrage that Renée was
accusing him of having been abusive, “but she has never
provided one shred of evidence of her laughable
allegations.” He then went on, in response to my detailed
questions, to describe thirteen different occasions on which
he had physically assaulted Renée, including repeated
incidents of pushing her down and one time when he kneed
her so hard in the pelvic area that she got a large dark
bruise. He claimed never to have punched or slapped her;
apparently this is why he considered her reports of abuse
such a joke.
That isn’t all. Kent went on to tell me that he had
participated only minimally in Tracy’s care during her first
year of life and not dramatically more during the
subsequent two years. (Most abusers in custody disputes
are craftier than Kent was. His entitlement was so severe
that he didn’t think I would see anything wrong with this
picture.) Why did Kent want to take a little girl out of the
full-time care of a competent mother in order to put her
into full-time day care? I was forced to conclude that he
craved power over Renée, wanted contact with her and saw
winning custody as the way to put the cards back in his
hands.
Unfortunately, few custody evaluators or judges
understand the nature of an abusive man’s problem. If they
find him likable, they assume the abuse allegations must be
greatly exaggerated. And once they adopt that stance, it can
become extraordinarily difficult to get them to listen
carefully to what has gone on or to investigate the evidence.
The world of family courts, where legal struggles over
custody and visitation take place, is a nightmare in the lives
of many thousands of abused women across the United
States and Canada. A woman who has overcome so many
obstacles to finally free herself from abuse can suddenly
find herself jerked back into the abuser’s grip, because he is
the legal father of her children and chooses to continue his
abuse through the legal system.
The typical abusive man enters the court with self-
assurance, assuming that court personnel will be malleable
in his charming and manipulative hands. He typically tells
lies chronically and comfortably. He looks and acts nothing
like the social stereotype of an abuser and plays on the
prevailing myths and prejudices concerning abuse. Imagine
how Tom, the father in the scenario that opened this
chapter, would appear in the courthouse; would anyone
believe that he could be an abuser?
THE ABUSER’S TACTICS IN CUSTO DY DISPUTES
Here are just a few of the strategies an abuser tends to use
in custody and visitation disputes: Taking Advantage of
His Financial Position Most men are in a better economic
position than their ex-partners for at least the first few
years following separation. This imbalance is greater for
abusers because they may control and manipulate the
finances while the couple is together and sometimes make
dramatic attempts to destroy their partner economically as
the relationship dissolves. An abuser can often afford to
spend a great deal more than the woman on legal expenses,
or he can get himself into a nice house to sway both the
children and the custody evaluator. He may be able to
completely ruin his ex-partner’s financial position by
dragging her back into court over and over again.
Asking for Psychological Evaluations M ost abusers do not
show significant psychopathology on psychological tests,
but their partners often do as a result of enduring years of
abuse. The evaluating psychologist may report that the
woman is depressed, hysterical, or vindictive; few
evaluators take the abused woman’s actual past experience
or current circumstances into account. If she reports that
she is being followed, for example, because the abuser is
stalking her, she is likely to be labeled “paranoid” and her
reports of abuse discredited on that basis. A psychologist’s
report on the abusive man may be based on a related set of
misconceptions. I have read several evaluations that state
that the man is unlikely to have perpetrated the reported
acts of abuse because he is not mentally ill or because he
doesn’t show signs of aggressiveness in the evaluator’s
office. (On this erroneous basis, most abusive men could be
declared to be victims of false accusations.) Unfortunately,
many psychologists who take court appointments have
been slow to accept that their standard array of theories
and tests can lead to serious errors when applied to
domestic-abuse cases.
Playing the Role of Peacemaker A great number of my
clients use a routine that goes like this: “There was a lot of
fighting and bad feeling in our relationship, and I can
understand that she is bitter about some things, but we
need to put that all behind us for the good of the children.
She is so focused on getting revenge against me that she is
forgetting about the children’s needs. That’s why I’m
asking for joint custody, so that the children would get lots
of time with each of us, while she’s asking for me to have
only every other Saturday.”
This piece of acting seeks to take advantage of the myth
that women are more vindictive than men when
relationships end (in the case of abuse, however, the reality
is very much the opposite) and that men are frequently
victims of false accusations of abuse by women who want
to keep them away from their children. The abuser’s goal
with this and all other strategies is to get court personnel to
disbelieve his ex-partner and ignore any evidence she
presents.
Feigning Remorse over the Abuse A surprising number of
judges and custody evaluators consider a man’s abuse of
his partner irrelevant to custody and visitation decisions.
They are either unaware or uninterested in the role that an
abusive man plays as a role model for his children, the
damage he can do to mother-child relationships, and the
way he may use the children as weapons. So if an abuser
says he regrets his verbal or physical assaults on the
mother, that can be enough to manipulate court personnel
into saying, “Let’s leave all that in the past.”
Confusing the Court with Crossaccusations M ost of my
clients can lie persuasively, with soulful facial expressions,
good eye contact, and colorful details. Court personnel
have trouble believing that such a pleasant-seeming man
could simply be inventing most or all of his accusations
against the abused woman. In various cases of mine, court
personnel have told me, “He accuses her of the same
things, so I guess they abuse each other.” In such cases, the
court may accept his counteraccusations at face value,
rather than look closely at the evidence.
Accusing Her of Trying to Turn the Children Against Him
Some abusive men do not succeed in turning children
against their mother, and some don’t even try. Children
sometimes see the abuse for what it is and take whatever
steps they can to protect themselves, each other, and their
mother, including perhaps disclosing the abuser’s treatment
of her (or of them) to outsiders. The abusive man’s typical
response to this is to claim that the mother is turning the
children against him. Some prominent psychologists have,
unfortunately, contributed through their writings to the
myth that it is unhealthy for children to distance
themselves from an abusive father and that the mother is
probably the cause of their desire to do so. Family courts
tend to be unaware of how important it is to children not to
be exposed to the negative role modeling of their abusive
father and to his hostility and contempt toward their
mother. Regrettably, a growing number of abusive men
succeed in using such claims of “parental alienation” to win
custody or ample unsupervised visitation, even in cases
where there is extensive evidence that the man has abused
not only the mother but the children as well.
The reality is that a mother who attempts to restrict her
children’s contact with the man who abused her is generally
acting as an appropriate protective parent. She is also
supporting healthy self-protective instincts in her children;
children who are not supported or encouraged in this way
to protect themselves from exposure to abuse will be at
greater risk for accommodating abuse by others as they go
through life.
I have noticed that charges of “parental alienation” are
sometimes leveled against the most competent mothers,
because of their strong and supportive bonds with their
children—which the abuser terms enmeshment or
overdependence—and because the children have learned to
see through the abuser’s facade and therefore choose to try
to keep away from him.
Appealing to Popular Misconceptions Several misleading
arguments appear repeatedly in statements that abusers
make during family court litigation. First is the claim that
fathers are widely discriminated against by family courts in
custody disputes. The research actually shows the
opposite, that in fact fathers have been at a distinct
advantage in custody battles in the United States since the
late 1970s, when the maternal preference went out of
vogue. Next often comes the myth that children of divorce
fare better in joint custody, when the research shows
overwhelmingly that they in fact do worse, except in those
cases where their parents remain on good terms after the
divorce and can co-parent cooperatively—which is almost
impossible for a woman to do with an abusive ex-partner.
Abusive men also assert falsely that there is a rampant
problem of women’s false allegations of abuse, that child
support obligations are unfairly high, that domestic abuse
is irrelevant to custody decisions, and that men are abused
in relationships just as much as women.
THE SUCCESS OF these strategies relies heavily on the
ignorance, and sometimes gender bias, of court personnel
regarding women who disclose histories of partner abuse
and on their stereotypes regarding men who are “just not
the type” to be abusers. Prejudicial attitudes often take the
place of careful investigation and consideration of the
evidence. Unfortunately, family courts have generally not
made the kinds of progress in recognizing and responding
to domestic abuse that many other social institutions, such
as the police and criminal courts, have (though serious
work remains to be done in those arenas as well, as we see
in Chapter 12).
MIXED SO CIAL MESSAGES TO ABUSED MO THERS
What should a mother’s role be in protecting her children
from exposure to their father’s abusiveness? Abused
women can get caught in the profound societal ambivalence
that exists regarding this question. While couples are
together, professionals and other community members are
highly critical of a mother who continues to live with an
abusive man. They say things to her such as, “You are
choosing your partner over your children,” or “You must
not care about what things are like for them.” Child
protection officials sometimes threaten to take a mother’s
children away from her for “failure to protect” if she won’t
leave a man who is abusing her. If she believes that the man
has the potential to change, they are likely to say she is “in
denial” or “unrealistic” for harboring such fantasies. These
critics ignore the huge challenges she faces as a parent and
how difficult it is to leave an abuser.
But when an abused mother does break up the
relationship, society tends to do an abrupt about-face.
Suddenly she hears from court officials and from other
people:
“Well, maybe he abused you, but that’s no reason to
keep the children away from him. He is their father, after
all.”
“Don’t you think your own resentments are clouding
your judgment about your children?”
“Don’t you believe that people ever change? Why don’t
you give him the benefit of the doubt?”
In other words, a woman can be punished for exposing
children to a man in one situation but then punished for
refusing to expose them to the same man in another
situation. And the second case is potentially even more
dangerous than the first, because she is no longer able to
keep an eye on what he does with the children or to
prevent the postseparation escalation that is so common in
abusive fathers.
Abused mothers are typically required by family courts
across the United States and Canada to send their children
on unsupervised visitation—or into custody—with their
abusive fathers. When the children then begin to show
predictable symptoms such as school behavior and
attention problems, sleep disorders, unwillingness to
respect their mother’s authority, or emotional
deterioration, court personnel and court-appointed
evaluators commonly declare that these are normal
reactions to divorce or that the children are actually
responding to their mother’s emotions rather than to their
own. I have been involved in several cases where the abuser
has physically or sexually abused the children in addition
to abusing the mother, and the court still forced the mother
to allow visitation with no professional supervision.
Abused women across the continent report that it can
become extraordinarily difficult to persuade the court to
examine the evidence objectively once the mother has been
labeled “vindictive” or “overemotional” or has been accused
(however baselessly) of having influenced her children’s
statements.
The treatment that protective mothers so often receive at
the hands of family courts is among the most shameful
secrets of modern jurisprudence. This is the only social
institution that I am aware of that so frequently forbids
mothers to protect their children from abuse. Fortunately,
over the past few years, women and men (including many
nonabusive fathers) across the United States and Canada
have been waking up to the severity of this problem with
the result that there are multiple initiatives currently in
motion to demand family court reform. I have been part of
one such effort, assisting a well-funded organization that is
preparing a human rights report for the international
community on the revictimization of abused women and
their children through custody and visitation litigation. (For
more information, see “Battered Mothers Testimony
Project” in the “Resources” section in the back of this
book.) PREPARING FO R CUSTO DY BATTLES JUST IN
CASE
If you have not experienced custody litigation, or at least
not yet, please bear the following points in mind:
It is important to keep records of your
partner’s abusive behaviors toward you or
the children. If he writes scary or twisted
letters to you, keep them. If friends or
neighbors see him mistreat you or the
children, ask them to describe in writing
what they witnessed. If you have ever
called the police, try to get a record of the
call, whether they came or not. If he leaves
abusive or threatening messages on your
answering machine, keep a copy on tape.
Seek legal representation if you can
possibly afford it. If you have no
resources, apply for a legal services
attorney. In choosing an attorney, try to
find one who is experienced in domestic
abuse and who treats abused women with
patience and respect. The fact that a lawyer
is well known does not mean that he or she
necessarily understands the issues involved
in disputing custody or visitation with an
abuser.
Move cautiously. Avoid abruptly denying
him visitation, for example, even if you
have concerns about how your children are
being affected. Courts can be quick to
accuse women of trying to cut the
children’s father out of their lives even if
she has good reason to be worried.
Involve your children with a therapist if
you can find a good one in your
community. It is important to have
professionals involved so that you are not
the only one reporting the distress that
your children’s relationship with their
father is causing them. In situations where
it is just your word against his, he may be
able to charm court personnel with his
skillful lying and winning manner.
If one of your children discloses to you
sexual abuse by their father—which is an
extraordinarily upsetting experience—it is
especially important that you approach the
court and your local child protection
agency with as calm an appearance as you
possibly can. If you get labeled as
“hysterical about sexual abuse,” no matter
how justified your reactions, your reports
may be discredited. If you are in this
situation, read the excellent book A
Mother’s Nightmare—Incest, listed in
“Resources,” for further guidance on
managing the legal system.
Most abused women do succeed in keeping
custody of their children. But the better
you plan, the more likely you are to avoid a
horrible surprise. For a free packet of
information for abused women and their
attorneys regarding custody and visitation
litigation, call the Resource Center on
Domestic Violence: Child Protection and
Custody at 1–800–527–3223.
THE SUBJECT OF abusive men as parents, including their
behavior in custody and visitation disputes, is a complex
one; I have only touched the surface here. Readers who
wish to pursue a more in-depth discussion should see my
book The Batterer as Parent: Addressing the Impact of
Domestic Violence on Family Dynamics (written with Dr.
Jay Silverman), which addresses the full range of issues
touched on in this chapter. Although that book focuses on
the physically violent abuser, you will find that most of
what we say applies to psychologically abusive men as
well.
The more you are aware of how your children may be
affected by their exposure to your partner’s abuse of you,
and to the problems in his style as a parent, the better able
you will be to protect them from emotional harm. They
need to know that you are a parent they can count on to be
consistently kind and safe, since the abuser is unpredictable
and at times intimidating. If they are giving you difficult
behavioral challenges, are having some problems focusing
their attention, or are prone to withdrawal or depression,
bear in mind that these are all normal responses in children
whose mothers are abused. Your patience and
understanding are critical to them, including your ability to
show them that you do not believe they are bad. Remember
that growing up around an abusive father or stepfather is
very confusing and anxiety producing for children even if
he does not mistreat them directly.
Make your own healing—as well as your emotional and
physical safety—a priority. Children of an abused woman
can feel the difference when their mother starts to get help
for herself and becomes more able to recognize abuse for
what it is, blaming neither herself nor her children for the
abusive man’s behavior.
Here are some other actions you can take: Insist on
complete respect from your children. Children can absorb
your partner’s rude or bullying approach to you and begin
to exhibit behaviors toward you that they have learned
from him. Try to put a stop to this behavior as quickly as
possible before it gets a chance to snowball. You may not
be able to be firm with the children in front of your partner
if he actively undermines you, but put your foot down as
much as you can, especially when he isn’t around.
Insist on respect for females in general. Your partner’s
control or abuse toward you creates an atmosphere in
which negative attitudes toward females can grow like
mold. Interrupt these whenever you see them appearing in
your sons or daughters.
Confront your partner’s undermining of your parenting.
Unless you are afraid of how your partner will retaliate,
name his undermining for what it is and demand that it
stop.
Don’t lie on your partner’s behalf or cover for his
behavior. You may feel that you should protect your
children’s image of your partner by making excuses for
him, telling them what happened was your fault, or lying
about what he did. Your relationships with your children
will be damaged in the long run if your cover for him,
however, and that is the outcome you most want to avoid.
In addition, you increase their vulnerability to him if you
encourage them to deny their own self-protective instincts.
(However, you may need to lie to him to protect them
sometimes.) Be the best parent you can. As unfair as it is,
the reality is that an abused woman has to be an
outstanding parent in order to help her children process and
heal from the abuse they have been exposed to. Draw on
every resource you can, including parenting books and
training courses, parent support groups, and play groups
that may exist in your area. (For specific suggestions, see
the “Resources” section in the back of this book.) Consider
leaving your relationship, at least for a while, if you can do
so safely. One of the best ways to help children heal is for
them to be free from witnessing abuse. As I discussed
earlier, however, it is important to plan carefully in order to
make it harder for your abusive partner to hurt the children
through his visitation with them or through legal actions for
custody.
If your partner has already succeeded in causing some
distance in your relationships with your children, or has
turned them against each other, it is still possible to heal
those divisions and rebuild healthy connections. M ake
your relationships a priority and draw on counseling
services in your community to help you work through the
barriers that your abusive partner has erected. Encourage
your children to talk about the upsetting interactions they
have witnessed in the home, with the help of counselors if
necessary; it is especially important to relieve any burden
the children have felt to keep the abuse secret. Some abused
women’s programs have group counseling for children,
which is an excellent environment in which they can break
the secret about the abuse, gain insight into their own
emotional reactions, and learn that the abusive man’s
behavior is neither their mother’s fault nor their own.
Above all, don’t give up. Healing ruptured relationships
takes time and perseverance. In a case I am involved in
currently in which the parents are divorced, the mother was
on the verge of losing hope that she would ever be on good
terms again with her teenage boy, who was allied with his
abusive father and imitating his attitudes and behaviors—
including threats of violence—toward the mother. But she
persevered, despite many moments of despair over a three-
year period, and now the boy has finally begun to
recognize his father’s bullying and manipulation and is
gradually repairing his connection to his mother.
KEY PO INTS TO REMEMBER
An abuser in the home affects everybody.
A good father does not abuse his children’s
mother.
Abusers drive wedges between people, by
accident or by design. Abused mothers and
their children should seek support to heal
as individuals and to heal their relationships
with each other (see “About General
Parenting Issues” in “Resources” in the
back of this book).
If you are preparing to leave an abuser with
whom you have children, seek out legal
advice regarding custody issues as soon as
you can.
11
Abusive Men and Their Allies
I used to feel close to his mom, but now she
seems to hate me.
I can’t even call up our friends anymore,
because they don’t want to get in the middle.
Sometimes I feel like I must be the one who’s
messed up, because my own family sides with
him.
I don’t bother to call the police when he gets
scary, because he’s got buddies on the force who
help him out.
The custody evaluator reported to the court that
I’m hysterical and that the children should live
with him.
IN EACH OF the following examples, all of which come
from cases I have been involved in, something is happening
that is very difficult to account for:
A woman flees into hiding because she is
terrified of her abusive husband. He looks
everywhere for her and cannot track her
down. When all else fails, he pays a visit to
her parents. He tells them how sorry he is
about how he treated their daughter and
says he misses her terribly and is going to
change. He cries and begs for her address,
“just so that I can send her a letter and tell
her how I feel,” and her parents give it to
him.
A man joins an abuser program that has
been denied certification by his state’s
Department of Public Health because it
violates state regulations. While in the
program, the man complains that his
girlfriend sometimes hits him, too, and the
counselor, who is a licensed psychologist,
responds by encouraging the abuser to get
a restraining order against the abused
woman. The psychologist admits this
openly to me.
The daughter of a divorced abused woman
discloses in explicit detail that she is being
sexually abused by her father during
visitation. The mother goes to court to
request a professional evaluation of her
daughter. The mother’s sister arrives at
court that day with the abuser, with whom
she has now become friends despite the
fact that she hated him before the divorce.
The sister not only tells the judge that the
sexual abuse allegations are lies but actually
asks the judge to take custody of the girl
away from the mother and give it to her.
(Fortunately, the judge doesn’t allow the
sister to take the girl. The evaluation goes
forward and winds up confirming the sexual
abuse.)
An abusive man’s therapist assigns a
psychological diagnosis to the abused
woman without having met her or even
talked to her, relying entirely on the man’s
descriptions of his partner, despite
knowing that he is accused of abusing her.
A mother flees with her children to a
shelter for abused women because her
house is vandalized. She can tell it was her
physically abusive ex-husband who did it,
and she takes the damage as a clear threat.
Within several days of fleeing, she contacts
the court-appointed custody evaluator to
let him know where she is. The custody
evaluator, however, shoots off a report to
the court stating that the woman has no
reason to be afraid of her husband, although
she has told him of her partner’s history of
violence and threats, and recommends that
the children be taken away from the mother
and given to the father. He does not
mention the woman’s phone call to him
from the shelter in his report. On the basis
of the custody evaluator’s report, all three
children, including a girl who is only three
years old, are sent to live at the abuser’s
home, and the mother is permitted only
brief supervised visits, because she is now
labeled a “flight risk.”
How are abusive men able to attract allies to their cause?
And why do some people become such enthusiastic, and at
times vicious, agents of the abuser? To answer these
questions we need to look not only at the mind-set of
abusive men but also at the socially acceptable attitudes
and styles of interaction that an abusive man can use to
prevail upon other people to do his dirty work.
WHY THE ABUSIVE MAN SEEKS ALLIES
Controlling and intimidating a partner is not that easy. A
man has a better chance of dominating a woman than vice
versa, but it is still a challenge. Very few people willingly
consent to having their rights systematically denied. The
abusive man thus is faced repeatedly with the problem—
from his perspective—of his partner’s continued resistance
to his control. Over time he gets tired of bullying her all by
himself.
Certain other impediments can trip up the abuser.
Changes in societal attitudes toward abuse, including
improvements in some important laws and policies, are
making it harder to get away with. The physically
frightening or sexually assaultive abuser, for example, is
much more likely to be arrested than he would have been
ten or fifteen years ago. His partner now has the option of
seeking a court order to keep him away from her.
Perhaps most important is that the silence surrounding
abuse is being broken. In a current case of mine involving a
psychological abuser, close friends of the woman sat her
down one day and staged an “intervention,” in which they
supportively pressed her to recognize the impact her
husband’s abuse was having on her. Unlike the situation
years ago, there are now various ways in which an abused
woman can find assistance—or assistance can find her, as it
did in this case.
In this context, an abuser has to work harder than ever
to keep his partner blaming herself and to fend off helping
hands that might reach her. One great way to keep people
off of her side is to win them over to his side first. Besides,
he feels that he deserves allies, because he considers
himself the victim.
You may wonder why, if abusive men feel so justified in
their actions, they distort their stories so much when
seeking support. First, an abuser doesn’t want to have to
explain his worst behaviors—his outright cruelty, for
example, or his violence—to people who might find those
acts distasteful, and he may not feel confident that his
justifications will be accepted. Second, he may carry some
guilt or shame about his worst acts, as most abusers do; his
desire to escape those feelings is part of why he looks for
validation from other people, which relieves any nagging
self-doubt. He considers his guilt feelings a weakness to be
overcome. And, last, he may lie because he has convinced
himself of his own distortions. The narcissistic abuser, for
example, considers his fabrications real, which is one of the
reasons why lie-detector tests are unreliable in cases of
abuse (including child sexual abuse).
QUESTION 16:
HO W CO ME SO MANY PEO PLE SIDE
WITH HIM?
The list of people an abuser can potentially persuade to
act as his agents is a long one: friends, relatives, teachers,
psychologists, clergypeople, police and judges, her
relatives, and, following a breakup, his new partner. Let’s
take a look at several of these people from the abused
woman’s perspective, examining both how the abuser
recruits them and why they are willing to be his front
people.
THE ABUSER’S RELATIVES
“Sometimes he and his father rip into me together,
putting me down and making fun of me. His dad is just
like him.”
“His uncle abuses his aunt and everybody in his family
can tell, but they never say a word about it.”
“He was arrested for pounding on my door when I had
a restraining order against him, but his sister testified
that he’d been over at her house that whole night, so he
got off.”
“His mother and I were good friends, but ever since he
got arrested for hitting me she won’t talk to me, as if I
were the bad one.”
As these statements by partners of my clients illustrate,
one fundamental dynamic has changed little despite three
decades of progress in social attitudes toward abuse: No
one wants to believe that his or her own son or brother is
an abusive man. Parents don’t want the finger pointed at
them, so they say: “Our child wouldn’t abuse his partner.
We brought him up right.” Allegations of abuse by the son
can draw uncomfortable attention to the dynamics of the
previous generation; abusive men are three times more
likely than nonabusers to come from homes in which their
father or stepfather abused their mother. And if the father
or stepfather is abusive, he shares the son’s entitled
attitudes and victim-blaming tendencies.
Family loyalty and collective denial of family problems
are powerful binding agents. The abuser shapes his
relatives’ views of his partner over a period of years. They
have perhaps seen with their own eyes how she
“overreacts” to certain things he does in public, because
with no idea of what he has been doing to her behind closed
doors, they can’t accurately judge her behavior. So they
oppose abuse in the abstract, but they fight fiercely for the
abuser when he is their own.
THE ABUSED W O MAN’S RELATIVES AND FRIENDS
As if the support an abuser receives from his own relatives
weren’t bad enough, I keep encountering cases where the
woman’s relatives also come to his aid. At a conference I
spoke at recently, a lawyer stood up to ask: “Why do
some of my clients find themselves in situations where
their own families are helping the abusers win custody?”
Every family has tensions within it, and abusers use
their manipulative skills to take advantage of those rifts. In
one case, for example, an abuser named Ian heard that his
ex-wife Tina had fallen out with her parents because they
were upset that she had stopped attending church. Ian
made a point of starting to make a regular appearance at
Sunday services and one day found his way to
“coincidentally” sit near Tina’s relatives. He engaged them
in a conversation about his “concerns” about her loss of
faith and how bad he felt that Tina wasn’t giving their
children the benefits of consistent church attendance. He
also slipped in a few assertions that he knew would bring
to mind the kind of person who skips services, saying,
“Our children tell me she’s been drinking heavily and
bringing a lot of different men around the house.” Pretty
soon a minor tiff had turned into a gigantic one.
It is uncomfortable for a woman to tell her family the
details of her partner’s abuse of her. She feels ashamed and
wants to avoid having them ask: “Well, then, why are you
with him?” But the abuser can take advantage of how much
her family doesn’t know. He is careful not to create the
impression he’s bad-mouthing her, while subtly planting
his poisonous seeds. He might say, for example: “She’s
telling people now that I was abusive to her, and that really
hurts me. It’s gotten so I don’t want to show my face
places ’cause of what she’s saying. I’m not keeping any
secrets; I’ll tell you right out that I did slap her one day,
which I know is wrong. She has this thing about saying that
my mother is a ‘whore’ ’cause she’s been divorced twice,
and that really gets to me, but I know I should have
handled it differently.”
When he leaves, her parents find themselves ruminating:
“Gee, she didn’t mention anything about insulting his
mother in that incident. That makes it a little different. She
can have quite a mouth on her, I’ve noticed that myself. He
shouldn’t slap her, but he’s obviously feeling guilty about
it now. And he’s willing to admit that it’s partly his fault,
while she blames it all on him. She does that in conflicts
with us sometimes; she doesn’t realize it takes two to
tango.”
The part about the woman calling his mother a degrading
name may never have even happened; my clients smoothly
make up stories to cover their worst incidents. But whether
or not he is telling the truth is almost beside the point; he is
playing to the societal value, still widely held, that a man’s
abuse toward a woman is significantly less serious if she
has behaved rudely herself.
There continues to be social pressure on women to
“make the relationship work” and “find a way to hold the
family together,” regardless of abuse. Since so many people
accept the misconception that abuse comes from bad
relationship dynamics, they see the woman as sharing
responsibility equally for “getting things to go better.” Into
this context steps the abuser, telling his partner’s friends,
“I still really want to work things out, but she isn’t willing
to try. I guess it isn’t worth the effort to her. And she’s
refusing to look at her part in what went wrong; she puts it
all on me.”
What her family and friends may not know is that when
an abused woman refuses to “look at her part” in the abuse,
she has actually taken a powerful step out of self-blame
and toward emotional recovery. She doesn’t have any
responsibility for his actions. Anyone who tries to get her
to share responsibility is adopting the abuser’s
perspective.
Despite the challenges, many, many friends and relatives
of abused women stay by them. Their presence is critical,
for it is the level of loyalty, respect, patience, and support
that an abused woman receives from her own friends and
family that largely determines her ability to recover from
abuse and stay free. (People wishing to support or assist
an abused woman they care about should read To Be an
Anchor in the Storm by Susan Brewster. See “Resources.”)
THERAPISTS AND EVALUATO RS
We need to take a large step back in time for a moment, to
the early part of Freud’s era, when modern psychology
was born. In the 1890s, when Freud was in the dawn of his
career, he was struck by how many of his female patients
were revealing childhood incest victimization to him. Freud
concluded that child sexual abuse was one of the major
causes of emotional disturbances in adult women and wrote
a brilliant and humane paper called “The Aetiology of
Hysteria.” However, rather than receiving acclaim from his
colleagues for his ground-breaking insights, Freud met with
scorn. He was ridiculed for believing that men of excellent
reputation (most of his patients came from upstanding
homes) could be perpetrators of incest.
Within a few years, Freud buckled under this heavy
pressure and recanted his conclusions. In their place he
proposed the “Oedipus complex,” which became the
foundation of modern psychology. According to this
theory any young girl actually desires sexual contact with
her father, because she wants to compete with her mother
to be the most special person in his life. Freud used this
construct to conclude that the episodes of incestuous abuse
his clients had revealed to him had never taken place; they
were simply fantasies of events the women had wished for
when they were children and that the women had come to
believe were real. This construct started a hundred-year
history in the mental health field of blaming victims for the
abuse perpetrated on them and outright discrediting of
women’s and children’s reports of mistreatment by men.
Once abuse was denied in this way, the stage was set for
some psychologists to take the view that any violent or
sexually exploitative behaviors that couldn’t be denied—
because they were simply too obvious—should be
considered mutually caused. Psychological literature is thus
full of descriptions of young children who “seduce” adults
into sexual encounters and of women whose “provocative”
behavior causes men to become violent or sexually
assaultive toward them.
I wish I could say that these theories have long since
lost their influence, but I can’t. A psychologist who is
currently one of the most influential professionals
nationally in the field of custody disputes writes that
women provoke men’s violence by “resisting their control”
or by “attempting to leave.” She promotes the Oedipus
complex theory, including the claim that girls wish for
sexual contact with their fathers. In her writing she makes
the observation that young girls are often involved in
“mutually seductive” relationships with their violent
fathers, and it is on the basis of such “research” that some
courts have set their protocols. The Freudian legacy thus
remains strong.
Hoping to find that the mental health field was changing
for the better, I recently reviewed the current catalogues for
various graduate professional training programs in clinical
and counseling psychology, including those from programs
considered to be on the cutting edge. I was unable not only
to locate a single course on any form of abuse, whether
toward partners or children, but to locate any reference to
abuse in the descriptions of courses on any other subject. I
proceeded to call one of the schools that trains clinical
psychologists and asked whether they ever offer any
classes on abuse, and was told: “Well, if there is a
particular interest in that subject among the students, they
sometimes organize a student-led seminar.”
The influence of the history of psychological thinking
remains particularly potent in the field of custody
evaluation, where mental health professionals routinely
ignore or minimize allegations of partner abuse and child
abuse, assume that women are hysterical and vindictive,
and treat all problems as mutual in origin. Custody
evaluators sometimes become fervent advocates for abusive
men, joining them in accusing the women of alienating
children from their fathers and refusing to consider the
evidence of abuse.
Similar kinds of errors abound in the work of many
individual and couples therapists. I’ve had couples
counselors say to me, for example: “He just isn’t the type
to be abusive; he’s so pleasant and insightful, and she’s so
angry.” Women speak to me with shocked voices of
betrayal as they tell me how their couples therapist, or the
abuser’s individual therapist, or a therapist for one of their
children, has become a vocal advocate for him and a harsh
and superior critic of her. I have saved for years a letter
that a psychologist wrote about one of my clients, a man
who admitted to me that his wife was covered with blood
and had broken bones when he was done beating her and
that she could have died. The psychologist’s letter ridiculed
the system for labeling this man a “batterer,” saying that he
was too reasonable and insightful and should not be
participating in my abuser program any further. The
content of the letter indicated to me that the psychologist
had neglected to ever ask the client to describe the brutal
beating that he had been convicted of.
Outside the mainstream of psychological thinking there
are many, many excellent practitioners and theorists, ones
who take the impact of trauma and abuse seriously and
who believe that most victims are telling the truth. The
writings of theorists and practitioners such as Judith
Herman, Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Jaffe, Angela Browne,
John M yers, Susan Schechter, Anna Salter, Beverly James,
and countless others serve to counter the hostility toward
the oppressed of the prevailing professional atmosphere. I
have come to know dozens of therapists who treat female
clients with respect and play an empowering role in
women’s recovery from abuse. But psychologists who are
trained in the area of trauma remain exceptional, and the
battle to reform psychological thinking has just begun.
Before selecting a therapist for yourself or for your child,
be sure to interview possible choices carefully, exploring
their knowledge of and values concerning trauma and abuse.
As for conjoint counseling for you and your abusive
partner, I recommend that you strictly avoid it, for reasons
that we will see further ahead.
AN ABUSER’S NEW PARTNER AS HIS LEADING
ALLY
Back in the first chapter, we met a man named Paul who
had divorced his wife and was now seeing Laura. Laura felt
terrible for Paul because he was such a sweet man and his
ex-wife was accusing him of having abused her. Laura was
determined to “be there” for Paul, and even hoping to help
him win custody because his ex-wife was “out of control.”
Dozens of ex-partners of my clients have described how
the abusive man’s new partner takes on a role similar to
Laura’s: “His girlfriend is worse than he is. She talks to me
like I’m dirt and she spreads bad things about me. I’d
almost rather deal with him. I think she puts him up to
some of the stuff he does. She’s a bitch.”
Perhaps his new partner really is a mean, hostile
woman, but there is an equally good chance that she isn’t.
Look through her eyes for a moment. The abuser is re-
creating the same dynamic he set up with you, beginning
with loving, attentive treatment in the early months of
dating. He speaks to her with downcast eyes that well up
with tears as he recounts how mean and unreasonable you
were and how you called him abusive whenever he refused
to bow to your control. If you have children with him, his
girlfriend’s heart is bleeding because he cries in front of her
about how much he misses them and says that you are
keeping them away from him out of pure vindictiveness or
out of a desire to turn them over to another man to be their
dad. I currently have a case, for example, where the abusive
father decided not to see his son for six months—he even
put his decision in writing, in a document that I read—and
then complained publicly that he was being denied visits.
Paul has probably misled Laura in some similar ways. His
girlfriend sees a kind, loving parent whose desire to
maintain a relationship with his children is being thwarted;
how could she not hate you?
He may remain on good behavior with his new girlfriend
even longer than he did with you because he is motivated
by his campaign against you. Of course, his other side will
slip out sooner or later, but by that time he can blame it all
on how badly you have hurt him. His girlfriend thus gets
sucked into breaking her back trying to prove that she’s a
good woman—unlike you. She hopes that if she
demonstrates her loyalty to him, he’ll become loving and
available to her once again, as he was at the beginning. So
she wants to show him she is really there for him by
joining with—or even outdoing—his hostility toward and
blaming of you.
By the time his selfish and abusive side finally gets so
bad that his new girlfriend can’t rationalize it away any
more, she’s in pretty deep. She may even have married him
by that time. For her to accept that he is an abuser, she
would have to face what a terrible wrong she did to you,
and that would be quite a bitter pill to swallow. So what
tends to happen instead is that his new partner becomes
angrier and angrier at you for the way she is being treated
by him, believing that you “made him this way” by hurting
him so badly.
A couple of years ago I worked with a woman who said
to me, “I really hated his ex-girlfriend, but now I’m
realizing he must have done the same stuff to her he’s doing
to me.” Her guilt weighed heavily upon her. Women tend to
need a long time before they can accept having been used in
this way.
In the story of Paul and Laura we never meet Paul’s ex-
wife, but I have talked to two dozen or more women in her
position among the ex-partners of my clients. It is difficult
to capture the pain I hear in the voices of women whose
abusive ex-partners are attempting to take their children
away from them through the legal system, and the fact that
they have a female ally helping them carry out that
nefarious plan is almost too much to bear. The mothers ask
me: “Does she realize what she is doing? Has she bothered
to think about what it’s like for a mother to be threatened
with losing her children? What if he turns around years
from now and does the same thing to her?”
At the same time, I believe it’s important not to judge
the new partner too harshly. I sometimes say to women,
“You know how manipulative he can be, and he is sure to
be feeding her carefully crafted distortions. I’m not saying
you should excuse her actions, I’m just reminding you that
the one behind it all is him, not her. If you pour energy into
hating her, you are inadvertently serving his interests.” We
do, however, need to create a social ethic that makes it clear
that anyone who chooses to go to bat for a man accused of
abuse has a responsibility to get all the facts and not just
the view that he promotes. The abuse of women is simply
too rampant for anyone to assume that an allegation is false
or exaggerated without checking it out very, very carefully.
Finally, I have had several cases in which the abuser’s
new partner was a man who became a gunner for the abuser
against the abused woman just as a new female partner
sometimes does. Some peer groups of gay men have
negative attitudes toward women and become cheerleaders
for abuse just as straight male peers can.
O THER ABUSERS O F PO W ER AS ALLIES O F
ABUSIVE MEN
You have undoubtedly come in contact at some point in
your life with a person driven by a deep attraction to
exercising power over others. Partner abusers have no
monopoly on the desire to intimidate or manipulate, or on
the skills for accumulating power and using it for selfish
purposes or emotional gratification. Among professionals,
for example—including those who are expected to respond
constructively to abusers and their partners—there are
some individuals who are motivated not by caring and
respect but by hunger for control. Not everyone who
enters police work wishes to be a public servant; there are
those who look forward primarily to carrying a gun,
pushing their weight around, and being above the law. I
know many humane judges who take an interest in the
challenges that people face and seek fair and practical
responses. But I watch others who appear to get
satisfaction out of insulting those who come before them,
dismissing their concerns and perspectives, and acting with
impunity. Among therapists there are plenty whose goal is
teamwork, while others look down on their clients and
speak condescendingly, making pronouncements about
what each person “really” thinks, feels, and needs to do.
There are custody evaluators who are eager to lend a hand
through the painful process of divorce, but a tragically large
number appears to be enamored with the power over the
lives of men, women, and children that their custody
recommendations give them.
People who are attracted to power and tend to abuse it
have important common ground with a man who abuses
women. For example, a dictatorial boss is bound to
encounter some occasions when an employee finally gets
fed up enough to swear at her, stomp out of the office, and
quit. A manager who coerces his female subordinates into
sexual contact with him may get reported for sexual
harassment sooner or later. The abuser of power feels
outraged when his or her victims attempt to defend
themselves in these ways and considers them to be the
unreasonable or aggressive ones. So it is not surprising that
such a person, when looking at a woman who is
complaining of abuse by a man, might have the following
thoughts: “This woman is another one of those people who
likes the role of victim. I know what they’re like because I
have to deal with them myself: They are never grateful no
matter how much you do for them; they don’t know their
place; and everything turns into an accusation of
mistreatment.” The abuser of power thus may personalize
the woman’s resistance to oppression and feel a strong
desire to retaliate on behalf of the abusive man, and in fact I
have often observed this disturbing eagerness among some
professionals to jump on abused women with both feet.
Their statements have sometimes confirmed to me that
they do indeed have the kind of thought process I have just
described—coupled of course with the usual myths
regarding women’s hysterical exaggerations and their
provocation of men’s abuse.
A professional who is drawn to abusing power seems to
have particularly strong reactions if the woman challenges
his or her actions in any way or attempts to explain the
effects the abuser has had on her. The underlying attitude
sometimes appears to be: “How dare you continue to
attempt to think for yourself when I am here before you
with my obviously superior knowledge, status, judgment,
and insight?” An abused woman can walk away from an
interaction with such a professional feeling like she has just
been beaten up, re-creating the ugliness of the verbal or
physical abuse she has suffered from her partner. A
number of abused women have said to me, for example,
“The police came to my house one time after he pushed me
around, but they were angry and insulting to me and kind
of buddied up to him, and when I complained about how
they were treating me they told me if I didn’t shut up they
would arrest me.” I have been involved in cases where some
judges and custody evaluators—both male and female—go
out of their way to discredit and demean women who
report abuse and request protection for themselves or their
children, and if the woman protests the professional
response they explode into verbally abusing her or
retaliating against her. In this way the mentality and tactics
of certain professionals can closely parallel those of
abusers, and the result is revictimization of the woman.
In some institutions whose own power dynamics have
tended to fall badly on abused women in these ways, such
as police departments, courts, and child protective services,
social pressure has brought about the creation of positions
for abused women’s advocates or domestic-violence
specialists whose job it is to make sure that the abused
woman is not revictimized by the system that should be
there to protect her rights. If you are involved with one of
these systems, find out whether an abuse specialist is on
staff and, if so, request to bring that person into your case.
ATTO RNEYS
Some attorneys for abusers are in a class by themselves. I
have rarely seen anyone become as vicious and
unprincipled in the role of coabuser of a man’s partner as
certain lawyers do. Woman after woman has described to
me the way her heart begins to race when she sees the
abuser’s attorney at court or the jolt she feels when court
papers prepared by the attorney arrive at her home.
An abuser or accused abuser of course has the right to
legal representation, as anyone does. But does offering
proper legal counsel mean that the attorney needs to insult
and deride the woman, make far-fetched accusations against
her, treat every allegation made by the man as gospel truth,
and even lie at times to promote his goals? Of course not.
However, such conduct is disturbingly widespread among
certain defense attorneys who represent accused abusers as
well as among some family law attorneys handling custody
and visitation cases. Some of this behavior appears to be
motivated by economics: Attorneys can build a successful
practice if word gets around that they specialize in
representing accused abusers. Abusers love it when they
hear that a certain attorney has a reputation for “really
going for the woman’s jugular,” since that ruthless
orientation is in keeping with their own. Women are
sometimes as traumatized by their ex-partner’s attorney as
they were by him.
There is an urgent need for the creation of legal
standards for attorneys who represent accused abusers, so
that a sharp line is drawn between giving a man a proper
chance to have his side heard in court, which is his legal
right, and acting as a weapon of the man’s abuse, allowing
him to cause financial and psychological damage that would
have been impossible for him without the lawyer’s
assistance.
THE MYTH O F NEUTRALITY
It is not possible to be truly balanced in one’s views of an
abuser and an abused woman. As Dr. Judith Herman
explains eloquently in her masterwork Trauma and
Recovery, “neutrality” actually serves the interests of the
perpetrator much more than those of the victim and so is
not neutral. Although an abuser prefers to have you
wholeheartedly on his side, he will settle contentedly for
your decision to take a middle stance. To him, that means
you see the couple’s problems as partly her fault and
partly his fault, which means it isn’t abuse.
I was speaking with a person one day who was
describing the abusive relationship of a man and woman,
both of whom were friends of hers. “They each want me to
side with them,” she explained to me, “but I refuse to take
sides. They have to work out their own dynamics. I have
let both of them know that I’m there for them. If I openly
supported her, he would just dig his heels in harder.” She
added, “People need to avoid the temptation to choose up
teams” in a tone that indicated that she considered herself
to be of superior maturity because of her neutrality.
In reality, to remain neutral is to collude with the
abusive man, whether or not that is your goal. If you are
aware of chronic or severe mistreatment and do not speak
out against it, your silence communicates implicitly that
you see nothing unacceptable taking place. Abusers
interpret silence as approval, or at least as forgiveness. To
abused women, meanwhile, the silence means that no one
will help—just what her partner wants her to believe.
Anyone who chooses to quietly look the other way
therefore unwittingly becomes the abuser’s ally.
Breaking the silence does not necessarily mean
criticizing or confronting the abuser regarding his behavior.
It certainly doesn’t mean going to him with anything you
have learned from her, because the abuser will retaliate
against her for talking about his behavior to other people. It
does mean telling the abused woman privately that you
don’t like the way he is treating her and that she doesn’t
deserve it, no matter what she has done. And if you see or
hear violence or threats, it means calling the police.
HOW SO C IETY ADO PTS THE ABUSER’S
PERSPECTIVE
Almost anyone can become an ally of an abusive man by
inadvertently adopting his perspective. People usually
don’t even notice that they are supporting abusive
thinking, or they wouldn’t do it. Let’s examine some of the
most common forms of accidental support: • The person
who says to the abused woman: “You should show him
some compassion even if he has done bad things. Don’t
forget that he’s a human being too.”
I have almost never worked with an abused woman who
overlooked her partner’s humanity. The problem is the
reverse: He forgets her humanity. Acknowledging his
abusiveness and speaking forcefully and honestly about
how he has hurt her is indispensable to her recovery. It is
the abuser’s perspective that she is being mean to him by
speaking bluntly about the damage he has done. To suggest
to her that his need for compassion should come before her
right to live free from abuse is consistent with the abuser’s
outlook. I have repeatedly seen the tendency among friends
and acquaintances of an abused woman to feel that it is
their responsibility to make sure that she realizes what a
good person he really is inside—in other words, to stay
focused on his needs rather than on her own, which is a
mistake. People who wish to help an abused woman should
instead be telling her what a good person she is.
• The person who says to her: “But he’s the father of your
children.”
The abusive man uses the children to entrap the woman in
the relationship, saying that she is depriving them of a
father by splitting up the family. But he is the one who is
keeping those children from having the father they need, by
forcing them to grow up with a father who abuses their
mother. Children need an abuse-free home.
• The person who says to her: “You made a commitment,
and now you need to stick with it through hard times.”
The abusive man believes that chronic mistreatment, overt
disrespect, intimidation, and even violence are not good
enough reasons for a woman to want to stay away from a
man. When people say to her, “You made your bed; now
lie in it,” they are supporting the abuser’s value system.
• The person who says to her: “You are claiming to be a
helpless victim.”
If the abuser could hear these words being spoken to his
partner, he would jump for joy. He may have said the very
same thing to her. The abuser’s perspective is that the
woman exaggerates the hurtfulness of his conduct because
she wants the status of victim, attributing to her the
maneuvers that he is actually fond of using himself. When
an abused woman tries to tell you how bad things are,
listen.
• The person who says: “These abuse activists are anti-
male.”
How is it anti-male to be against abuse? Are we supposed
to pretend we don’t notice that the overwhelming majority
of abusers are male? This accusation parallels the abuser’s
words to his partner: “The reason you think I’m abusive is
because you have a problem with men!” One of the best
counters to this piece of side-tracking is to point out how
many men are active in combating the abuse of women.
Remember also that abused women are the sisters,
daughters, mothers, and friends of men; men’s lives are
affected by abuse, because it happens to women we know
and care about.
I HAVE GIVEN just a few of the dozens of examples I have
encountered of how people take on the abuser’s view of his
abuse. When you hear these kinds of statements, draw the
speaker’s attention to the fact that he or she is making the
abuser’s arguments for him. Most people don’t want to
carry his banner and will drop it quickly once you show
them what is in their hands.
It is impossible for a community to stop abuse while
continuing to assist or ignore abusers at the same time.
Protecting or enabling an abuser is as morally repugnant
as the abuse itself. This critical concept needs to become
firmly embedded in our culture. Colluding with abuse
abandons the abused woman and her children, and
ultimately abandons the abuser as well, since it keeps him
from ever dealing with his problem. In particular we have
to bring to light the actions of those powerful, well-trained
professionals who choose to join the abuser in his goals and
tactics. If we can erode the ability of abusers to gain allies,
they will stand alone, and alone they are easier to stop.
It often falls to the abused woman herself,
unfortunately, to try to educate the people around her
whose help and support she needs, so that they will
understand the dynamics of abuse and stop supporting the
abusive man. M uch of why an abuser is so able to recruit
allies, besides his own manipulativeness and charm, is his
skill in playing on people’s ignorance and misconceptions
and often on their negative attitudes toward women. As
difficult as it is to take on, you will often find yourself
having to be your own best advocate, arguing forcefully
against the range of ways in which your society’s values
may buy into the abusive man’s outlook, in order to gain
the kind of strong backing that you deserve from all those
around you.
KEY PO INTS TO REMEMBER
When people take a neutral stand between
you and your abusive partner, they are in
effect supporting him and abandoning you,
no matter how much they may claim
otherwise.
People cannot claim to be opposed to
partner abuse while assisting their own son,
brother, friend, or partner in his
abusiveness toward a woman.
Everyone should be very, very cautious in
accepting a man’s claim that he has been
wrongly accused of abuse or violence. The
great majority of allegations of abuse—
though not all—are substantially accurate.
And an abuser almost never “seems like the
type.”
The argument that “he is a human being,
too, and he deserves emotional support”
should not be used as an excuse to support
a man’s abusiveness. Our society should
not buy into the abusive man’s claim that
holding him accountable is an act of cruelty.
12
The Abusive Man and the Legal
System
He’s on probation for hitting me, but he acts like
it’s a big joke.
He’s been arrested four times, but he always
gets off.
I called the police and reported that he violated
the restraining order, but they said since he
didn’t get violent or threatening this time, the
violation is too minor for them to do anything
about it.
The D.A. wants me to testify, but there’s no way
I’m going in that courthouse again. Last time his
defense attorney humiliated me; it’s just not
worth it.
The judge told me that we should go to couples
counseling to work on our relationship issues.
He’s been sending me scary letters from jail.
What should I do?
LURKING BENEAT H T HE SURFACE of most women’s
experience of abuse is fear: fear of what he will do if you
stand up to him; fear of how he will react if he finds out
you’ve been spending time with your friends, whom he
hates; fear of what he might do to one of your children; fear
that he will get you pregnant again; fear of how he may
retaliate if you try to leave him.
Sometimes a woman can describe to me what she is
afraid of, because her partner’s bullying and cruelty follow
a pattern. You may dread his insults and his rage or his
contempt and disgust. If he is violent, you may get shaky
when images go through your mind of his twisted, hate-
filled face as he slams his fists. At times it may seem like
he could kill you—and he may threaten to.
In other cases, the fear is unnameable. You might find
yourself saying to a friend: “I don’t know what he’ll do;
there’s no way to tell with him, but he’ll do something, and
it’s going to be bad.” Waiting for the punishment can be
even harder when you don’t know what it will be. Even the
abuser who has never used violence knows that there can
always be a first time—and he may well be aware that you
know that too. So he looks for ways, perhaps explicit or
perhaps enigmatic, to remind you not to “push him too
far,” because you won’t want to see what happens.
The impact of fear accumulates over time. The twentieth
time a loved one scares you is not the same as the first.
You become enraged, or paralyzed, or numb, or all of those
at the same time. You feel like it’s harder and harder to
figure out what to do.
If your partner is physically frightening or sexually
assaultive, one option you can consider to gain protection
for your rights and safety is to use the legal system. You
can call the police to report an assault or a threat, or go to a
court and ask for a restraining order (which also may be
known as a “protective order” or “peace bond”). The
restraining order may require the abuser to move out of the
house, even if it is in his name; to stay away from you; or
to have no contact with you of any kind, depending on
what arrangement you feel you need.
The first time a woman considers involving the police or
courts in her relationship, something inside her rebels. This
is a man she loves, or at least once loved, with whom she
has a history, with whom she has shared the highs and
lows of moments of physical or emotional intimacy, with
whom she may have children. She thinks to herself
incredulously, I am going to get a court order against this
man? I am going to call the police and let them arrest him?
I am going to cause him to have a criminal record, or
perhaps even go to jail?? She shuts these preposterous-
seeming possibilities out of her mind. Relationship
problems are solved by talking, or by seeking counseling,
or by taking some time apart, she tells herself, not by using
laws and judges and police departments.
But if the woman’s partner continues to frighten her—
and it is unusual for scary behavior to stop once it rears its
head—sooner or later she finds herself feeling that the
situation has gone beyond what she can handle herself. The
step of reaching out for legal help then stops seeming so
farfetched.
Or she may become involved with the legal system
without making the choice. Neighbors, bystanders, or her
own children may call the police during a scary incident.
Neighbors are much less likely nowadays to put their
hands over their ears and pretend that nothing is
happening; the traditional belief that domestic violence is a
“private matter” is rapidly fading. Schools now teach
children how to use 911 and sometimes even explain to
children that they have a right to safety inside their homes,
not just outside.
A woman who faces purely verbal or economic abuse
from her partner, without the elements of physical assault,
sexual assault, or physical intimidation, generally does not
have recourse to the police or courts under current laws.
The impact on her of her partner’s behavior may be severe
nonetheless, but she will need to seek other sources of
support, beginning with the nearest program for abused
women.
QUESTION 17:
HO W CO ME HE KEEPS GETTING
AWAY W ITH IT?
THE DIFFERENT PLAYERS IN THE LEGAL SYSTEM
A call to the police or a visit to the court to seek a
restraining order is a courageous and potentially
empowering step. But an abused woman can also encounter
some nasty surprises. Although the legal system is
supposed to be her friend and protector, sometimes public
officials seem to forget their job. Legal responses to abuse
involve many players, each of whom has the potential to
help the woman—or to drop the ball. When police are
called to your home, they have a responsibility to make
sure that you and your children are safe and to arrest the
abuser if he has been violent or threatening. If he has
violated a restraining order, the police should take him
away even if he “only committed a technical violation” of
the order or has some “good reason” for being there, such
as asserting that you called him up and asked him to come
over, or that he just wanted to drop off gifts for the
children.
If the police do not arrest the abuser, or were never
called, responsibility next falls to the court to file a charge.
If you report to the court that you were assaulted or
threatened, or that your partner broke a restraining order,
your word is evidence. Courts can, and do, file charges on
the basis of victim reports alone, but tragically they can be
reluctant to do so in cases of domestic abuse or sexual
assault. Courts reserve a special skepticism toward women
who complain of abuse by a partner, and disparaging biases
against females are still the rule of the day in some courts—
even among female employees.
If the court does file a charge, the baton then passes to
the district attorney. His or her job is to take the crime just
as seriously as if it had been committed by a stranger and
to pursue a conviction just as assiduously. The fact that
the accused is your partner should make no difference or
should actually lead the prosecutor to consider the offense
more dangerous. Negotiations between the prosecutor and
the abuser that fail to address the central issue of abuse—
such as agreeing to reduce the charges if the abuser sees a
therapist, or dropping the charges because the couple has
split up “so it’s not an issue anymore”—have no place
here. But they sometimes creep in.
Next comes the judge, who not only makes sentencing
decisions but, unless there is a jury trial, also is the one
ruling on the man’s guilt or innocence. Will the judge apply
the same standards of proof used for other cases, or will he
or she require a higher standard for domestic violence or
sexual assault cases? Studies have shown that it is harder to
convince judges and juries to convict in abuse cases,
because of prejudices against the complainants as well as
misconceptions about what “type” of man would commit
such a crime.
A judge is also the one who grants or denies a restraining
order to protect the woman. Some judges listen carefully to
plaintiffs’ concerns, whereas others assume that women are
lying and exaggerating. A remarkable number of judges grant
restraining orders to abusers to use against their victims or
grant mutual orders, which validate the abuser’s claim that
his partner shares responsibility for causing his scary
behavior.
And finally comes the probation department at the
court. It is rare for an abuser to spend time in jail unless he
is on his third or fourth conviction, which typically would
mean five or ten or more arrests. So his probation officer
becomes the person who determines whether or not the
abuser feels the bite of consequences or is left to coast. I
have worked with probation officers who send abusers an
unequivocal message: “Domestic abuse is a serious offense.
I will not permit you to get away with blaming your victim
in any way, and it is up to you to do some serious work on
yourself.” But I have also worked with many others who
buddy up to the abuser with a wink and a nod, who bond
with him in the belief that there exists an anti-male bias in
the court system and who signal him that he needn’t take
the abuser program seriously by saying things such as:
“Just show up to your required number of group meetings
and we’ll get you right off probation.”
The front doors of police departments and courthouses
sometimes open into cold and adversarial worlds. Police
and courts may have little training in how to respond to a
person who has suffered chronic or terrifying abuse. Even
if they don’t say or do anything unkind, their brusque,
businesslike manner can feel like an icy slap in the face to a
woman who seeks relief from psychological assault and
intimidation at home. And too often, regrettably, they
share the abuser’s attitudes. I could not possibly count the
number of women who have said to me: “I wish those
people down at the court could live my life for a day and
see what it’s like.”
On the other hand a kind word, a useful pamphlet, some
patient listening can touch an abused woman deeply.
Increasingly I hear women say: “The police who came were
so nice to me: They talked to me in private and asked me
what happened, and they told me about programs where I
could get help,” or “The judge said not to hesitate to come
back if there were more problems or if I needed additional
protection.” When an abused woman encounters humane,
intelligent responses from officials who are informed on the
subject of abuse, not only is her external freedom promoted
but her inner feelings are validated, helping to keep her
spirit alive. She walks away thinking, Maybe everything
isn’t the way he says it is. Maybe some people do care.
Maybe I’m not so bad as to deserve being torn down all the
time. Maybe he can’t fool everybody.” And the budding
belief that life can be filled with something other than
cruelty and superiority grows a little stronger inside her.
In the pages ahead, we will look at how the abuser views
and maneuvers through the legal system, trying to prevent
his partner from receiving empowering assistance and
striving to avoid accountability. Armed with this
awareness, both individuals and communities are in a better
position to press the police, courts, and prosecutors to do
their jobs properly and become part of the solution rather
than part of the problem of abuse.
HOW THE ABUSER THINKS ABO UT LAWS AND
CO NSEQ UENCES
My clients support laws that prohibit domestic abuse—as
long as they are applied only to other men. Each one has a
mental image of what a “real abuser” is like, and it isn’t
him. In his mind, the “real abuser” is more violent and
scary than he is and has a partner who is “a nice lady” who
doesn’t deserve abuse. Dozens of my clients have said to
me: “I’m not like those guys who come home and abuse
their partners for no reason, you know.” A man who
minimizes and excuses his abuse in these ways is shocked
when the police arrest him or when a court orders him to
vacate his home. He feels outraged at the unfairness of the
system. He thinks, With all those horrible batterers out
there, why are they coming after me? This is ridiculous!
Since he can’t accept the idea that he is abusive, he has
to find something wrong with everyone else—another
example of the abuser seeing his dirty face and washing the
mirror. His thinking is rife with distortions, including the
following:
• “She really exaggerated what I did.”
His first line of mental defense is to impugn her honesty
and accuse her of being calculating: “She told the police I
punched her in the face, because she knew that would make
me look like a real bad guy. I only slapped her, and no
harder than she slaps me.” My response to such
statements is to say that just because she remembers the
incident differently doesn’t mean her version is wrong and
his is right; in fact, abused women typically have memories
of what occurred that are clearer and more accurate than
those of the abuser, because of the hyperalert manner in
which people react to any danger. And even if this time he
is technically right that his hand was open, what difference
does it make? He obviously hit her hard enough to make
her think that she was punched, so he is not a candidate for
my sympathy. Besides, even if it was a slap, that’s enough
to hurt a woman and put her in fear.
• “The judge didn’t even want to hear about what she did.
In court the man is automatically wrong, so the woman can
do whatever she wants.”
The abuser feels justified in using intimidation “when it’s
really called for,” so he gets frustrated if he finds that court
officials do not find his excuses about her behavior
compelling or don’t even want to hear them. He feels that if
the court is going to take action against him for intimidating
her, then it should simultaneously crack down on her for
hanging around with friends of hers whom he dislikes,
talking back to him when he tells her to shut up, fighting
back physically when he is assaulting or threatening her, or
whatever his grievances may be.
• “The system is controlled by women.”
Every aspect of the multipronged legal system even today
is dominated by males: police, prosecutors, judges,
probation officers. In addition, the state legislatures that
make the laws are still disproportionately male. So how
does the abuser come to the farfetched conclusion that
women are somehow lurking in the shadows, pulling strings
to cause him to suffer consequences for his actions when he
thinks there shouldn’t be any? This absurd leap occurs for
two reasons. One is that he already has well-entrenched
habits of blaming women for his own behavior. So when
society sends him the message that he is responsible for
what he does, he just widens the scope of his blame-
projecting machine to target all women. The second is that
if he didn’t blame women, he would have to accept the fact
that a large proportion of men are opposed to what he is
doing. Cultural values are changing, slowly but surely, and
abusers cannot always count on other men to back them up
anymore—a fact that makes them feel betrayed so they
close their eyes to it.
• “I’ve never experienced any consequences for my abuse
before. It isn’t going to suddenly happen now.”
Once the abuser recovers from his initial shock at legal
intrusion into his private domain, he falls back on one of
his core assumptions, which is that he can get away with it.
He starts manipulating court officials the same way he
manipulates his partner and the people around her.
Unfortunately, his sense of invulnerability is not as
deluded as it may seem; abusers slide by in ways that can
be startling to watch. And the abuser who coasts through
court is often worse than he would have been had he never
been arrested; he feels that his belief that nothing can stick
to him has been confirmed, and he feels vindicated before
the world, with the result that his abusive behavior may
escalate.
• “Nothing is going to stop me.”
This last attitude is less pervasive, belonging to that
minority of abusers who are unimpressed by legal
consequences and who will stop at nothing to maintain
their control of their partners. This style of man finds
ways to be abusive and controlling even from jail, either
sending letters or relaying messages through friends to keep
her frightened. Jail doesn’t convince him that he has done
anything wrong; it just sharpens his appetite for revenge.
Abused women, and the communities that support them,
need to be alert to the need to take additional steps to
prepare for the eventual release of the hell-bent abuser.
Keep the above attitudes in mind as we observe the
abuser’s approach to the various legal situations he faces;
his moves follow predictably from this thinking.
WHEN THE PO LICE C O ME TO THE DO O R
Anyone who believes that abusers lose control of
themselves should peer through the window when the
police enter a home. Hundreds of women have told me:
“It’s as if he could flick a switch. The police arrive, and
he’s suddenly cool as a cucumber. Meanwhile, I’m freaking
out, so of course they think something is wrong with me.
They don’t believe he could settle down that fast.” If
abusers truly had tremendous problems managing their
anger, if they were as emotionally vulnerable or deeply
injured from childhood as they often maintain, they
wouldn’t be able to shut themselves off like a faucet as
soon as a cop knocks on the door.
Abusers tell stories to the police of hard luck and
misunderstanding, of unstable or drunk women and
helpless, well-intentioned men who are trying to fend off
disaster. The most common routines are variations on the
following themes:
• “It was just a verbal argument, there was no hitting.”
He hopes that the police will ignore any signs of chairs
knocked over, plates smashed, or scratches on her arms (or
his). He assumes his partner will be too scared to tell the
truth or that she’ll feel responsible for protecting him.
• “She was hitting me over and over again while I tried to
get out of the apartment, and all I did was push her out of
my way so I could get out.”
How many women want to keep an enraged man trapped
indoors? Not many, unless perhaps the man is threatening
to commit suicide or to attack one of her friends or
relatives. In the rare cases where a client of mine is telling
the truth that his egress was blocked, he still had other
options besides assault, including going out the back door.
I’ve never yet had a man tell me that he was unable to get
to the phone to call for assistance, for example, in the way
that has happened to hundreds of the female partners of
my clients.
Countless clients of mine claim self-defense as an
excuse, but then they admit that they were not frightened
or injured by their partners nor was the woman able to
successfully control their movements or keep them from
saying whatever they wanted. It’s payback, not self-
defense. Among the two thousand clients I have had, I can
think of only one who genuinely had a problem with
serious violence on his wife’s part that was not a reaction
to violence, and even he was not especially afraid of her.
• “She was drunk and was going out to drive, and I was
just trying to get the keys away from her.”
This excuse is a tricky one, because abused women
sometimes do develop alcohol or drug problems, usually
because of the abuser’s behavior. However, her addiction is
no excuse to abuse her further. Unfortunately, if a woman
is visibly intoxicated when the police come, they may feel
inclined to believe the abuser and discredit her. If I ask a
few questions, though, I usually find out that the reason
she was trying to leave the house was that he had been on a
mounting verbal rampage that day, and she was trying to
get away from a physical assault that she could tell was
coming soon.
• “She said that if I didn’t give her more money, she’d call
the police and say that I hit her.”
I have heard this story from so many of my clients that I
find myself wondering if they are all graduates of the same
Abuse Academy. I have yet to encounter a case in which
there turned out to be any truth to this claim, even when
the man was asserting at first that he had witnesses.
• “I just stepped in to protect our child from her abuse.”
Again, a situation in which a nonabusive man had to take
physical steps to protect a child from an assaultive mother
could truly arise, but he would do so by removing the child,
not by assaulting the mother.
Carrying false allegations of domestic violence all the
way through to a conviction is extraordinarily hard to do. If
a vindictive woman really wants to stick it to a man, there
are ways to do it that are more satisfying, less time
consuming, and far less prone to failure. There isn’t the
slightest evidence that rates of false allegations for domestic
abuse are higher than for any other kind of crime. In fact,
research suggests that they may be lower.
When an abuser is accused of violating a restraining
order, he has another set of explanations ready, including:
• “It’s just a coincidence that we were there at the same
time. I had no idea she would be present.”
In determining the legitimacy of this excuse, I have noticed
that men who are determined to obey their restraining
orders always seem to find ways to stay away from the
woman, whereas other abusers seem to “just by accident”
keep violating the order over and over again.
• “I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to even send a letter.”
Even when this excuse is true, it shows the man’s
contempt for both his partner and for the court, since it
means he didn’t bother to read the order. And he doesn’t
need an attorney to analyze the statement “Do not contact
the plaintiff.”
• “I just called to speak to the children because I miss them
terribly.
I haven’t had visitation with them in two months.”
No excuse pulls heartstrings down at the police department
and courthouse quite the way this one does. Several of my
clients who have used this excuse actually did have
visitation rights but were choosing not to use them because
they didn’t like the terms. They stated: “If I can only see
them one afternoon a week, or if I have to see them with a
supervisor, I’m not going to see them at all.” So much for
the devoted fathers they claim to be.
Even in cases where the mother or the court has indeed
denied the abuser visitation, he knows perfectly well what
he is doing when he calls the home and the feelings of fear
and invasion it will cause the mother. If his concern for his
children is as profound as he claims, he can prove it by
doing what his children need from him the most—deal
seriously with his abuse problem.
WHEN T HE POLICE go to a home on a domestic-abuse
call, the woman sometimes scrambles to cover for her
abusive partner. Consider her position: She knows that in a
few minutes the police will leave her house and she will
remain there alone, either with the abuser or without him. If
the police do arrest him, it is only a matter of time until he
is released—and angrier than ever. She calculates that her
safest position is beside her partner; if she teams up with
him, he might not rip her to pieces when the police car
disappears up the street. Even if she called for help herself,
she wasn’t necessarily looking for an arrest; most women
call to get a scary experience to stop. They want the police
to calm the man down and typically would like him
removed from the home for the night. But jail, even just for
a day or two? Few women would want to see that happen
unless they have suffered a long history of abuse by him.
At the same time, women are noticeably more likely to
tell the truth to the police than they were fifteen years ago.
Although the abuser may say, “You put me in jail!”, the
reality is that he put himself there, and an increasing
number of people are beginning to understand this crucial
point. Why should you have to suffer abuse to protect him
from the pain or humiliation of being locked up? He knows
what he needs to change in order to keep the police from
being called the next time. It’s on him.
I am not recommending that you stand by idly while the
police arrest your partner if you fear that he may kill you
when he gets out. Every woman has to make her own
decisions based on what she knows about the status of her
own safety; you are the expert on your own partner. You
may know from your experience that the legal system is
not going to be able to control his behavior and that you
will have to seek alternate strategies for safety, such as
planning an escape.
SHO ULD I GET A RESTRAINING O RDER?
Throughout almost all of the United States and Canada, a
woman who is being physically abused, sexually assaulted,
or physically threatened by an intimate partner or ex-
partner has the option to seek an order of protection from a
court to keep the abuser away from her. (Purely
psychological abuse without these elements of threat or
assault is generally not covered under the laws governing
protective orders.) In some areas there are important gaps
in eligibility, however, such as states where a woman
cannot get an order against a lesbian partner who is abusing
her or cannot get an order if she has never lived with or
been married to the abuser. There are also places where,
regrettably, the woman is required to pay a substantial fee
in order to obtain the order. Call either the courthouse or
your local program for abused women to find out whether
you are eligible to seek an order and what the process is for
obtaining one.
The question of whether and when to obtain a
restraining order is a complex one that no one can answer
for you. Consider the following points in making your
decision:
1. Is he afraid of the police, courts, or jail? If
he is, the restraining order may keep him
away from you. But if he has no fear, the
order may incite him to get scarier than
ever. I have had clients who responded to
a restraining order as a red flag waved in
front of a bull.
2. Is your main concern that he will
intimidate you, attempt to hit you, or
hassle you verbally, or are you afraid he
will do something even more serious, such
as attempt to kill you? Restraining orders
can be helpful for stopping harassment
and nonlethal assault but may not be
worth a great deal in stopping an abuser
whose intentions are murderous. If you
fear the worst, it is important to take
multiple steps to protect your safety (see
“Safety Planning” in Chapter 9), which
can include a restraining order as one
aspect of a larger plan, and even then only
if you think it will contribute to your safety.
3. Are the police and courts in your area
supportive? Are they likely to take
serious action if he violates the order? Will
they believe you if you report a violation
to them? A restraining order can do more
harm than good if the legal system is not
prepared to back you up.
I have seen cases where restraining orders have
contributed greatly to women’s safety and peace of mind
and have helped immeasurably in women’s efforts to move
on with their lives and be free. But each abusive man is
different. I have been involved in cases where the woman
regretted getting the order because it made her life even
scarier. If possible, speak with an advocate for abused
women before making a decision about seeking an order.
And whether or not you choose to request a restraining
order, also make sure to take other steps to protect your
safety. A restraining order should be one part of a larger
safety plan (see “Leaving an Abuser Safely” in Chapter 9).
IF THEY DO ARREST HIM, WHAT THEN?
Once an abuser is released from jail following arraignment,
he typically devotes his efforts to achieving the following
goals: (1) persuading the woman to drop the charges and
not to testify if charges do proceed; and(2) receiving the
lightest possible consequence from the court.
One of my early clients, a large biker named Phil,
introduced me to many of the tactics that predominate
during this period. He joined my abuser group voluntarily
following an arrest for assaulting his girlfriend, Betty. He
was fairly unpleasant in the early weeks of his
participation, because of his arrogance and his “I don’t give
a damn about anything” posture. But he softened as the
weeks went by and began to make appropriate comments
to other group members about their abuse. Betty reported
that she was seeing a side of Phil that had disappeared for
several years: He was calmer, he was listening to her more
when she talked, and he was walking away from arguments
instead of frightening her. Even more important to her was
that he had stopped by her sister’s house one afternoon
and made an effort to begin mending fences after two years
of refusing to talk to her and insisting that she was a
“bitch.” And Betty was happy to hear that his attendance
at and participation in our program were good.
Two things had happened, however, that left Betty
confused. One day they had gotten into a tense argument,
which had been uncommon lately, and he had yelled at her:
“I have all these court hassles now because you decided to
go and call the fucking police on me.” This jab didn’t seem
to be consistent with the remorse he was showing on other
days. However, he apologized the next day and referred to
his own behavior as “backsliding.” A couple of weeks later,
in another tense exchange, he said to Betty in a low growl,
“If you go forward with testifying against me, you are
going to be really sorry.” Later he insisted that he had just
meant that she would feel guilty for treating him “like a
criminal,” but Betty continued to feel that he had meant
something more.
By the date of his hearing, Phil had put more than three
good months together in a row. Betty reported this change
in him to the judge, and Phil described his involvement in
our program, saying that he had accepted that he had a
problem he needed to work on. The judge was impressed
that Phil had gotten into counseling on his own initiative
without waiting for the court to mandate his attendance.
The charges were dismissed.
Phil and Betty walked down the courthouse steps
together before heading off toward their separate cars. As
they parted, Phil gave a smile that looked more like a sneer
and said, “Well, I guess that’s it for Mr. Nice Guy.” And
he meant it. He never set foot in his abuser group again and
overnight reverted to his habitual mistreatment of Betty.
After watching a steady trickle of clients in our program
follow in Phil’s footsteps, we finally adopted a policy of
not allowing men to join our program between an arrest and
the date of the court disposition. We didn’t want to be
another tool used by abusers to manipulate their partners
and escape legal consequences.
Women often berate themselves for not following
through with prosecution. A woman may say to me:
“What an idiot I was. I don’t know why the hell I believed
his promises. I should have gone ahead and testified. Now
look at the mess I’m in.” If you have had occasion to dump
on yourself in this fashion, stop for a moment and
consider: Why is it your fault that he is so persuasive, that
he knows so well how to muddle your mind, that he has
collected information over the years about your
vulnerabilities and knows how to play them? How are you
to blame for how manipulative he is? The reason it takes so
long to figure out an abuser is that he knows how to keep
himself hidden in constantly shifting shadows. If abusers
were so easy to figure out, there would be no abused
women.
In counties where abused women find a court system
that is well trained in abuse and sensitive to their
circumstances, and where victim advocates are actively
involved, 80 percent or more go forward with testifying. If
you can’t stand dealing with a system that doesn’t
understand your needs, that isn’t a shortcoming of yours.
Also, remember that your decision to drop a restraining
order or criminal charges doesn’t mean you can’t try again
to use legal protections in the future (although you may
encounter prejudice against you from the police or the
courts if you have started actions and dropped them in the
past).
THE C O URT HANDS DO WN A SENTENCE
My physically violent clients seem to have nine lives when
it comes to staying out of jail. Through dozens of
interactions I have had over the years with probation
officers, magistrates, prosecutors, and judges, it has become
clear to me that courts have been regrettably slow to free
themselves of the beliefs that any man is “bound to lose it
sooner or later if his wife pushes him far enough,” that
“alcohol is what really causes partner abuse,” or that
“women frequently exaggerate partner abuse out of
hysteria or vindictiveness.” These persistent attitudes can
dovetail with the abusive man’s native ability to lie
convincingly and elicit sympathy.
Sentences for the violence that men do to their wives or
girlfriends are shorter on average than those they receive for
assaults on strangers, even though partner violence causes
more serious injuries and deaths than male-on-male fights
do. Courts don’t want to send abusers to jail, because they
consider them a special class of offenders who deserve
unusual compassion and because they often accept victim-
blaming justifications for men’s violence.
Old attitudes die hard. A few years ago, a judge
approached me after a judicial training session I had given
and said, “All right, I understand about these men who beat
their partners black and blue, who punch them in the face
and put them in the hospital. But how about the guy who
just gives his wife a push or a shove once in a while? I can’t
treat him like he’s a batterer. You didn’t explain what
judges should do in those cases.” I attempted to explain
how shocking and intimidating a man’s shove can be to a
woman, but I could tell his mind was already closed.
I’ve seen judges who were worse than this one, who
seem angrier at the woman for reporting the violence than
they are at the man for perpetrating it. But I have worked
with others who look carefully at the evidence, listen
respectfully to all parties, and make a decision based on
fact instead of prejudice. In cases where the man is found
guilty, they speak to him in strong terms about the
seriousness of his offense, reject his excuses, and impose a
punishment that fits the crime.
I have spoken with judges who like to give an abuser a
strong verbal admonition instead of imposing some
sanctions, in the belief that a stern warning from a judge can
make an abuser realize that he has to stop. But in reality,
the man considers the judge’s lecture a joke if no sentence
comes with it. He puts on a chastised expression for the
court but then smiles all the way home, smug and
empowered. I see the emboldening effects of such court
dates on my clients.
I am not an advocate of long sentences for abusers,
however. Abusers spend much of their time in jail brooding
over their grievances against the abused women and
plotting their revenge. Men’s jails do not help them to
overcome their oppressive attitudes toward women; in fact,
they are among the more anti-female environments on the
planet. Yet courts are going to have to overcome their
reluctance to send abusers to jail if they ever want them to
sit up and take notice. A short jail sentence, combined with
a long postjail period of probation and participation in an
abuser program, can provide powerful motivation for an
abuser to deal with his problem. Jail time involving at least
a few weekends—so that the man can continue bringing in
income for his family—should be imposed on his first
conviction for any offense related to domestic abuse. Each
subsequent offense should lead to a longer sentence and a
higher fine than the previous one, following the principle of
“staircased” sentencing that is often applied to drunk
driving. Unfortunately, this type of approach is rare at
present.
An important part of the sentence for any man
convicted of domestic abuse should be an extended period
—not less than a year—of participation in a specialized
abuser program. The abuser program cannot be replaced by
psychotherapy or anger management, as those services are
not designed to address the range of behaviors that make up
abuse and the core attitudes that drive them (see Chapter
3). In Chapter 14, we will examine how a competent abuser
program works and how to evaluate the strengths and
weaknesses of a particular program in your area.
THE ABUSER O N PRO BATIO N
I used to supervise an excellent young abuse counselor
named Patrick. He was fiery and courageous, but both he
and the group clients were always aware of his youth—he
was twenty-three and looked about nineteen—and his
small size. We assumed that sooner or later one of the more
violent abusers would try to intimidate him. Sure enough,
one day when Patrick was laying down the law with a
client about his disruptive behavior in the group, the man
demanded that Patrick “step outside” so that they could
fight. His body posture demonstrated how much he
relished the opportunity to use his fists. Patrick politely
declined the offer, however, and told the abuser to leave the
room. The client considered his options and decided to
storm out without hitting anyone.
We reported the incident to the court and waited to see
how quickly this man would be jailed for threatening the
counselor at his court-mandated abuse program. Imagine
our astonishment when we heard from the chief probation
officer two weeks later that she had called the man in to
give him “some strong talk” and then had instructed him to
enroll in another abuser program. In other words, his
“consequence” was that he got out of completing our
program. I had a similar experience with the same court in a
case where we suspected that one of our clients was
abusing his prescription pain medication. We requested
permission to speak to the prescribing doctor, but the
client refused. His probation officer was soon ringing my
telephone and sputtering angrily that a client’s prescription
medication was none of our business. The probation officer
then proceeded to declare to me unabashedly that his pain
medication was prescribed by the same doctor. (No wonder
he didn’t want us examining the matter too closely.)
My clients have no problem figuring out whether or not
their probation officers consider domestic abuse a serious
crime. Each man tries out his excuses and justifications to
see how fertile the ground is; the more space the probation
officer gives him for whining and victim blaming, the less
strict he knows the supervision will be. The probation
officer’s attitude regarding domestic violence is, in turn,
largely a reflection of the tone set by the chief probation
officer, just as I have observed to be true in police
departments. When I work with courts that have pro-
victim probation departments, the majority of men they
refer cooperate with my program and complete all the
requirements. But when the sympathies of the probation
department lie primarily with the abuser—as seemed to be
true in the court described above—the men present
recurring behavior, attitude, and attendance problems, and I
have to keep kicking guys out of the program for
noncooperation. Why? Because they have already figured
out that getting terminated isn’t likely to lead to serious
consequences at that court, so they would rather not put
up with an abuser program that challenges them.
When an abuser finds that he can manipulate or bond
with his probation officer, he not only paints a twisted
picture of the abused woman but also employs his divide-
and-conquer strategy with respect to the abuser program.
“I know what I did was wrong,” he says, “and I really want
to work on myself. But over at the abuse group they don’t
help us change; they just tell us that we’re terrible people
and everything we say is wrong. They just hate men over
there, and they take it out on us.” The probation officer
then calls me to relay the man’s complaint. My response
has always been: “Come over some night and sit in on two
or three of our groups. You’ll see for yourself what we
offer.” One probation officer did in fact visit a few groups
and then started attending regularly once per month. He
caught on quickly to what a patient and educational
approach we actually take with abusers, and he became
impossible to manipulate after that.
The abuser’s distortions regarding the abuser program
follow the same lines of his thinking about his partner. If I
tell a loquacious client that he can’t dominate the entire
group discussion and needs to be quiet for a while, he tells
his probation officer, “The counselors say we can only
listen and we’re not allowed to talk at all.” If I set limits on
a man’s disruptiveness in the group, he turns in his seat,
drops his head like a victim, and says sarcastically, “Right,
I get it: We’re always wrong, and the women are always
right.” If I terminate a man from the program after three
warnings for inappropriate behavior, he says, “If we don’t
tell you exactly what you want to hear, you kick us out,
and you don’t give anyone a second chance.” His twisted
reports on our statements provide important glimpses into
how he discredits his partner at home—and why she may
feel so angry, frustrated, and ready to scream.
EFFO RTS TO BO ND
As the abuser encounters each new player in the legal
system, he tries to make a personal connection. With men
he relies on “male bonding,” making jokes about women or
seeking sympathy based on anti-female stereotypes. With
women he experiments with flattery and flirtatiousness, or
tries to learn private details of people’s lives so that he can
show concern with statements such as: “I heard your
daughter has been sick. How is she doing?” The unspoken
message running through these efforts is: “See, I’m not an
abuser, I’m just a likable, ordinary person like you, and I
want to be your friend.” My clients attempt to run the
same routines at the abuser program, so I come to know
them well.
USING THE LEGAL SYSTEM FO R HIS O WN
PURPO SES
Over the fifteen years I have worked with abusive men, I
have seen my clients become increasingly shrewd at getting
the police and the courts to work on their behalf. Abused
women are arrested much more commonly than when I
began, as abusers have learned to use their own injuries
from a fight to support claims of victimization. I find that
the more violent an abusive man is, the more likely he is to
come out of a fight with some injuries of his own, as his
terrified partner kicks, swings her arms, and scratches in
her efforts to get away from him. But some police take a
look at the abuser’s injuries and say: “Well, we’re going to
arrest her, because he’s got scratches.”
Abusers have also learned to rush to the court for
restraining orders before their partners get a chance to do so
and sometimes scoop up custody of their children in the
process. It would be difficult to find anyone more self-
satisfied than the man who repeatedly assaults his partner
verbally or physically and then has the pleasure of handing
her a court order that bars her from the residence. And of
course the shock to the woman of discovering that the
court has kicked her when she was already down can
propel her several more yards in the direction of resignation
and bitterness. But, fortunately, the story need not end
there for the abused woman.
SURVIVING THE LEGAL SYSTEM
Despite the confidence and superiority of abusers and the
regressive attitudes of some police and court officials that
still persist, tremendous progress has been made in the legal
system’s response to domestic abuse. Hundreds of
thousands of women per year succeed in obtaining orders
of protection from courts, and a large proportion of those
orders accomplish what the woman is seeking: restoration
of her safety and a desperately needed break from the
abuser. Many states now mandate the police to arrest
abusers in domestic-abuse cases, and district attorneys
often are diligent in pursuing convictions.
If you choose to use the police or courts for protection
—or if you are cast into the legal system because of a call
made by a neighbor or relative—here are some principles to
tuck away in your survival kit:
• Ask for help, ask for help, ask for help.
I can’t say it enough. Dealing with the police and courts
can leave you feeling isolated, afraid, and disempowered.
Some women decide, after getting a taste of this cold and
sometimes hostile system, that they will never reach out
for official assistance again. One antidote is to draw upon
every resource available to you. Is there a program for
abused women near you that provides advocates to
accompany women to court? Does the county employ
victim/witness advocates, and are they available at the
courthouse? Is there a friend or relative who could
accompany you to request a restraining order? Does your
police department have a specially trained domestic-
violence officer with whom you could discuss your case?
Remember, anyone who specializes in “domestic violence”
is there to help you deal with a scary or intimidating
partner, even if he has never hit you. Involve as many of
these people in your case as possible; emotional and
logistical support can make an immense difference.
• Cooperate with the prosecution unless it is too dangerous
for you to do so.
Multiple studies have demonstrated that abusers who are
prosecuted are more likely to stop their violence than those
who are not. If your partner suddenly seems serious about
changing, it is not a reason to drop legal action; on the
contrary, it is another reason to continue it. Court
involvement will help give him the structure and incentives
he needs to carry through with his good intentions.
Without that extra push, an abuser’s thoughts of change
almost always fade with time.
Some women say to me: “But if I go forward with
testifying, he is going to be furious, and then he’ll never be
willing to look at his problem.” This is a common
misconception: You cannot get an abuser to change by
begging or pleading. The only abusers who change are the
ones who become willing to accept the consequences of
their actions; if he is unrelentingly angry about prosecution,
you can be 100 percent sure that he wouldn’t have worked
on himself anyhow. You also may be concerned that a
criminal conviction will burden him with a humiliating
stigma and make it harder for him to find jobs in the future.
However, few employers do criminal record checks, and
even fewer turn down a man because of an offense related
to domestic abuse. As for the stigma, he needs it; he may
seem to have snapped out of his denial for the moment, but
you will be surprised by how quickly he leaps back into it
once the threat of court action has passed.
• Avoid dropping a restraining order.
Stay away from your partner until the court order expires,
even if you are missing him very much and he seems like a
completely different person. Courts unfortunately often
develop prejudices against women who seek restraining
orders and then drop them, just as police and prosecutors
can look negatively upon a woman who does not want to
go through with testifying. I understand the fear you may
have that he will do something extreme if you don’t back
off, the challenge of surviving without his financial support
(especially if you have children), the pressure you may be
getting from other people to give him another chance, and
numerous other weights on your shoulders. But courts
sometimes do not consider these issues and can be reluctant
to assist a woman the next time she reaches out for help.
Stick with it through the whole period unless your
situation becomes too dangerous.
• Don’t give up prematurely.
Most police departments have some officers who handle
domestic abuse cases well and some who don’t, just as
most courts have judges who hold abusers accountable and
others who let them skate. Just because things went badly
this time doesn’t mean they always will. Some abusers get
sick of dealing with the legal system after awhile, and some
public officials decide to finally take action if a case erupts
in front of them enough times.
There are exceptions to what I have just said, however.
You may know for a fact that in your community legal
recourse is stacked against you. If the abuser is on the
police force or has close buddies who are, calling 911 can
make things worse rather than better. If the abuser is a
judge—and I have talked to a few women who were in this
sad circumstance—relief may not be available at the
courthouse. There is a point at which it does make sense to
scrap the legal system and start considering what other
strategies you might try. Begin always with a call to an
abuse hotline.
• Advocate for yourself.
If the abuser is on probation, ask for a face-to-face meeting
with the probation officer; it will make it harder for your
partner to paint a distorted picture of you and may make
the probation officer feel responsible for your safety. If the
prosecutor is considering a plea bargain, demand to be
included in the process of negotiation, so that your needs
are considered before any deal is made. If the abuser is
mandated to attend an abuser program, communicate
frequently with the abuser program and make sure that
they are on your side, not his. (Chapter 14 offers guidelines
for determining whether or not a particular abuser program
is a good one.)
THE LEGAL SYST EM cannot solve the problem of abuse
by itself, but, when it is working properly it can be an
important ally in defending your rights. The better that you
and anyone attempting to help you understand the abuser’s
tricks for turning the legal process to his advantage, the
better you can pressure the system to hold him
accountable.
KEY PO INTS TO REMEMBER
Abusers rarely change if they aren’t forced
to suffer any consequences. A man should
be required to complete an abuser program
in conjunction with, not instead of, legal
consequences.
Many abusers see the legal system as
another opportunity for manipulation.
Whether or not he succeeds in that
approach will depend largely on how well
trained the crucial public officials are on the
subject of abuse—and on how many of
them think as he does.
A woman who wants the legal system to
help protect her rights needs to seek out
assistance for herself and to be prepared to
advocate for her own needs and interests.
Her first call should be to a program for
abused women.
The legal system will tend not to contribute
well to your safety unless you use it in
conjunction with other self-protective steps
(see “Safety Planning” in Chapter 9).
Any form of physical aggression, including
a push, poke, shove, or threat, is illegal in
most states and provinces. You do not need
to wait until you are severely injured to
seek police assistance.
There is no such thing as a “minor”
violation of a law or a court order by an
abusive man. If the legal system does not
hold him accountable, he will escalate to
more serious violations under the
assumption that the system does not mean
what it says.
PART IV
Changing the Abusive Man
13
The Making of an Abusive Man
We pass a magazine rack, and he points at the
cover of Cosmo and says, “Why don’t you look
like that?”
His favorite song is that Guns N’ Roses one: “I
used to love her, but I had to kill her.” He puts it
on all the time.
His dad treats his mom the same way he treats
me.
You should see the way he and his buddies talk
about women, like they’re pieces of meat.
Once upon a time, there was a boy who grew up with
a happy dream. He was told when he was very
young—as soon as he was old enough to understand
anything, really—that a beautiful piece of land out on
the edge of town was in trust for him. When he was
grown up, it would be his very own and was sure to
bring him great contentment. His family and other
relatives often described the land to him in terms that
made it sound like a fairy world, paradise on earth.
They did not tell him precisely when it would be his
but implied that it would be when he was around age
sixteen or twenty.
In his mid-teens, the boy began to visit the
property and take walks on it, dreaming of owning it.
Two or three years later, he felt the time had come to
take it on. However, by then he had noticed some
disturbing things: From time to time, he would
observe people hiking or picnicking on his acres, and
when he told them not to come there without his
permission, they refused to leave and insisted that
the land was public! When he questioned his relatives
about this, they reassured him that there was no
claim to the land but his.
In his late adolescence and early twenties, he
became increasingly frustrated about the failure of the
townspeople to respect his ownership. He first tried
to manage the problem through compromise. He set
aside a small section of the property as a public
picnic area and even spent his own money to put up
some tables. On the remainder of the land he put up
“No Trespassing” signs and expected people to stay
off. But, to his amazement, town residents showed
no signs of gratitude for his concession; instead they
continued to help themselves to the enjoyment of the
full area.
The boy finally could tolerate the intrusions on his
birthright no longer. He began screaming and swearing
at people who trespassed and in this way succeeded
in driving many of them away. The few who were
not cowed by him became targets of his physical
assaults. And when even his aggression did not
completely clear the area, he bought a gun and began
firing at people just to frighten them, not actually to
shoot them. The townspeople came to the conclusion
that the young man was insane.
One particularly courageous local resident decided
to spend a day searching through the town real estate
records and was able to establish what a number of
people had suspected all along: The property was
indeed public. The claim made by the boy’s family
on his behalf was the product of legend and
misconception, without any basis in the documentary
record.
When the boy was confronted with this evidence,
his ire only grew. He was convinced that the
townspeople had conspired to alter the records and
that they were out to deprive him of his most
cherished dream. For several years after, his behavior
remained erratic; at times it seemed that he had
accepted having been misled during his childhood, but
then he would erupt again in efforts to regain control
of the land through lawsuits, creating booby traps on
the land to injure visitors and employing any other
strategy he could think of. His relatives encouraged
him to maintain his belligerence, telling him, “Don’t
let them take away what is yours.” Years went by
before he was able to accept the fact that his dream
would never be realized and that he would have to
learn to share the land. Over that period he went
through a painful, though ultimately freeing, process
of gradually accepting how badly misled he had been
and how destructive his behavior had been as a result.
IN ORDER TO know how to foster change in abusive men,
individuals and communities need to understand not only
how abusive thinking works, which has been my focus so
far, but also where it comes from. Overcoming the scourge
of relationship abuse demands attention to the root causes
of the problem.
The story I have just told is a metaphor for the
childhood social process that produces an abuser. As I have
explained in earlier chapters, abusiveness has little to do
with psychological problems and everything to do with
values and beliefs. Where do a boy’s values about partner
relationships come from? The sources are many. The most
important ones include the family he grows up in, his
neighborhood, the television he watches and books he
reads, jokes he hears, messages that he receives from the
toys he is given, and his most influential adult role models.
His role models are important not just for which behaviors
they exhibit to the boy but also for which values they teach
him in words and what expectations they instill in him for
the future. In sum, a boy’s values develop from the full
range of his experiences within his culture.
Each boy’s socialization is unique. Even two siblings
close in age do not learn identical values. Culture is thus
transmitted on a continuum. In a culture that is fairly
religious, for example, some children will grow up to be
devout believers; others will reject the faith completely;
and most will fall in with the average level of religious
observance for their community. Where a child will land on
this continuum partly depends on how strong a set of
messages he or she receives from the social environment
and partly on his or her personal predispositions. The
family rebel, for example, might become an atheist, while
the child who is most focused on pleasing the parents
might become even more religious than they are.
HOW A BO Y LEARNS ABUSE
Children begin at a very young age—certainly by the time
they are three and probably sooner—to absorb the rules
and traditions of their culture. This learning continues
throughout their childhood and adolescence. The family in
which children grow up is usually the strongest influence,
at least for their first few years, but it is only one among
many. Children’s sense of proper and improper ways to
behave, their moral perceptions of right and wrong, and
their beliefs about sex roles are brought to them by
television and videos, popular songs, children’s books, and
jokes. They observe behaviors that are modeled by friends
and relatives, including adults to whom they are close.
They watch to see which behaviors get rewarded—by
making people popular, for example—as opposed to those
that are condemned. By age four or five they start to
express curiosity about laws and police, both of which
play an important role in shaping their moral sense. During
their adolescence, young people have increasing access to
the wider culture, with less and less filtering by adults, and
are subject to the rapidly growing influence of their peers.
Even after reaching adulthood, people continue to read the
social messages that surround them in the culture and to
adjust their values and beliefs in response to what is
socially acceptable.
QUESTION 18:
WHERE DID HE LEARN TO BE THAT
WAY?
Let’s look now at how society influences the
development of a boy or a young man’s attitude toward
abuse. Some of what I describe here dates back many
hundreds of years, while other messages are more recent
arrivals on the cultural scene. I give examples from child-
oriented culture, such as children’s books and movies, and
others from adult culture, which trickle down to children
from the models they observe of adult behavior and from
what adults tell them directly about right and wrong.
• Laws and the legal system have colluded with the abuse of
women.
Until well into the 1800s, it was expressly legal for a man
in the English-speaking world to physically abuse his wife.
She had no recourse to the police or the courts, and, if she
chose to divorce him because of his abusiveness, he was
legally entitled to custody of their children. In the late
nineteenth century some legal consequences were finally
legislated for some of the most extreme beatings of women,
but they were rarely enforced until the 1970s and were not
enforced consistently at all until the 1990s! For hundreds
and perhaps thousands of years the domestic assault of
women has been considered a necessary tool for a man to
maintain order and discipline in his home, to make sure that
his superior intelligence rules, and to avoid the
mushrooming of the hysterical, short-sighted, and naive
qualities that men widely attribute to women. It was only
with the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and
especially with the work of those activists focusing
specifically on battering and sexual assault, that the
intimate oppression of women began to be taken seriously
as a crime.
This legal history plays an important role in shaping
today’s cultural views among males—and females—about
the abuse of women. It is likely to take a number of
generations to overcome the accumulated impact of
hundreds of years of destructive social attitudes. The
culture that shaped these laws, and was in turn shaped by
them, is reflected in people’s continued willingness to
blame women for “provoking” abuse, to feel sorry for men
who face legal consequences for intimate violence, and to be
highly skeptical of women’s reports of abuse. These are all
attitudes that children can absorb from the behaviors and
comments of the adults around them.
Children also notice responses by the legal system. A
boy who grows up in a home where his father assaults his
mother may observe over the years that his father never
seems to get in any serious trouble, indicating to him that
his father’s behavior is not viewed as wrong by the
community. (In fact, any male who is older than ten or
fifteen years of age today is unlikely to have ever seen his
father prosecuted for domestic violence, since such
prosecution was uncommon before 1990). When a woman
asks me, “Why does a physically abusive man believe he
can get away with it?”, I have to answer that until very
recently he could, and even now legal consequences are less
serious for men who assault partners than for those who
assault strangers. This historical condoning of the physical
abuse of women has also played a critical role in making it
difficult to address and overcome emotional abuse, as it has
created an atmosphere of impunity regarding men’s
conduct in partner relationships.
• Religious beliefs have often condoned the abuse of women.
The most influential religious scriptures in the world today,
including the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, and major
Buddhist and Hindu writings, explicitly instruct women to
submit to male domination. Genesis, for example, includes
the following passage: “Unto the woman He said, I will
greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow
thou shalt bring forth children: and thy desire shall be to
thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” I have had
numerous clients over the years who explicitly rely on
quotations from scripture to justify their abuse of their
partners. Similarly, religious prohibitions against divorce
have entrapped women in abusive marriages. The book
When Love Goes Wrong (see “Resources”), published in
1985, describes a study of conservative Protestant clergy
that reported that 21 percent said that no amount of abuse
would justify a woman’s leaving her husband, and 26
percent agreed with the statement “a wife should submit to
her husband and trust that God would honor her action by
either stopping the abuse or giving her the strength to
endure it.”
Children who are raised in a faith tradition are
commonly taught that the rules of their religion are the
ultimate guide to right and wrong, superior even to civil
law. A boy’s early religious training can be formative in the
development of his image of appropriate behaviors in
intimate relationships, the status of women, and the
entitlements of men. If the more destructive aspects of his
religious background are the ones that are given the most
emphasis in his family or community, some dangerous
seeds may have been sown.
• Popular performers both reflect and shape social
attitudes.
The white rapper Eminem won a Grammy Award while I
was writing this book. At the time of his award, one of his
newest popular songs was “Kim,” the name of Eminem’s
wife. The song begins with the singer putting his baby
daughter to bed and then preparing to murder his wife for
being with another man. He tells his wife, “If you move I’ll
beat the shit out of you,” and informs her that he has
already murdered their four-year-old son. He then tells his
wife he is going to drive away with her in the car, leaving
the baby at home alone, and then will bring her home dead
in the trunk. Kim’s voice (as performed by Eminem) is
audible off and on throughout the song, screaming with
terror. At times she pleads with him not to hurt her. He
describes to her how he is going to make it look as if she is
the one who killed their son and that he killed her in self-
defense, so that he’ll get away with it. Kim screams for
help, then is audibly choked to death, as Eminem screams,
“Bleed, bitch, bleed! Bleed!” The murder is followed by the
sound of a body being dragged across dry leaves, thrown
into the trunk of a car, and closed in.
Even more horrible than Eminem’s decision to record
this song glorifying the murder of a woman and child is the
fact that it did not stop him from receiving a Grammy.
What is a teen boy or a young man to conclude about our
culture from this award? I believe I can safely say that a
singer who openly promoted the killing of Jews, or blacks,
or people in wheelchairs would be considered ineligible for
a Grammy. But not so, unfortunately, for encouraging the
brutal and premeditated murder of one’s wife and child,
complete with a plan for how to escape consequences for
it.
And, unfortunately, Eminem has plenty of company.
The extremely popular Guns ’n’ Roses recorded a song
that goes: “I used to love her But I had to kill her I had to
put her six feet under / And I can still hear her complain.”
The singer (Axl Rose) goes on to sing that he knew he
would miss her so he buried her in the backyard. This song
supports a common attitude among physical abusers that
women’s complaints are what provoke men to violence.
Another outstanding example is the comedian Andrew Dice
Clay, whose repertoire of “jokes” about the beating and
sexual assault of females has filled performance halls across
the country. Fans of these kinds of performers have been
known to state defensively, “Come on, it’s just humor.”
But humor is actually one of the powerful ways a culture
passes on its values. If a man is already inclined toward
abuse because of his earlier training or experience, he can
find validation in such performances and distance himself
even further from empathy for his partners. In one abuse
case that I was involved in, the man used to play the above
Guns ’n’ Roses song on the stereo repeatedly and tell his
wife that this was what was going to happen to her,
laughing about it. But in the context of verbal assault and
physical fear that he created, what was a joke to him was a
blood-curdling threat to his partner.
• Popular plays and movies romanticize abuse of women.
Several years ago I saw the play Frankie and Johnny Got
Married in Boston. The story line goes like this: Johnny is
in love with Frankie and knows that she is the right woman
for him. One evening he comes to her apartment to express
his love and convince her to get involved with him. She is
not interested, and tells him so. Johnny then begins a
relentless pressure campaign that lasts for the remainder of
the play. He criticizes her and puts her down, telling her
that her fears of intimacy and commitment are the reasons
why she avoids being with him. He lets her know that,
whatever knowledge she may have about who she is and
what she needs, his judgment is better. Frankie remains
unimpressed.
So Johnny’s coercion escalates. At one point Frankie,
who is exhausted after hours of this pressure, attempts to
go to sleep, but Johnny blocks her path to the bedroom,
grabbing her arms. She then goes to the kitchen and makes
herself a sandwich, figuring that if she can’t sleep she might
at least eat. It is not to be, however, because Johnny grabs
the plate away from her and heaves it into the sink,
sandwich and all.
Exasperated, Frankie orders Johnny to leave her
apartment. He refuses. She threatens to call the police to
remove him, to which he replies with words to the effect
of: “Go ahead, bring them over. In an hour they will have
released me, and I’ll be back on your fire escape. Sooner or
later you’re going to have to deal with me.”
So now that Frankie has discovered that she can’t
succeed in having any of her rights respected at all, what
happens next? Lo and behold, she has an epiphany! A life-
changing breakthrough! In a flash, she overcomes her fear of
deep connection—it turns out Johnny was right about her
fear of intimacy as well as everything else—and she falls
enraptured into his arms. Frankie and Johnny are in love.
The curtain falls. (Presumably Frankie is now permitted to
eat and sleep, though we have no way to say for sure.)
The most astounding part of the evening was still to
come, however. To my amazement, the roughly two
hundred and fifty well-educated, economically privileged
adults who were packed into their Huntington Theater
Company seats rose in a roar of delighted applause, smiling
from ear to ear. Not a person in the auditorium remained
seated—except me. I had been working with abusers for
over five years at this point and knew perfectly well what
we had been witnessing. No one else seemed to notice
anything amiss in the physical grabbing, sleep and food
deprivation, threats, superiority, and other forms of
coercion we had just watched. Was Frankie reluctant to be
with Johnny because she feared intimacy? Or could it
perhaps have been because he was arrogant, coercive, and
physically violent? Who wouldn’t fear intimacy with this
bully? One ought to.
The messages to young men, intentional or not, are that
coercion and even a degree of physical violence and
intimidation are compatible with deep love and that a man
can know better than a woman what is good for her. The
attitudes that drive the behavior of many of my clients
were woven throughout this play. And if a young boy
doesn’t see this play—most of the audience was adult—he
nonetheless is influenced by the attitudes that his parents
bring home with them from the theater.
• A boy’s early training about sex roles and about
relationships can feed abuse.
At least until quite recently, a boy has tended to learn from
the most tender age that when he reaches young adulthood
he will have a wife or girlfriend who will do everything for
him and make him a happy man. His partner will belong to
him. Her top responsibility will be to provide love and
nurturing, while his key contribution will be to fill the role
of “the brains of the operation,” using his wisdom and
strength to guide the family. Tightly interwoven with these
expectations are other messages he is likely to receive about
females. He may learn that boys are superior to girls,
particularly if he grows up around men who exhibit that
attitude. (In many families, there is no worse insult you can
give to a boy than to say, “You’re acting like a girl.”) When
he is old enough to know about sex, he may learn that the
most valuable thing about females is their capacity to give
sexual pleasure to males. Depending on what his father or
stepfather is like, what kinds of peers he chooses in his
teen years, or what kinds of music he listens to, he may
learn that, when a female partner does not defer to him, he
can use verbal degradation or even physical intimidation to
punish her and ensure better cooperation in the future.
Studies have found that nearly half of abusive men grow
up in homes where their father or stepfather is an abuser.
Home is a critical learning ground for values and sex-role
expectations. Boys are at risk to absorb the abuser’s
attitude through his words and actions (see Chapter 10).
Even if the dad never explicitly says that females are
inferior, for example, or that the man should have the last
word in an argument, his behavior can get the message
across.
The sex-role expectations to which boys and men have
historically been subjected are captured powerfully by an
article called “The Good Wife’s Guide,” from a 1955 issue
of Housekeeping Monthly that includes such instructions as
“Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his
judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the
house and as such will always exercise his will with
fairness and truthfulness,” and “Don’t complain if he’s late
home for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this
minor compared to what he might have gone through that
day.” The wife is further encouraged to make sure the
children are quiet when he gets home, to keep the house
perfectly orderly and clean, and not to complain if her
husband goes out for evening entertainment without her,
because she needs to “understand his world of strain and
pressure.” Our society’s sex-role attitudes have certainly
progressed greatly over the past fifty years, yet the
expectations laid out in this article are precisely the ones I
find in many of my abusive clients to this day; cultural
values that run this deep take generations to unearth and
dispose of.
• Some messages in media oriented toward children and
teens support abuse by men.
In a book in the popular Berenstain Bears series for
children called Trouble with Homework, both the mother
and the children cower when Father becomes angry. (It’s
on the cover.) At one point he knocks over a chair and
clenches his fists above his head. At the end of the story,
the children have pleased Dad by doing what he wanted,
and Mom smiles happily to see them cuddled up with Dad
on the couch. In Bedtime for Francis, by Russel Hoban, the
father threatens Francis that he will spank her if she does
not stop asking for help with her fear of the dark, and she
falls asleep alone with the fear of how the spanking would
hurt.
Fairy tales also sometimes support the abusive
mentality. In Beauty and the Beast, for example, the beast is
cruel to the woman and isolates her from the world, but she
loves him anyhow, and her love ultimately transforms him
into a good man—the precise myth that keeps some
women entrapped in their abusive relationships. In The
Little Mermaid, Ariel chooses to give up her voice—
literally—in order to live on land so that she can marry the
man she loves. A woman with no voice is the dream girl of
many abusive men.
Even movies that are aimed at children and teens
commonly include messages that condone abuse of females.
In a recent Jim Carrey film, for example, a man sits down in
a park next to a strange woman who is nursing her baby
and then suddenly pushes the baby away from the woman
and begins to suck her breast himself. This sexual assault is
presented as humorous.
Music videos and computer games have become the
predominant sources of cultural training for children and
teenagers. In the world of M TV and VH1, many of the sex-
role messages are worse than ever, with males aggressive
and in control and the value of females restricted to their
sexual allure. As was exposed in a recent documentary
broadcast on M TV, pornographers are frequently being
hired to make music videos, which predictably leads to
portrayals of women that make them look like they exist
for men to use.
Some music videos show abuse explicitly. In one, for
example, a man stalks a woman throughout the song as she
repeatedly tries to escape him, including one part in which
she dives into a car to get away and he pulls open another
door and jumps in after her. At the end of the video, she
gives up and falls in love with him. The message thus is not
only that stalking proves how much he loves her but also
that the stalker was actually doing what was best for her.
Women in music videos never mean “no” when they say it,
and when they run away, they really want to be chased and
caught. What could more perfectly capture the abusive
mentality?
• Pornographic videos, magazines, and web sites are
learning grounds.
As a boy enters his teen years, he is likely to encounter
another powerful shaper of his outlook on females and how
to treat them: pornography. Most pornographic movies,
magazines, and web sites can function as training manuals
for abusers, whether they intend to or not, teaching that
women are unworthy of respect and valuable only as sex
objects for men. The Internet has made access to
pornography much easier—and free—for teenage boys; a
recent study found, for example, that one in four teenage
boys has experienced exposure to unwanted sexual
material, most commonly through Internet solicitations. A
great deal of mainstream pornographic material—not just
so-called “hard core”—contains stories and images showing
the abuse of both women and children as sexy, sometimes
including presentations of rape as erotic. The harm to teens
from looking at pornography has little to do with its sexual
explicitness and everything to do with the attitudes it
teaches toward women, relationships, sexual assault, and
abuse. Spend some time looking at pornography yourself—
if you can stand it—and think about the messages it is
sending to young people and especially to boys.
I learned of a recent case in an upper-class suburb
involving a group of middle school–aged boys who were in
the habit of spending hours each day after school watching
pornography on their computers. One day they went from
this activity to a party where they succeeded in pressuring
several girls—with an average age of twelve—into
performing group oral sex on them, inspired by something
they had watched at a web site. Parents found out about
what happened and a scandal ensued, but the community
still did not seem to recognize the critical influence of the
images to which the boys were being exposed.
Boys often learn that they are not responsible for their
actions.
Boys’ aggressiveness is increasingly being treated as a
medical problem, particularly in schools, a trend that has
led to the diagnosing and medicating of boys whose
problem may really be that they have been traumatized and
influenced by exposure to violence and abuse at home.
Treating these boys as though they have a chemical
problem not only overlooks the distress they are in but
also reinforces their belief that they are “out of control” or
“sick,” rather than helping them to recognize that they are
making bad choices based on destructive values. I have
sometimes heard adults telling girls that they should be
flattered by boys’ invasive or aggressive behavior “because
it means they really like you,” an approach that prepares
both boys and girls to confuse love with abuse and
socializes girls to feel helpless.
In most media coverage of bullying and school violence,
including highly publicized school murders such as
Columbine, reporters have overlooked the gender issues.
Headlines have described these events as “kids killing
kids,” when close to 100 percent of them have involved
boys killing kids. In some cases it has been revealed that the
killings were related to boys’ hostility toward females,
including one case in which the two boys who went on a
murderous rampage said afterward that they had done it
because they were angry that their girlfriends had broken
up with them. But the urgent need to confront the anti-
female attitudes among these boys was never mentioned as
a strategy for preventing future school violence.
• When culture and home experience dovetail, each
reinforces the other.
If a boy grows up in a home where his mother is abused,
hearing a song like Eminem’s “Kim” could leave a deep
imprint on him. He may well feel that society is giving its
public stamp of approval to the mistreatment of women he
has witnessed at home. The likelihood that he will blame
his mother for what happens to her and begin to copy the
abuser’s behavior increases with each pro-abuse message he
absorbs from his surroundings. My counseling experience
persuades me that the men who are most likely to grow up
to abuse women are probably those who grow up with an
abuser as an important role model and who also get
especially heavy doses of destructive cultural training. But
also be aware: Half or more of my clients do not come from
homes in which a man modeled abuse of women. The
cultural influences I have discussed above are sufficient in
themselves to prepare a boy to become an abusive man. It
is therefore essential to teach boys to respect women and
think critically about the societal messages to which they
are exposed.
Many sons of abused women whom I have known,
including police officers, writers, therapists, and activists,
have dedicated their lives to opposing the abuse of women.
The example set by these men shows that a boy’s family
influences are only the beginning of the story and that he
can make the choice to channel his childhood distress into
constructive action—if he learns about alternative ways of
thinking and acting.
LET’S RET URN NOW to our growing boy. From a
combination of different cultural influences, he develops an
image of his future, which he carries within him. He
pictures a woman who is beautiful, alluring, and focused
entirely on meeting his needs—one who has no needs of
her own that might require sacrifice or effort on his part.
She will belong to him and cater to him, and he will be free
to disrespect her when he sees fit. In his mind this picture
may illustrate the word partner, but a more accurate word
for the image he is developing might be servant.
When this boy gets involved in actual—as opposed to
imagined—dating, especially as he reaches an age where his
relationships become more serious, his childhood fantasy
life collides with the real-life young woman he is seeing.
She defies him on occasion. She has other people in her life
who are important to her rather than making him her
exclusive focus. She demands from time to time that he take
an interest in her as a person. She doesn’t always accept
his opinions as accurate and superior to hers. She may even
attempt at some point to break up with him, as if she were
not his personal possession. The boy doesn’t believe that
he is demanding anything unreasonable; he seeks only what
he considers his due. In fact, our young man feels like he
gives his girlfriend more freedom than a lot of other guys
do, just as the boy in our opening story felt generous for
providing a public picnic area on “his” land. And, like that
boy’s reaction to the “trespassers,” he becomes
increasingly frustrated, erratic, and coercive as he tries to
regain control over his partner. His first sexual experiences
are likely to be a result of his pressuring a girl steadily until
she gives in, so that sexual coercion becomes one of his
earliest relationship habits. He may even start to appear
mentally ill, as did the young man who began firing at
hikers, but in fact his behavior is largely logical and rational,
given what his key social influences have led him to believe.
Above all, he feels that his rights are the ones being denied
—which is precisely the attitude of almost all of my clients
when they begin my program. The abusive man feels
cheated, ripped off, and wronged, because his sense of
entitlement is so badly distorting his perceptions of right
and wrong.
In sum, an abuser can be thought of not as a man who is
a “deviant,” but rather as one who learned his society’s
lessons too well, swallowing them whole. He followed too
carefully the signposts his culture put out for him marking
the path to manhood—at least with respect to
relationships with women.
THE C ULTURAL EXC USE
My abusive clients sometimes become aware of these
ways in which society has shaped their values and, sticking
closely to their long-standing abusive habits, seize this
insight as a new excuse. Instead of saying “I was drunk “or
“I was abused as a child,” they rise to a new level of
sophistication in escaping responsibility, declaring, “I did it
because I learned entitled expectations and the devaluing of
females.” I respond by telling the client that he is putting
old wine in a new bottle. “The number-one lesson you
seem to have learned,” I say, “is how to make excuses for
abusing women. And I see that you’re still practicing it.”
Abusive men do need to learn about social influences, but
not in a way that gives them yet another means of letting
themselves off the hook.
ABUSE AS A FO RM O F OPPRESSIO N
A home where a woman is abused is a small-scale model of
much larger oppressive systems that work in remarkably
similar ways. Many of the excuses an abusive man uses for
verbally tearing his partner to shreds are the same ones that
a power-mad boss uses for humiliating his or her
employees. The abusive man’s ability to convince himself
that his domination of you is for your own good is
paralleled by the dictator who says, “People in this
country are too primitive for democracy.” The divide-and-
conquer strategies used by abusers are reminiscent of a
corporate head who tries to break the labor union by giving
certain groups of workers favored treatment. The making of
an abuser is thus not necessarily restricted to the specific
values his society teaches him about men’s relationships
with women; without realizing it he may also apply
attitudes and tactics from other forms of oppression that
he has been exposed to as a boy or as a young adult and
that he has learned to justify or even admire.
If you look at any oppressive organization or system,
from a racist country club up to a military government, you
will find most of the same behaviors and justifications by
the powerful that I have described in this book. The tactics
of control, the intimidation of victims who try to protest,
the undermining of efforts at independence, the negative
distortions about the victims in order to cast blame upon
them, the careful cultivation of the public image of the
oppressors—all are present, along with many other
parallels. The people in power generally tell lies while
simultaneously working hard to silence the voices of the
people who are being dominated and to stop them from
thinking, just as the abusive man strives to do. And the
bottom line is the same: Oppressive systems stay in
existence because the people in power enjoy the luxury of
their position and become unwilling to give up the
privileges they win through taking advantage of other
people and keeping them down. In short, the abusive
mentality is the mentality of oppression.
The connection among different kinds of power abuses
can add greatly to the stress experienced by an abused
woman. If you already face discrimination as a woman of
color or if you are a low-income woman or a lesbian, you
may feel overwhelmed at times by how similar the control
and abuse from your partner feel to other forms of
oppression you have endured. Some abusive men even
deliberately take advantage of their partner’s social
vulnerabilities. I have had several clients, for example,
whose partners are undocumented immigrants whom they
have threatened to have deported if the women ever
disclose the abuse. In some geographical areas you can find
supportive services for specific groups of abused women,
such as immigrants or lesbians, or locate agencies where
there are staff people from your background who
understand the additional challenges you face. (See
“Resources.”)
WHEN WE ST EP BACK and gaze upon the broad
panorama of social influences on a boy’s development, we
can see that it’s really no great wonder that he may learn
the patterns of abuse. What he isn’t taught by the cultural
messages around him that specifically support the abuse of
women he can learn from the tactics of other abusers of
power and from the blaming of other victims. In fact, the
greater surprise is that so many boys do not grow up to
abuse women. There must not be anything inherently
abusive or power-hungry about men, or it would be
impossible for so many to refuse to follow the path where
their cultural training is propelling them. One of the best-
known male crusaders against the abuse of women, a man
with whom I have had the good fortune to work, grew up
in a home where his mother was physically beaten. He
could have modeled himself after his father, but he didn’t.
He chose instead to think critically about his experience
and take the opposite road. M any of the influential leaders
of the movement against the abuse of women in the United
States, Canada, and other countries are male, including men
who have mentored me in my work.
The oppressive mentality can be taken apart and
replaced with a new consciousness. The composer of
“Amazing Grace,” you may have heard, was a slave trader
who repented of his cruelty and became an abolitionist.
Abusive men can learn respect and equality—if we insist
that they do so. But they won’t make those changes unless
they are subjected to tremendous pressure, because their
cultural values as well as their privileges are pushing them
so hard to stay the same.
There has never been a better time than the present to
apply that pressure, to demand that abusers accept
responsibility for the destruction they cause. We live in a
period of mounting international pressure for the respect of
human rights for everyone, of insistence on the recognition
of the worth and dignity of each person, male or female,
young or old, wealthy or poor, and of whatever color. The
current context is probably the most hopeful one there has
ever been for putting an end to the abuse of women, and to
the range of abuses of power that follow its pattern.
Resistance never disappears; it waits in the shadows,
sometimes for many years, and then eventually sprouts
again. You may have gone through dark times when you
felt, “I just can’t fight this anymore, I give up,” yet you
rebound after a while to try again to recover your rights.
And one day you will succeed.
KEY PO INTS TO REMEMBER
An abuser is not born; he is made.
In order to bring about change in an abuser,
we have to reshape his attitude toward
power and exploitation.
Abusive behavior is reinforced by multiple
societal messages, some of which are
specific to the abuse of women and some of
which reflect the overall culture of
oppression.
Your courageous resistance to partner
abuse—and you have stood up for yourself
(and your children) in many ways, whether
you realize it or not—is a gift to everyone,
because all forms of abuse are intertwined.
14
The Process of Change
Since he started going to therapy, he’s gotten
more self-centered than ever.
I think this time he’s really sorry.
He’s usually very closed off to his feelings, so it
gives me hope that he’s finally opening up a
little.
Our couples counselor says we both have to be
willing to change.
Do you think he can change? I’m not sure how
long I should wait around to see whether he will
or not.
MY FIFTEEN YEARS OF WORKING day in and day out
with abusive men have left me certain of one thing: There
are no shortcuts to change, no magical overnight
transformations, no easy ways out. Change is difficult,
uncomfortable work. M y job as a counselor is to dive into
the elaborate tangle that makes up an abuser’s thinking and
assist the man to untie the knots. The project is not
hopeless—if the man is willing to work hard—but it is
complex and painstaking. For him, remaining abusive is in
many ways easier than stepping out of his pattern. Yet
there are some men who decide to dig down inside of
themselves, root out the values that drive their abusive
behavior, and develop a truly new way of interacting with a
female partner. The challenge for an abused woman is to
learn how to tell whether her partner is serious about
overcoming his abusiveness.
The first challenge with an abusive man is to motivate
him to work on himself. Because he becomes attached to
the many rewards that his controlling and intimidating
behaviors bring him, he is highly reluctant to make
significant changes in his way of operating in a relationship.
This reluctance cannot be overcome through gentle
persuasion, pleading, or cajoling by the woman. I am sorry
to say that I have never once seen such approaches
succeed. The men who make significant progress in my
program are the ones who know that their partners will
definitely leave them unless they change, and the ones on
probation who have a tough probation officer who
demands that they really confront their abusiveness. In
other words, the initial impetus to change is always
extrinsic rather than self-motivated. Even when a man does
feel genuinely sorry for the ways his behavior has hurt his
partner, I have never seen his remorse alone suffice to get
him to become a serious client. After a few months of deep
work in the program, some men do start to develop
intrinsic reasons for change, such as starting to feel real
empathy for their partners’ feelings, developing awareness
of how their behavior has been harming their children, or
even sometimes realizing that they themselves enjoy life
more when they aren’t abusive, despite all the privileges of
abuse they have to give up. But it takes a long time for an
abusive man to get to that point.
As I discussed in the Introduction, the majority of
abusive men do not make deep and lasting changes even in a
high-quality abuser program. However, if even a minority
become nonabusive, or at least significantly less abusive,
the job is worth doing. At least as important is that the
program can help the abused woman develop clarity about
her abuser’s patterns and manipulations and can share
insights with her. For example, an abusive man’s
underlying attitudes tend to leap out of him in the heat of
debates and confrontations in his group, and the counselor
can then assist the woman in identifying the thinking that is
driving his behavior. Follow-up surveys by abuser
programs have found that the support that the counselors
give to her tends to be the aspect of the program that the
woman finds most valuable. (These surveys indicate that
an abuser program that is not focused on supporting the
abused woman and that does not consider serving her to be
its primary responsibility is severely limiting what it can
accomplish and may even be contributing to her
difficulties.) For an abusive man to make genuine progress
he needs to go through a complex and critical set of steps.
To give my clients a road map of the process of change, I
tell them the following story: There once was a man whose
neighbors had a large and beautiful maple tree growing
behind their house. It gave shade in the hot summers,
turned stunning colors of fire in the fall as it dropped its
leaves, and stood against the winter snow as a magnificent
wooden sculpture. But the man hated his neighbors’ tree,
because the shade that it cast into his yard made his grass
grow poorly and stunted his vegetable garden, which was
his passion. He pressured the neighbors repeatedly to
either cut the tree down or prune it drastically, and their
response was always the same: “You are free to cut any
branches that stick out over your property, but beyond
that we are going to leave the tree alone, because it is
beautiful and we love it. We are sorry about the shade it
casts on your side, but that is what trees do.”
One summer the neighbors went away on vacation for a
week, and the man decided to rid himself of his aggravation.
He took a chainsaw and cut their tree to the ground, making
careful cuts so that the tree would not fall on the neighbor’s
house and destroy it but also directing it away from his
own yard, so he wouldn’t have to clean it up. Then he
walked home, fully satisfied if perhaps a little afraid. The
next day he took his chainsaw, threw it in the dump, and
prepared himself to deny having any idea who had brought
the giant down, even though the truth would be obvious.
There was only one hole in his plan: He didn’t realize
how popular his neighbors were, and he didn’t know how
unbearable it would be to have the entire local population
turn against him, to the point where no one would even
look at him or talk to him. So the day finally came when
the man realized his life would be wrecked for good unless
he dealt with his destructive and selfish act. What steps did
he have to take in order to set things right?
THE STEPS TO AC C EPTING RESPONSIBILITY
1. He had to admit, and admit fully, that he
cut down the tree. He dreaded looking at
people and saying, “Yeah, it was me”—
even though they already knew—but he
had to do it. He had to stop claiming that
the neighbors had cut the tree down
themselves so that they could blame him
and turn everyone against him. And when
he did admit his act, he also had to
acknowledge what an old and impressive
tree he had killed, rather than try to save
face by insisting that it had been small and
ugly.
2. He had to admit that he had cut it down
on purpose, that his actions were a choice.
He couldn’t claim that he had been so
drunk or enraged that he didn’t know
what he was doing. He couldn’t say,
“Well, I just meant to put a little cut into
the trunk as a warning to them, but I
accidentally cut too far and the tree fell
down.” In short, he had to stop making
excuses. Furthermore, he had to admit that
he had goals that he tried to further
through his destructive behavior; he
needed to be honest about his motives.
3. He had to acknowledge that what he did
was wrong. This meant that he had to
stop blaming the neighbors and playing up
how victimized he had been by the shade.
He had to make a sincere, heartfelt
apology.
4. He had to accept the neighbors’ right to be
angry about what he did, which meant
that he had to be willing to truly
acknowledge the effects of his actions. He
had to take in the anguish he had caused.
He had to stop asserting that they were
“making too big a deal over one stupid
tree” and that “it happened a long time
ago and they should be over it by now.”
Although apologizing was important, he
also had to accept that saying he was
sorry was only the beginning and that it
meant nothing unless he also looked
seriously at the damage he had done.
5. He had to accept the consequences of his
actions. First, he had to provide
reasonable monetary damage for the value
of the destroyed tree. He then needed to
plead guilty to the criminal charges, so
that the neighbors would not have to go
through the ordeal of testifying against
him. He had to stop seeking sympathy
from people for the problems he himself
had caused, along the lines of: “Poor me, I
had to pay out all this money that I can’t
afford because of their tree when the only
reason I cut it down was because they
were wrecking my yard with it.”
6. He had to devote long-term and serious
effort toward setting right what he had
done. No amount of money can replace a
mature tree; there’s no way to erase the
effects of such a destructive act. The man
therefore had to make amends. He needed
to buy as large and healthy a young tree as
he could find in a nursery and to plant it
carefully behind the neighbors’ house.
What’s more, he had to water the tree,
protect it from deer, watch it for diseases,
and fertilize it as necessary for years. A
young tree takes a long time to securely
establish itself.
7. He had to lay aside demands for
forgiveness. He had to recognize that even
if he sincerely were to take all of the steps
I have described, the neighbors might still
be left with pain, hurt, and bitterness, and
the man had no right to tell them how long
their bad feelings should last, especially
since he was the cause. People might be
nicer to him now that he had stopped
denying what he did, but they wouldn’t
necessarily ever like him. The neighbors
might never want to be his friends—and
why should they be? If they did decide to
be friendly with him at some point, he
should see their forgiveness as an act of
kindness and not as his due for replacing
the tree.
8. He had to treat the neighbors consistently
well from that point forward. He couldn’t
decide to stick it to them five years later
by cutting down a rosebush, for example,
and then say, “Okay, I messed up, but
shouldn’t I get credit for the five years
that I’ve been good? You can’t expect me
to be perfect.” Asking someone not to cut
down the neighbors’ flowers is not the
same thing as expecting perfection.
9. He had to relinquish his negative view of
his neighbors. He had to stop speaking
badly about them to other people and
accept that most—perhaps even all—of
what he disliked about them actually had
to do with their responses to the damage
he had done and their refusal to be bullied
by him. He had been the creator of their
hostility toward him.
As I go over each of these responsibilities with my
clients, I ask them if they have any disagreements. They
concur that each of the above steps is fair and necessary—
as long as we are talking about trees and neighbors.
However, as soon as I start to go back through the story,
reviewing how each piece applies to a man who has abused
his partner, my clients begin backpedaling. They are
reluctant to do the serious work of change, feeling that it
would be easier to throw a new blanket over the moldy
mattress and carry on with life as usual.
HO W THESE STEPS APPLY TO ABUSE
The box below summarizes how the steps in the tree story
apply to an abusive man’s process of change.
STEPS TO CHANGE
1. Admit fully to his history of
psychological, sexual, and
physical abusiveness toward
any current or past partners
whom he has abused. Denial
and minimizing need to stop,
including discrediting your
memory of what happened. He
can’t change if he is continuing
to cover up, to others or to
himself, important parts of
what he has done.
2. Acknowledge that the abuse was
wrong, unconditionally. He
needs to identify the
justifications he has tended to
use, including the various ways
that he may have blamed you,
and to talk in detail about why
his behaviors were unacceptable
without slipping back into
defending them.
3. Acknowledge that his behavior
was a choice, not a loss of
control. For example, he needs
to recognize that there is a
moment during each incident at
which he gives himself
permission to become abusive
and that he chooses how far to
let himself go.
4. Recognize the effects his abuse
has had on you and on your
children, and show empathy for
those. He needs to talk in detail
about the short-and long-term
impact that his abuse has had,
including fear, loss of trust,
anger, and loss of freedom and
other rights. And he needs to do
this without reverting to feeling
sorry for himself or talking
about how hard the experience
has been for him.
5. Identify in detail his pattern of
controlling behaviors and
entitled attitudes. He needs to
speak in detail about the day-to-
day tactics of abuse he has used.
Equally important, he must be
able to identify his underlying
beliefs and values that have
driven those behaviors, such as
considering himself entitled to
constant attention, looking
down on you as inferior, or
believing that men aren’t
responsible for their actions if
“provoked” by a partner.
6. Develop respectful behaviors
and attitudes to replace the
abusive ones he is stopping.
You can look for examples such
as improving how well he
listens to you during conflicts
and at other times, carrying his
weight of household
responsibilities and child care,
and supporting your
independence. He has to
demonstrate that he has come to
accept the fact that you have
rights and that they are equal to
his.
7. Reevaluate his distorted image
of you, replacing it with a more
positive and empathic view. He
has to recognize that he has had
mental habits of focusing on and
exaggerating his grievances
against you and his perceptions
of your weaknesses and to begin
instead to compliment you and
pay attention to your strengths
and abilities.
8. Make amends for the damage he
has done. He has to develop a
sense that he has a debt to you
and to your children as a result
of his abusiveness. He can start
to make up somewhat for his
actions by being consistently
kind and supportive, putting his
own needs on the back burner
for a couple of years, talking
with people whom he has
misled in regard to the abuse and
admitting to them that he lied,
paying for objects that he has
damaged, and many other steps
related to cleaning up the
emotional and literal messes that
his behaviors have caused. (At
the same time, he needs to
accept that he may never be able
to fully compensate you.)
9. Accept the consequences of his
actions. He should stop whining
about, or blaming you for,
problems that are the result of
his abuse, such as your loss of
desire to be sexual with him, the
children’s tendency to prefer
you, or the fact that he is on
probation.
10. Commit to not repeating his
abusive behaviors and honor
that commitment. He should not
place any conditions on his
improvement, such as saying
that he won’t call you names as
long as you don’t raise your
voice to him. If he does
backslide, he cannot justify his
abusive behaviors by saying,
“But I’ve done great for five
months; you can’t expect me to
be perfect,” as if a good period
earned him chips to spend on
occasional abuse.
11. Accept the need to give up his
privileges and do so. This
means saying good-bye to
double standards, to flirting
with other women, to taking off
with his friends all weekend
while you look after the
children, and to being allowed to
express anger while you are not.
12. Accept that overcoming
abusiveness is likely to be a
lifelong process. He at no time
can claim that his work is done
by saying to you, “I’ve changed
but you haven’t,” or complain
that he is sick of hearing about
his abuse and control and that
“it’s time to get past all that.”
He needs to come to terms with
the fact that he will probably
need to be working on his issues
for good and that you may feel
the effects of what he has done
for many years.
13. Be willing to be accountable for
his actions, both past and future.
His attitude that he is above
reproach has to be replaced by a
willingness to accept feedback
and criticism, to be honest about
any backsliding, and to be
answerable for what he does and
how it affects you and your
children.
Abusive men don’t make lasting changes if they skip
any of the above steps, and some are easier than others.
Most of my clients find it fairly easy to apologize, for
example. In fact, an abuser may weave apologies into his
pattern of abuse, so that when he says “I’m sorry,” it
becomes another weapon in his hand. His unspoken rule
may be that once he has apologized, no matter how
cursorily or devoid of sincerity, his partner must be
satisfied; she is not to make any further effort to show her
feelings about his mistreatment, nor may she demand that
he fix anything. If she tries to say anything more about the
incident, he jumps right back into abuse mode, yelling such
things as, “I already told you I was sorry! Now shut up
about it!”
But even a genuine and sincere apology is only a starting
point. M any of my clients make it through the first three
steps: They admit to a substantial portion of their abuse;
they agree that their actions resulted from choice rather
than loss of control; and they apologize. Then they dig in
their heels at that point. An abuser’s sense of entitlement is
like a rude, arrogant voice screaming inside his head. It yells
at him: “You’ve given up too much already; don’t budge
another inch. They already talked you into saying your
abuse is all your own fault when you know she’s at least
half to blame because of the shit that she does. She should
be grateful to you for apologizing; that wasn’t easy to do.
She’s lucky you’ve gone this far; a lot of guys would tell
her to go screw, you know.” And the voice drags him back
into the mud that he had finally taken a couple of baby
steps out of.
Step number four, for example, demands that the
abusive man accept his partner’s right to be angry. He
actually has to take seriously the furious things that she
says and think about them rather than using her emotional
pitch as an excuse to stuff her opinions back down her
throat as he has normally done. When I explain this step,
my clients at first look at me as though I had an eye in the
middle of my forehead. “I should do what?? When she is
yelling at me, I’m supposed to just sit there and take it??”
To which I reply, “M ore than that, actually. You should
reflect on the points she is making and respond to them in a
thoughtful way.” And then we begin practicing exactly that
in the group; I ask them for examples of their partners’
angry statements and then guide them through
understanding why their partners are furious and accepting
their right to feel that way.
The steps go on. Steps six and seven require that he
make up for what he has done, that he actually has incurred
a debt because of his abuse. Step eight says that he has to
change his behavior in the future, not just say he’s sorry
for the past, and he has to stop his abusiveness completely
and for good. In other words, he is truly going to have to
deal with the attitudes that are driving his bullying and
disrespect of his partner. Step eleven requires him to give
up the privileges that his abusiveness has won him. As we
go through each of these steps, some clients choose to
struggle through, as hard as the process is, while others
throw in the towel and resume their abusive behaviors.
THE ABUSER’S OUTLO O K O N CHANGE
To guide my clients through the work of overcoming
abusiveness, I have to keep in mind the fact that they bring
their usual habits, attitudes, and manipulations to the
process of change itself. This is why a woman finds herself
feeling like she is riding a roller coaster while her partner
claims to have changed. Here are some of the attitudes that
abusers commonly exhibit when their partners, or a court,
or an abuse program begin demanding that they stop: •
“The change game is just like the rest of the routine.”
Abusers can turn their manipulative skills to creating an
appearance of change. This was the style we saw in
Chapter 1 with Carl, who put on such a show of
developing insights at his abuser group but whose
treatment of Peggy was as verbally cruel as ever and was
rapidly heading back toward physical violence. I couldn’t
count the number of clients who come into groups of mine
when they are separated from their partners and hoping for
a reconciliation, or barred from the house with a restraining
order and trying to get permission to return, who then
vanish from the abuser program the moment they get what
they want. A man may say to his partner, “I am learning so
much from the abuse groups, and if you let me move back
in I’ll work even harder at the program,” but as soon as his
bags are unpacked, the excuses begin: The program is too
expensive; he doesn’t need it anymore; he doesn’t feel
comfortable being in a room with “real abusers” because
he’s not like them, “you and I have just had a few little
problems.”
• “I can stop abuse by learning nonabusive ways to control
and manipulate my partner.”
I hear this (mostly unconscious) attitude in the voice of the
client who says to me: “I thought you were going to be
giving me tools to help me manage my partner’s crazy
behavior. But you aren’t helping me with that at all.” His
expression crazy behavior is a code phrase for any way in
which she stands up to him, expresses anger, or insists on
maintaining a separate identity rather than just conforming
to exactly what he wants her to be. A large percentage of
men who join abuser programs quit within the first few
weeks. They make various excuses at home, but the true
reason is that they discover that the program expects them
to start treating their partners with respect when they were
hoping to just learn kinder, gentler approaches to running
the show.
• “Change is a bargaining chip.”
An abuser often tries to use the promise of change to cut
deals, since he believes that his partner’s behaviors are just
as wrong as his: “I’ll agree not to call you ‘bitch’ anymore
if you don’t bug me to help clean up the children’s mess
when I’m trying to watch the game. I won’t call you ‘slut’
or ‘whore’ if you give up talking to your male friends. I
won’t push you up against the wall if you drop your side
of an argument whenever you see that I’m really upset.”
To him, these seem like fair deals, but in reality they
require a woman to sacrifice her rights and freedom in
return for not being abused—a coercive bargain that is in
itself abusive.
• “I don’t mind changing some of what I do as long as I
don’t have to give up the attitudes and behaviors that are
most precious to me.”
At some point during the first few months that a man is in
my program, I usually stumble upon the core of his
privilege, like a rear bunker on his terrain. He may abandon
a few of his forward positions, but this fortification is
where he surrounds himself with sandbags and settles in for
protracted war. A client may agree to stop constantly
interrupting his partner and dominating arguments, for
example, but when I tell him that he needs to be doing his
share of child care, even during football season, he draws
the line. If being a respectful partner requires actually rising
off of his behind, he’d rather be abusive. Another client
may consent to stop spending all of his family’s money on
himself, but if I tell him that he also has to give up his
chronic pattern of having affairs, he decides the losses have
become too great, and he quits.
An abuser who does not relinquish his core
entitlements will not remain nonabusive. This may be
the single most-overlooked point regarding abusers and
change. The progress that such a man appears to be making
is an illusion. If he reserves the right to bully his partner to
protect even one specific privilege, he is keeping the abuse
option open. And if he keeps it open, he will gradually
revert to using it more and more, until his prior range of
controlling behaviors has been restored to its full glory.
Abusers attach themselves tightly to their privileges and
come to find the prospect of having equal rights and
responsibilities, living on the same plane as their partners,
almost unbearable. They resent women who require them
to change and persuade themselves that they are victims of
unfair treatment because they are losing their lopsided
luxuries. But they can’t change unless they are willing to
relinquish that special status—one of the key pieces of
work they have to do in an abuser program.
FOR ME TO BE ABLE T O help an abusive man change, I
have to guide him past the points where he gets stuck. I
explain to him that he is going to feel some guilt, for
example, and that his sense of entitlement will make him
want to backslide when the guilty feelings come up. I have
to alert him when he starts trying to cut deals to preserve
aspects of his abusive behavior and when he reverts to
blaming his partner or feeling sorry for himself. I have to
help him become aware of his real motives for abusive
behavior. Above all, I have to confront his lack of empathy
for his partner and children, pressing him to get in touch
with the feelings of those he has harmed; it is my job to
take away the abusive man’s privilege of turning his eyes
away from the damage he has done. If the man is willing to
persist through this long and difficult process, the potential
for real change begins.
HOW TO ASSESS AN ABUSER’S CLAIMS OF
CHANGE
QUESTION 19:
HO W CAN I TELL IF HE’S REALLY
CHANGING?
No one is in a better position than the abused woman
herself to distinguish genuine progress from window
dressing. A woman may call me after her partner has been
in my program for a few weeks, her voice edged with
anxiety and hope, to ask: “So, how is he doing? Do you
think the program is working?” She’s counting on the abuse
expert to look deeply into her partner’s eyes and read his
potential. But I can’t do it. I have to push the umpiring
back to her.
You are the only one who can judge your partner’s
change. There are men who join my group and become
model clients, getting the right answers and showing the
appropriate emotions, yet when I talk to their partners I
find out that life at home is business as usual or maybe has
gotten a little worse. And I work with other men who are
cantankerous during meetings, but the report I receive from
the front lines is that their treatment of their partners is
noticeably improved. What the client shows me matters
little.
There are two main principles to keep in mind when
deciding how much potential an abuser has to become a
kind, respectful partner in the long run:
1. He cannot change unless he deals deeply
with his entitled and superior attitudes.
No superficial changes that he may make
offer any real hope for the future.
2. It makes no difference how nice he is
being to you, since almost all abusers have
nice periods. What matters is how
respectful and noncoercive he chooses to
become.
Holding on to these fundamental points, you can use the
following guide to help you identify changes that show
promise of being genuine. We are looking for “yes” answers
to these questions:
Has he learned to treat your opinions with respect, even
when they differ strongly from his?
YES _____ NO _____
Is he accepting your right to express anger to him,
especially when it involves his history of mistreating
you?
YES _____ NO _____
Is he respecting your right to freedom and
independence? Does that include refraining from all
interference with your friendships and giving up the
demand to always know where you are and whom you
are with?
YES _____ NO _____
Has he stopped making excuses for his treatment of you,
including not using your behavior as an excuse for his?
YES _____ NO _____
Is he being respectful about sex, applying no pressure
and engaging in no guilt trips?
YES _____ NO _____
Has he stopped cheating or flirting with other women, or
using other behaviors that keep you anxious that he will
stray?
YES _____ NO _____
Does he listen to your side in arguments without
interrupting, and then make a serious effort to respond
thoughtfully to your points, even if he doesn’t like them?
YES _____ NO _____
Have you been free to raise your grievances, new or old,
without retaliation from him?
YES _____ NO _____
Has he stopped talking about his abuse as if it were an
accident and begun to acknowledge that he used it to
control you?
YES _____ NO _____
Is he actually responding to your grievances and doing
something about them (for example, changing the way he
behaves toward your children)?
YES _____ NO _____
Has he greatly reduced or eliminated his use of
controlling behaviors (such as sarcasm, rolling his eyes,
loud disgusted sighs, talking over you, using the voice of
ultimate authority, and other demonstrations of
disrespect or superiority) during conversations and
arguments?
YES _____ NO _____
When he does slip back into controlling behavior, does
he take you seriously when you complain about it and
keep working on improving?
YES _____ NO _____
Is he being consistent and responsible in his behavior,
taking into account how his actions affect you without
having to be constantly reminded?
YES _____ NO _____
Is he acting noticeably less demanding, selfish, and self-
centered?
YES _____ NO _____
Is he being fair and responsible about money, including
allowing you to keep your own assets in your own
name?
YES _____ NO _____
Has he stopped any behaviors that you find threatening
or intimidating?
YES _____ NO _____
Has he significantly expanded his contribution to
household and child-rearing responsibilities and stopped
taking your domestic work for granted or treating you
like a servant?
YES _____ NO _____
Has he begun supporting your strengths rather than
striving to undermine them?
YES _____ NO _____
Have you had any major angry arguments with him in
which he has shown a new willingness to conduct himself
nonabusively?
YES _____ NO _____
“No” answers to any of the above questions are signs of
work that your partner still needs to do. If he is committed
to changing, he will take you seriously when you voice
your continued concerns and he will acknowledge that he
needs to continue working on his attitudes and habits. On
the other hand, if he is impatient with or critical of you for
not being satisfied with the gestures of change he has
already made, that is a sign that his overt abusive behaviors
will be coming back before long. M y experience with
abusive men is that small or even medium-level
improvements generally slip away over time; the man who
actually maintains his progress is usually the one who
changes completely even though that process tends to take
considerable time. Thus, when you are attempting to
preserve a relationship with a man who has abused you,
you need to some extent to hold him to an even higher
standard than you would a nonabusive partner.
Sometimes when a woman reports to me that her
abusive partner has been doing better, it turns out that he
hasn’t been doing anything at all. He isn’t swearing at her
or scaring her, but he also isn’t spending time with her,
talking to her, or showing her any affection. He’s avoiding
abusiveness simply by disconnecting from the relationship.
As a partner of one of my clients said to me: “It’s like he’s
got two gears: angry and neutral.”
Distancing himself can be worse than avoidance; it can
be a way to punish you for putting your foot down about
the way he treats you. A certain number of my clients
leave their partners once they realize that their abuse really
isn’t going to be tolerated anymore. But the more typical
approach is to remain physically present but to retool the
machinery to churn out passive aggression instead of open
hostility. He learns how to hurt her through what he
doesn’t do instead of through what he does.
The previous questions can help you to distinguish
between genuine change and an abusive man’s usual pattern
of going through a “good” period. If your partner is truly
on the road to renouncing abuse, you will notice a dramatic
difference in him. Partners of my successful clients say that
they feel almost as though they were living with a different
person and that now they sense a deeper change that
involves a real shift in attitudes rather than just his usual
use of superficial sweetness to smooth things over.
CLEAR SIGNS O F AN ABUSER WHO ISN’T
CHANGING
Your partner can make several statements or behave in
several ways that clearly indicate he isn’t making progress:
He says he can change only if you change
too.
He says he can change only if you “help”
him change, by giving him emotional
support, reassurance, and forgiveness, and
by spending a lot of time with him. This
often means that he wants you to abandon
any plans you had to take a break from
seeing him.
He criticizes you for not realizing how
much he has changed.
He criticizes you for not trusting that his
change will last.
He criticizes you for considering him
capable of behaving abusively even though
he in fact has done so in the past (or has
threatened to) as if you should know that
he “would never do something like that,”
even though he has.
He reminds you about the bad things he
would have done in the past but isn’t doing
anymore, which amounts to a subtle threat.
He tells you that you are taking too long to
make up your mind, that he can’t “wait
forever,” as a way to pressure you not to
take the time you need to collect yourself
and to assess how much he’s really willing
to change.
He says, “I’m changing, I’m changing,” but
you don’t feel it.
BE STRAIGHT WITH YO URSELF
To use good judgment and make wise decisions about the
prospects for change in your abusive partner, you need to
be honest with yourself. Because you love him, or you have
children with him, or leaving him would be difficult for
other reasons, you may be sorely tempted to get overly
hopeful about small concessions that he finally makes. If he
doesn’t budge for five years, or twenty years, and then he
finally moves an inch, your exhaustion can make you think,
Hey! An inch! That’s progress! You may wish to overlook
all the glaring signs indicating that his basic attitudes and
strategies remain intact. Beware of his deception and your
own self-deception. I have heard such heart-rending
sadness in the voices of many dozens of abused women
who have said to me: “I wish I could somehow recover all
those years I wasted waiting around for him to deal with
his issues.” Save yourself that sadness if you can, by
insisting on nothing less than complete respect.
THE ABUSER IN C O UPLES THERAPY
Attempting to address abuse through couples therapy is
like wrenching a nut the wrong way; it just gets even harder
to undo than it was before. Couples therapy is designed to
tackle issues that are mutual. It can be effective for
overcoming barriers to communication, for untangling the
childhood issues that each partner brings to a relationship,
or for building intimacy. But you can’t accomplish any of
these goals in the context of abuse. There can be no
positive communication when one person doesn’t respect
the other and strives to avoid equality. You can’t take the
leaps of vulnerability involved in working through early
emotional injuries while you are feeling emotionally unsafe
—because you are emotionally unsafe. And if you succeed
in achieving greater intimacy with your abusive partner,
you will soon get hurt even worse than before because
greater closeness means greater vulnerability for you.
Couples counseling sends both the abuser and the
abused woman the wrong message. The abuser learns that
his partner is “pushing his buttons” and “touching him off”
and that she needs to adjust her behavior to avoid getting
him so upset. This is precisely what he has been claiming
all along. Change in abusers comes only from the reverse
process, from completely stepping out of the notion that
his partner plays any role in causing his abuse of her. An
abuser also has to stop focusing on his feelings and his
partner’s behavior, and look instead at her feelings and his
behavior. Couples counseling allows him to stay stuck in
the former. In fact, to some therapists, feelings are all that
matters, and reality is more or less irrelevant. In this
context, a therapist may turn to you and say, “But he feels
abused by you, too.” Unfortunately, the more an abusive
man is convinced that his grievances are more or less equal
to yours, the less the chance that he will ever overcome his
attitudes.
The message to you from couples counseling is: “You
can make your abusive partner behave better toward you
by changing how you behave toward him.” Such a message
is, frankly, fraudulent. Abuse is not caused by bad
relationship dynamics. You can’t manage your partner’s
abusiveness by changing your behavior, but he wants you
to think that you can. He says, or leads you to believe, that
“if you stop doing the things that upset me, and take better
care of my needs, I will become a nonabusive partner.” It
never materializes. And even if it worked, even if you could
stop his abusiveness by catering to his every whim, is that
a healthy way to live? If the way you behave in the
relationship is a response to the threat of abuse, are you a
voluntary participant? If you have issues you would like to
work on with a couples counselor, wait until your partner
has been completely abuse-free for two years. Then you
might be able to work on some of the problems that truly
are mutual ones.
A professional book I recently read offers a powerful
example of how couples therapy works with an abuser.
The therapist made an agreement with the couple that the
man would avoid his scary behaviors and in return the
woman would stop making her friends such an important
part of her life “because her friendships were causing so
much tension in the marriage.” The therapist had, in effect,
assisted the man in using the threat of violence to get his
way, cutting his partner off from social connections and
sources of support that were important to her. What the
therapist portrayed as a voluntary agreement was actually
coercion, although the authors of the book showed no signs
of realizing this.
Couples counseling can end up being a big setback for
the abused woman. The more she insists that her partner’s
cruelty or intimidation needs to be addressed, the more she
may find the therapist looking down at her, saying, “It
seems like you are determined to put all the blame on him
and are refusing to look at your part in this.” The therapist
thereby inadvertently echoes the abuser’s attitude, and the
woman is forced to deal with yet another context in which
she has to defend herself, which is the last thing she needs.
I have been involved in many cases where the therapist and
the abuser ended up as a sort of tag team, and the abused
woman limped away from yet another psychological
assault. Most therapists in such circumstances are well
intentioned but fail to understand the dynamics of abuse
and allow the abuser to shape their perceptions.
The therapist’s reassuring presence in the room can give
you the courage to open up to your partner in ways that
you wouldn’t normally feel safe to do. But this isn’t
necessarily positive; an abuser can retaliate for a woman’s
frank statements during couples sessions. Later, when he is
screaming at you, “You humiliated me in front of the
therapist, you made me look like the bad guy, you told
things that were too private!” and delivering a nonstop
diatribe, you may regret your decision to open up.
Irene, an abused woman who tells her own story in
public and has appeared on several panels with me, shares
the following account: She had been in couples counseling
for about six months with her husband, Quentin, when one
day the therapist decided it was time to get the ball rolling.
He said, “These session have gradually stopped going
anywhere, and I think I know why. Irene, you’re not
opening up very much, and I think you need to take more
emotional risks.” Irene felt that the therapist was right; she
had been exposing very little week to week. So she decided
to take the plunge. She told the therapist about Quentin’s
abuse of her, which included considerable physical violence
and the downward emotional spiral she had been in as a
result. Quentin appeared moved and shaken, his eyes
reddening as if he might cry at any moment. “I have really
been in denial about my violence,” he told the therapist,
“and I haven’t been facing how badly it has been affecting
Irene.” The therapist felt that a crucial barrier to progress
had been overcome. “Now,” he declared, “I think your
couples work can begin to yield results for you.”
On the drive home from the session, Quentin kept one
hand on the steering wheel. In the other hand he clutched a
large handful of Irene’s hair as he repeatedly slammed her
head into the dashboard, screaming, “I told you to never
fucking talk to anyone about that, you bitch! You promised
me! You’re a fucking liar!” and similar insults in a nonstop
rant. After hearing Irene’s account, I was careful to never
again underestimate the risk to an abused woman of
conjoint therapy.
If couples counseling is the only type of help your
partner is willing to get—because he wants to make sure
that he can blame the problem on you—you may think,
Well, it’s better than not getting any counseling at all. And
maybe the therapist will see the things he does and convince
him to get help. But even if the therapist were to confront
him, which is uncommon, he would just say: “You turned
the therapist against me”—the same way he handles any
other challenges.
Some couples therapists have said to me: “Before I
work with a couple whose relationship has involved abuse,
I insist on clear agreements that there won’t be any abuse
while they are in therapy with me and no paybacks for
anything that gets said in a session.” Such agreements are
meaningless, unfortunately, because abusers feel no
obligation to honor them; virtually every abuser I’ve ever
worked with feels entitled to break his word if he has “good
enough reason,” which includes any time that he is really
upset by his partner. Increasingly, therapists across the
United States and Canada are refusing to engage in couples
or family sessions with an abuser, which is the responsible
course of action.
THE ABUSIVE MAN IN INDIVIDUAL THERAPY
The more psychotherapy a client of mine has participated
in, the more impossible I usually find it is to work with
him. The highly “therapized” abuser tends to be slick,
condescending, and manipulative. He uses the
psychological concepts he has learned to dissect his
partner’s flaws and dismiss her perceptions of abuse. He
takes responsibility for nothing that he does; he moves in a
world where there are only unfortunate dynamics,
miscommunications, symbolic acts. He expects to be
rewarded for his emotional openness, handled gingerly
because of his “vulnerability,” colluded with in skirting the
damage he has done, and congratulated for his insight.
Many years ago, a violent abuser in my program shared the
following with us: “From working in therapy on my issues
about anger toward my mother, I realized that when I
punched my wife, it wasn’t really her I was hitting. It was
my mother!” He sat back, ready for us to express our
approval of his self-awareness. My colleague peered
through his glasses at the man, unimpressed by this
revelation. “No,” he said, “you were hitting your wife.”
I have yet to meet an abuser who has made any
meaningful and lasting changes in his behavior toward
female partners through therapy, regardless of how much
“insight”—most of it false—that he may have gained. The
fact is that if an abuser finds a particularly skilled therapist
and if the therapy is especially successful, when he is
finished he will be a happy, well-adjusted abuser—good
news for him, perhaps, but not such good news for his
partner. Psychotherapy can be very valuable for the issues
it is devised to address, but partner abuse is not one of
them; an abusive man needs to be in a specialized program,
as we will see.
THE ABUSER PRO GRAM
Bringing about change in an abuser generally requires four
elements:(1) consequences, (2) education, (3)
confrontation, and (4) accountability. Consequences, the
first item on the list, are manifested primarily through the
abuser’s experience of losing his relationship (at least
temporarily if not permanently), or through the legal
system if he has committed any abuse-related crimes, such
as threats or assaults. He may also experience
consequences in the form of ciriticism or disapproval from
other people in his life.
The abuser program has responsibility for items two
and three, providing the abusive man with education about
abuse and confronting him with his attitudes and excuses.
A high-quality abuser program is entirely different from
therapy. The critical distinctions include:
Therapy focuses on the man’s feelings and
gives him empathy and support, no matter
how unreasonable the attitudes that are
giving rise to those feelings. An abuser
program, on the other hand, focuses on his
thinking. The feelings that the abuser
program discusses are primarily his
partner’s and his children’s, not his.
Therapy involves few rules, or none,
governing what the man is allowed to do
during the period he is in therapy. The
abuser program requires the man to refrain
from all physical violence and threats and
to work seriously on reducing his verbal
aggression and other forms of psychological
abuse, or he can’t stay in the program.
An abusive man’s therapist usually will not
speak to the abused woman, whereas the
counselor of a high-quality abuser program
always does.
Therapy typically will not address any of
the central causes of abusiveness, including
entitlement, coercive control, disrespect,
superiority, selfishness, or victim blaming.
An abuser program is expected to cover all
of these issues and in fact to make them its
primary focus.
An abuser program is expected to provide
the man with education about abuse, to
counsel him on how to apply those
concepts to his own life, and to confront
his abusive attitudes and excuses. It is rare
for therapy to do any of these things.
At the same time, an abuser program possesses no more
magic than anyone else. The man who makes major life
changes as a result of attending an abuser program is the
one who chooses to work the program, not the one who
sits back and waits for the program to “help” him,
expecting service as he usually does. The successful client
neither fights his counselors every step of the way, telling
them what ignorant idiots they are, nor kisses up to them
unctuously while claiming that the program has caused him
to see the light. Rather, he comes weekly with a
seriousness of purpose, practices what he is told, and tries
to face up to the damage he has done.
I regret to say that a majority of abusers choose not to
do the work. It isn’t that they can’t change (any abuser
who doesn’t have a major mental illness can change) but
that they decide they don’t wish to. They run a sort of
cost-benefit analysis in their heads and decide that the
rewards of remaining in control of their partners outweigh
the costs. They decide that to consider seriously the
perspective their counselors are presenting to them is just
too uncomfortable and difficult and offends their arrogant
sense of certainty about everything—at least, about
everything having to do with relationships and the
particular women they are with.
Later in this chapter I offer some suggestions on how
you can increase the likelihood that your partner will be
among those who do overcome their abusiveness. Bear in
mind, though, that the ultimate choice is his; the saying
“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him
drink” applies particularly well here.
HOW DO I KNO W IF HIS ABUSER PRO GRAM IS A
GOO D O NE?
The first test of the quality of an abuser program is
whether the main goal of the staff members appears to be
helping you or helping him. In a responsible program the
abused woman is considered the primary client. The only
“assistance” they should be offering to the man is to
educate and challenge him about his abusive attitudes and
behaviors. He, on the other hand, may have numerous other
goals—to get back together with you, to get more visitation
with the children or reduce his child support payments, to
escape criminal charges—but the program has no business
assisting him with any of these; the last thing an abused
woman needs is more people helping her abuser to work
against her.
Those in charge of an abuser program should do the
following:
Contact you quickly after your partner
enters the program. In this call, they should
ask you to give a history of his abusive
behavior and of any substance abuse, and
tell you where to go for abused women’s
services.
Warn you that only a minority of abusers
make lasting changes and that a few
actually get worse from participating in an
abuser program.
Tell you the rules he has to follow to be in
the program.
Describe to you the topics that will be
covered in his group meetings and give you
as much detail about those sessions as you
request.
Give you any information you request
about his attendance and the attitudes he
expresses in the program, and about any
specific statements he makes in group that
you would like to know. They should not
be promising him any confidentiality with
respect to you.
Devote most sessions at the program to
discussing the core attitudinal and
behavioral issues of abuse (as covered in
Chapter 3).
Furthermore, you should be given a copy of any written
reports generated by the program about the abuser, such as
court reports. These reports should include:
A full description of all the abuse that your
partner has admitted to while in the
program, including psychological abuse,
sexual coercion, or violence
Any steps toward change that he has failed
to make (see the box earlier in this chapter)
There are various signs you can watch for that indicate
an abuser program is ineffective:
Counselors fail to contact you or to tell
you the limitations of what counseling is
likely to accomplish.
They tell you that they think he is really
changing and that he is doing very well in
the program. (They should know that what
you see is what matters, not what they see;
lots of abusers put on a good show at the
abuser program.)
They try to involve you in couples
counseling, suggest that you drop your
restraining order, encourage you to
communicate with your partner, or
advocate for his interests in any way.
They relay messages to you from him.
Their group meetings seem to spend too
much time teaching him to identify his
feelings, to apply conflict-resolution skills,
to manage his anger better, or to deal with
other issues that do not affect his
underlying beliefs.
Their written reports are vague, do not
address the steps to change (see the box
earlier in this chapter), or give an overly
rosy image of his prospects for change
without describing the steps he still has left
to take.
I know how hard it is for a woman to get her partner to
attend an abuser program. After she’s finally succeeded in
that campaign, I wish I could tell her that a cure is sure to
follow, but it isn’t. A large proportion of abusers would
rather stay stuck in their old ruts. I consider myself an
excellent counselor for abusive men; I am patient with
them, approaching them as an educator rather than as a
harsh critic. At the same time, I can detect manipulation; I
know what their issues are, and I don’t allow them to fool
me. I have worked with colleagues whom I believe to be
even more skilled than I, and from whom I have learned
volumes. But even the very best counselors give the same
report: It is more common for abusers to stay the same or
get worse than it is for them to make the kinds of changes
that bring qualitative improvements in the lives of their
partners and children. A responsible abuser program
encourages clients who are doing serious work but always
mixes caution with its optimism.
If your partner or ex-partner joins an abuser program, I
recommend that you examine the program’s literature
carefully, ask lots of questions, and advocate for yourself
to make sure the program does the kind of work with the
man that you know needs to be done. At the same time,
keep your own life moving forward, focusing on your own
healing process, not on the man’s process of change.
Waiting around for him to get serious about developing
respect for you could be a long stall in your own growth
and development. Don’t sell yourself short.
CREATING A CO NTEXT FO R CHANGE
An abuser doesn’t change because he feels guilty or gets
sober or finds God. He doesn’t change after seeing the fear
in his children’s eyes or feeling them drift away from him.
It doesn’t suddenly dawn on him that his partner deserves
better treatment. Because of his self-focus, combined with
the many rewards he gets from controlling you, an abuser
changes only when he feels he has to, so the most
important element in creating a context for change in an
abuser is placing him in a situation where he has no other
choice. Otherwise, it is highly unlikely that he will ever
change his abusive behavior.
Once an abuser has made substantial improvements, his
motivation to sustain those changes sometimes does
become more internal. But the initial impetus is always
external. Either his partner demands change and threatens
to leave him or a court demands change and threatens to jail
him. I have never seen a client make a serious effort to
confront his abusiveness unless somebody required him to
do the work. The abuser who truly enters counseling
voluntarily, with no one holding anything over his head,
quits within a few sessions, unless he finds a counselor he
can manipulate.
QUESTION 20:
HO W CAN I hELP MY ABUSIVE
PARTNER C HANGE?
Creating a context for change also involves these elements:
1. Establishing consequences for him for
continued abusiveness. You may be able
to use the legal system to impose
sanctions if your partner’s style of abuse
is physically violent or threatening, or
involves sexual assaults. Leaving him is
another good consequence for him,
perhaps even better than legal
intervention, depending on who he is and
how well the police and courts work
where you live. To get an abuser to
change, you have to either prepare to
leave him—if you can do so safely—or use
the police and courts, or both.
2. Making clear to him what your
expectations are for his treatment of you,
including specifically what you are willing
to live with and what you are not.
3. Focusing on your own healing and
strength, so that he senses that he if he
doesn’t change, you are ready to move on.
You cannot, I am sorry to say, get an abuser to work on
himself by pleading, soothing, gently leading, getting
friends to persuade him, or using any other
nonconfrontational method. I have watched hundreds of
women attempt such an approach without success. The
way you can help him change is to demand that he do so,
and settle for nothing less.
It is also impossible to persuade an abusive man to
change by convincing him that he would benefit, because he
perceives the benefits of controlling his partner as vastly
outweighing the losses. This is part of why so many men
initially take steps to change their abusive behavior but
then return to their old ways. There is another reason why
appealing to his self-interest doesn’t work: The abusive
man’s belief that his own needs should come ahead of his
partner’s is at the core of his problem. Therefore when
anyone, including therapists, tells an abusive man that he
should change because that’s what’s best for him, they are
inadvertently feeding his selfish focus on himself: You can’t
simultaneously contribute to a problem and solve it. Those
abusive men who make lasting changes are the ones who do
so because they realize how badly they are hurting their
partners and children—in other words, because they learn
to care about what is good for others in the family and
develop empathy, instead of caring only about themselves.
LEAVING AN ABUSER AS A WAY TO PRO MO TE
CHANGE
Breaking up with an abusive man, or even deciding to take
some time apart, needs to be done with caution, as I
discussed in “Leaving an Abuser Safely” in Chapter 9. But
if you feel you can leave, doing so may help provide the
impetus your partner needs to look at his behavior. If you
are separating with the hope that you might get back
together in the future, consider the following suggestions:
Be very clear about what kind of contact
you want to have with your partner during
the separation, if any. It is generally best to
have none at all. If you keep talking to him
or seeing him from time to time, you will
find it much harder to keep your own
thinking clear, because you will tend to
miss him even more intensely, feel sorry
for him, and get drawn in by his promises
and his charm. Occasional contact is bad for
him, too, not just for you; it feeds his
denial of his problem, encouraging him to
assume that he can use his usual
manipulations to avoid dealing with
himself.
If you feel that you do want to permit
some contact, consider the specifics. Can
he call you, or do you want to be the only
one to initiate contact? Can he send letters?
If you are going to see each other in person,
where, when, and how often?
Once you make up your mind about the
above questions, be explicit with your
partner about your wishes for contact and
let him know that you expect your wishes to
be respected. Tell him that if he is serious
about changing, the first way he can
demonstrate that to you is by giving you
the space you are asking for.
Stay away from him for as long as you can
stand it. Get support during this period
from friends, relatives, your religious
community, or anyone else you can trust to
help you stay strong. Attend counseling or
a support group at a program for abused
women if there is one in your area, even if
your partner has never been violent. Give
yourself as much time as possible to heal
emotionally and to clear your mind.
The separation needs to be long enough to
make him really uncomfortable—enough to
motivate him to change. Part of what
creates discomfort for him is the dawning
realization that maybe you really could live
without him. A separation that is too short,
on the other hand, will serve in his mind as
proof that you can’t stand to be on your
own, so he will think he can get away with
anything. Try to prepare yourself for the
possibility that he will start to date
someone else during your separation. This
is a common move, used to test your
strength and get you to lose your resolve
and start seeing him again. His new
relationship is not very likely to last, so
just try to sweat it out.
If you decide to get back together with him,
be clear with yourself and with him about
what the rules are for his behavior. The first
time he violates one of those rules—and it
is likely that he will—it is of critical
importance to take another period of
separation. Your partner does not believe
that you will go through with setting limits
on his conduct. You need to prove him
wrong. He may test you the first day you
move back in together, or he may wait two
years. But the day will probably come, so
have your response ready.
The next separation should be longer than
the first in order to give your partner a clear
message and to motivate him to change. If
during the first break you spoke to him
occasionally, this time permit no contact at
all for a few months. As always, focus on
making yourself stronger. Pursue new
friendships, get exercise, do artwork, or
engage in whatever activity you love the
most and that helps you feel that your life
is moving forward. If you are drinking too
much or have developed other problems,
seek out the help you need and deserve.
The more space you get from abuse, the
less willing you will be to endure it and the
harder it will be for your (ex-)partner to
con you.
Have you ever noticed that people
sometimes quit a job soon after returning
from a vacation? We all have a higher
tolerance for frustrating or unhealthy
situations in our lives when they are
constant, but when we get a little time
away and then come back, that taste of
freedom changes our perspective. What had
been a dull ache turns into a sharp pain and
becomes unbearable. The same can happen
to an abused woman. If you give yourself a
long enough taste of life without being cut
down all the time, you may reach a point
where you find yourself thinking, Go back
to that? For what? Maybe I’ll never stop
loving him, but at least I can love him from
a distance where he can’t hurt me.
If he doesn’t get serious about stopping his
mistreatment of you, you will come to a
day when you feel ready to end the
relationship for good. This may seem
inconceivable to you now, however, so just
keep moving forward with your life. Focus
on yourself as much as possible, pursuing
your own goals and filling your life with
the activities you enjoy and find satisfying.
Trying too hard to get your partner to
change is a dead-end street. To do so keeps
you wrapped up in the dynamics of abuse,
because an abuser wants you to be
preoccupied with him. Only permit him to
occupy your thoughts for a portion of the
day and then reserve the lion’s share of
your mental space for yourself.
The only time an abusive man will deal with his issues
enough to become someone you can live with is when you
prove to him, and to yourself, that you are capable of living
without him. And once you succeed in doing so, you may
very well decide that living without him is what you would
rather do. Keep an open mind, and make sure you are not
clipping your own wings on top of the clipping that he has
given them. Sometimes I work with a woman who is among
the fortunate ones whose partners do make deep changes,
but she finds that his change has ceased to matter, because
she has simply outgrown him. The fundamental principle,
then, is to do what is best for you.
WHICH ABUSERS ARE MO ST LIKELY TO
CHANGE?
Prediction is difficult. I have had clients who were stellar
participants in group and whose partners reported good
progress in the early months, but who dive-bombed later
on, rushing back to their worst behaviors as if reuniting
with dear old friends. On the other hand, I have worked
with men who were ornery during group meetings, who
were slow and stubborn about taking in the concepts, yet
who months later stood out for having done some of the
most serious work on themselves of anyone in the
program.
I have noticed some recurring themes among those
abusers whose changes go the deepest and last the longest,
however:
His close friends and relatives recognize
that he is abusive and tell him that he needs
to deal with it. They support the abused
woman instead of supporting him. I have a
much more difficult time with the abuser
whose friends and family back up his
excuses and encourage his disrespect for the
woman.
He is lower than others on the scale of self-
centeredness. He tends to show signs early
on of having more empathy than other
clients do for the pain he has caused his
partner, and his empathy seems more
genuine and less theatrical. The highly self-
referential, arrogant abuser, on the other
hand, believes that he is above criticism and
considers his own opinions and insights to
be the last word on the planet. So who is
going to be able to persuade him that he has
been cruel and selfish?
His partner gets the most unreserved,
unequivocal support from her friends and
relatives, her religious community, and
from the legal system if she needs it. The
more consistently she receives the message
that the abuse is in no way her fault and
that her community intends to stand behind
her 100 percent, the stronger and safer she
feels to settle for nothing less than fully
respectful treatment from her partner or ex-
partner.
He joins a high-quality abuser program and
stays for a long time—about two years.
But, even in cases where all of these conditions are met,
his progress still depends on whether or not he decides to
carefully and seriously take each of the steps to change.
KEY PO INTS TO REMEMBER
You can’t make or even help an abusive
man change. All you can do is create the
context for change, and the rest is up to
him.
You are the best judge of whether or not he
is truly developing respect for you and for
your rights. Don’t put anyone else’s
opinions ahead of your own.
Change in an abusive man is not vague; it is
highly specific. Use the information in this
chapter to measure for yourself whether he
is getting down to the real work of change
or whether he is trying to fly by with the
usual nods and winks.
An abusive man won’t change by “working
on his anger,” unless he also does the more
difficult work of changing his entitled
attitudes.
Make your own recovery, and that of your
children, your top priority.
Abusiveness is like poison ivy, with its
extensive and entrenched root system. You
can’t eradicate it by lopping off the
superficial signs. It has to come out by the
roots, which are the man’s attitudes and
beliefs regarding partner relationships.
15
Creating an Abuse-free World
I’ve joined a support group. It feels so good to
talk to people who get it.
I met this guy at work who said that my
partner’s behavior is abuse.
I’m so grateful for my friends and family; they
really have been there for me.
I told my son that the next time he calls a girl
“bitch,” he’s grounded.
My daughter’s teacher asked me if everything is
okay at home. I lied and said, “Yes,” but it’s
actually really nice that somebody noticed.
PART NER ABUSE is a cyclone that leaves a swath of
destruction behind it as it rips through the lives of women
and children: destroyed self-confidence, loss of freedom,
stalled progress, fear, bitterness, economic ruin,
humiliation, heartbreak, physical injury, ugly custody
battles, isolation, wedges driven between mothers and their
children, confusion, mistrust between siblings, secrets, lies.
No woman should have to live this way. Neither should
her children. But there are other lives that are also affected,
because for every abused woman, there are friends and
relatives who suffer, too, from their worry and pain over
what they see happening to her. Some of those who
approach me to share their anguish are men who are
groping desperately for clues to how they can assist their
daughters and sisters and mothers who they see being
sliced to ribbons a day at a time. In fact, it is unusual for
me to talk to anyone, male or female, whose life has not
been saddened at some point by an abusive man.
In recent years, in my public presentations, I have
increasingly addressed the effects on children who are
exposed to partner abuse. While writing this book I spoke
at a training session for police officers, where a young cop
who was built to intimidate—about as wide as he was tall
—came up to me privately during a break and said, “All
this stuff you are talking about went on in my family
growing up. My old man was just like what you describe,
always controlling, scaring everybody. And he drove me
and my mom apart, just like you said. But we all saw
through him when we got older, and me and my mom are
close now.” I told him how happy I was that he had
become a police officer, so that when a family calls for
help, they might be sent a cop who can see through the
children’s eyes and remember that they are victims too.
We all have a stake in ending abuse, if not for ourselves,
then for our loved ones who may be targets or bystanders
or who may find themselves mired in an abusive
relationship someday. Anyone who chooses to can play an
important role in chasing this scourge out of our homes, our
communities, and our nations.
Abuse is a solvable problem. We know where it comes
from; we know why abusers are reluctant to change; and
we know what it takes to make abuse stop. Abusers
specialize in creating mystery and intrigue, but when we
clear the smoke away we are left with an obvious moral
wrong and a straightforward task to set it right. All that is
required is the clarity of our minds and the will of our
communities.
Throughout this book, I have been putting forth my
suggestions to abused women about steps that they can
take to make sense out of what is occurring, to seek safety,
and to set their own healing in motion. I have a few more
words of advice for them, but most of this chapter is
directed at everyone—male or female, survivor of abuse or
not, young or old—who is interested in helping to end
abuse.
WHAT THE ABUSED W O MAN CAN DO
My primary message to you is this: An abuser distorts the
life and mind of his abused partner, so that she becomes
focused on him. The main way out of the abuse vortex,
therefore, is to reorient your thinking so that you devote
your attention to yourself and to your children. I hope this
book has helped to solve some puzzles for you about what
is going on in your partner’s mind. Now see if you can
stop puzzling about him and turn your energy toward
moving yourself forward on your chosen course.
Most of this chapter talks about the ways in which
people can transform the attitudes toward abuse that
prevail in their communities. Please don’t concern yourself
with these suggestions unless you are sure you are ready
for them. If you jump from trying to take care of your own
abusive relationship to trying to take care of other abused
women, you may forget that you deserve caretaking for
yourself. Let other people take on the world for now and
just be the “hero of your own life,” as one book refers to
abused women. Taking action in your community against
the abuse of women may be an empowering and healing
activity for you, but not if you take it on too soon. You’ll
know when you’re ready.
I have woven practical ideas through all of the previous
chapters. I would like to leave you with just a few more
thoughts:
Get support for yourself no matter how.
Find someone somewhere who can
understand what you are going through,
who can be trusted with confidences, and
who can help you hold on to your sense of
reality. Reach out.
Keep a journal to document your
experience, so that when your partner is
making you crazy with mind games or with
sudden “good” behavior, you can look back
through your writings and remember who
you really are and what he really does.
Stay away from people who aren’t good
for you, who don’t understand, who say
things that push you down into self-blame.
Do anything you can think of that’s good
for you, that nurtures your soul. Even
women who have extraordinarily
controlling partners often can find some
ruse that will free them long enough to
work out, take a class, go for a walk, or just
get some time alone to think.
Keep your abusive partner out of your
head as much as you can. Use this book to
help you understand what he is doing;
naming and understanding is power. If you
can understand how he thinks, you can
avoid absorbing his thinking yourself and
prevent him from crawling inside your
head.
Don’t blame yourself when you don’t
reach your goals right away, when, for
instance, you break down and get back
together with him. Just pull yourself
together and try again. You will succeed
eventually, perhaps even on your very next
attempt.
HOW TO SUPPO RT AN ABUSED WO MAN
QUESTION 21:
HO W CAN I hELP MY DAUGHTER,
SISTER, O R FRIEND WHO IS BEING
ABUSED?
If you would like to make a significant difference in the life
of an abused woman you care about, keep the following
principle fresh in your mind: Your goal is to be the
complete opposite of what the abuser is.
THE ABUSER: Pressures her severely SO YOU SHOULD: Be
patient. Remember that it takes time for an abused woman
to sort out her confusion and figure out how to handle her
situation. It is not helpful for her to try to follow your
timetable for when she should stand up to her partner,
leave him, call the police, or whatever step you want her to
take. You need to respect her judgment regarding when she
is ready to take action—something the abuser never does.
THE ABUSER: Talks down to her SO YOU SHOULD: Address
her as an equal. Avoid all traces of condescension or
superior knowledge in your voice. This caution applies just
as much or more to professionals. If you speak to an
abused woman as if you are smarter or wiser than she is, or
as if she is going through something that could never
happen to you, then you inadvertently confirm exactly
what the abuser has been telling her, which is that she is
beneath him. Remember, your actions speak louder than
your words.
THE ABUSER: Thinks he knows what is good for her better
than she does SO YOU SHOULD: Treat her as the expert on
her own life. Don’t assume that you know what she needs
to do. I have sometimes given abused women suggestions
that I thought were exactly right but turned out to be
terrible for that particular situation. Ask her what she
thinks might work and, without pressuring her, offer
suggestions, respecting her explanations for why certain
courses of action would not be helpful. Don’t tell her what
to do.
THE ABUSER: Dominates conversations SO YOU SHOULD:
Listen more and talk less. The temptation may be great to
convince her what a “jerk” he is, to analyze his motives, to
give speeches covering entire chapters of this book. But
talking too much inadvertently communicates to her that
your thoughts are more important than hers, which is
exactly how the abuser treats her. If you want her to value
her own feelings and opinions, then you have to show her
that you value them.
THE ABUSER: Believes he has the right to control her life SO
YOU SHOULD: Respect her right to self-determination. She
is entitled to make decisions that are not exactly what you
would choose, including the decision to stay with her
abusive partner or to return to him after a separation. You
can’t convince a woman that her life belongs to her if you
are simultaneously acting like it belongs to you. Stay by
her even when she makes choices that you don’t like.
THE ABUSER: Assumes he understands her children and their
needs better than she does SO YOU SHOULD: Assume that
she is a competent, caring mother. Remember that there is
no simple way to determine what is best for the children of
an abused woman. Even if she leaves the abuser, the
children’s problems are not necessarily over, and
sometimes abusers actually create worse difficulties for the
children postseparation than before. You cannot help her to
find the best path for her children unless you have a
realistic grasp of the complicated set of choices that face
her.
THE ABUSER: Thinks for her SO YOU SHOULD: Think with
her. Don’t assume the role of teacher or rescuer. Instead,
join forces with her as a respectful and equal team member.
Notice that being the opposite of the abuser does not
simply mean saying the opposite of what he says. If he
beseeches her with, “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me,” and
you stand on the other side badgering her with, “Leave him,
leave him,” she will feel that you’re much like him; you are
both pressuring her to accept your judgment of what she
should do. Neither of you is asking the empowering
question, “What do you want to do?”
DEALING WITH YO UR O WN FRUSTRATIO NS
Because empowerment and recovery for an abused woman
can be a long process, people who want to be there for her
tend to go through periods when their patience wears thin.
They are tempted to aim their frustration at the woman
herself, saying, “Well, if you put such a low value on
yourself as to choose to be abused, I can’t keep hanging
around,” or “If you care about him more than you care
about your children, you’re as sick as he is.” I understand
why you feel irritated, but it doesn’t make sense to put her
down. The message you send with such an outburst is that
you think she is causing herself to be abused, which is just
what the abuser is telling her. And the last thing you want
to do is support his message.
One of the biggest mistakes made by people who wish
to help an abused woman is to measure success by whether
or not she leaves her abusive partner. If the woman feels
unable or unready to end her relationship, or if she does
separate for a period but then goes back to him, people
who have attempted to help tend to feel that their effort
failed and often channel this frustration into blaming the
abused woman. A better measure of success for the person
helping is how well you have respected the woman’s right
to run her own life—which the abusive man does not do—
and how well you have helped her to think of strategies to
increase her safety. If you stay focused on these goals you
will feel less frustrated as a helper and will be a more
valuable resource for the woman.
Here is a mental exercise you can do to help you through
your impatience. Think about your own life for a moment,
and consider some problem that has been difficult for you
to solve. Perhaps you have had difficulty finding a job you
really like; perhaps you have a weight problem or some
other health problem; perhaps you wish to quit smoking;
perhaps you are unhappy in your current relationship or
unhappy being single. Now think about a time when
friends or relatives were jumping in to tell you what you
should do about the challenge facing you. How much did
that help? Did they gloss over the complexities, making
solutions sound simpler than they really are? Did they
become impatient when you were reluctant to take the
steps that they proposed? How did their impatience feel to
you?
Other people’s problems almost always appear simpler
than our own. Sentences that start with “If I were you, I
would…” rarely help. When people start to impose their
solutions on me, for example, I feel the desire to respond:
“If you are such an expert on how I should wend my way
through life’s obstacles, why are there still important
sources of unhappiness in your life? Why haven’t you
made everything perfect for yourself?” No life situation is
as simple as it may appear from the outside.
When your frustration is about to get the best of you,
seek support for yourself. Talk to someone you care about.
Share how painful it is to be unable to instantly pluck the
abused woman from her thorny trap, which of course is
what you wish you could do, as do I. Tell about the rage
you feel toward the man who is abusing her. Then prepare
yourself to go back and be patient and loving with the
woman you are trying to help. Abused women tell me over
and over again that nothing has mattered more to their
progress toward safety and recovery than the love and
support of friends, relatives, and respectful professionals.
One more word of caution: I observe that many people
are eager to find something wrong with an abused woman,
because if they can’t, they are confronted with the
uncomfortable reality that any woman can be abused. The
urge to find fault in her interferes with your ability to help
her—and ultimately colludes with the abusive man.
WHAT IF SHE DO ESN’T BELIEVE SHE IS BEING
ABUSED?
Family and friends of an abused woman sometimes ask me
how they can get her to realize that her partner is an
abuser. They complain: “She always makes excuses for
him. She has these ideas about how to make him get better,
like by helping him find a less stressful job, that obviously
aren’t going to work. And she blames herself, saying that
she’s the one who sets him off a lot of times. She’s in a lot
of denial.”
She may actually be more aware of the abuse than she is
willing to say. Her shame, and her fear that other people
will pressure or criticize her, may make her pretend she
doesn’t see. If she has been with her partner for a long
time, or if he is especially scary or crazy-making, she may
be experiencing traumatic bonding (see Chapter 9). Or she
may believe that her partner is right—that her behavior
really is the root of their difficulties, not his. In any event,
you will not be able to “make her” see her partner’s
abusiveness any more than she can “make him” see it. I
wish I could say otherwise, because I know how difficult it
is for an abused woman’s loved ones to accept the limits on
what they can do.
Here are a few steps you can take, however:
Tell her that you don’t like the way she is
being treated and that you don’t think she
deserves it.
Tell her you love her and that you think
she is a good person.
Ask her to read this book. You also might
hand her one of the other books listed
under “Resources” in the back of this one.
Ask her if she would be willing to make
plans with you for ways to respond to
specific situations of abuse as they arise.
See, for example, if she would agree to call
you the next time her partner starts to yell
at her. Offer to pay for her to spend the
night at a hotel the next time he gets scary.
Ask whether she could make an excuse to
come and visit you on her own for a week
over the summer, so that she might get a
chance to clear her head a bit. You may
think of other alternatives of your own.
If you ever think she is in danger at a
particular moment—if, for example, she
calls you in the midst of violence or threats
—call the police in her area and tell them
what is happening.
Call her or write her often, even if she never
seems to return calls, unless she asks you
not to (which would indicate that he
punishes her for being in contact with
people).
Treat her consistently well. She’ll feel the
difference between what you do and what
he does.
Encourage her to call a program for abused
women “just to talk.” She does not need to
give them her name or her telephone
number, and she doesn’t even have to
believe that she is being abused. She can call
for support and reality checks and just to
describe her struggles in her relationship.
The first call to a women’s program
sometimes breaks the ice so that it gets
easier for her to reach out for help again.
You may wonder why I stated earlier that abuse is a
solvable problem, yet now I am saying that you sometimes
will have to watch and wait. To say that we can end abuse
in our communities does not mean that we can rescue each
individual abused woman right this minute. To help your
friend or relative achieve an abuse-free life may take some
time. To achieve an abuse-free society will take a lot of
effort on many levels, as we will see.
Finally, do yourself one great favor: Read To Be an
Anchor in the Storm, a wonderful book that has been
written precisely for the loved ones of abused women (see
“Resources”) and is filled with wisdom from cover to
cover.
REACHING THE ABUSER
If I were asked to select one salient characteristic of my
abusive clients, an aspect of their nature that stands out
above all the others, I would choose this one: They feel
profoundly justified. Every effort to reach an abuser must
be based on the antidote to this attitude: Abuse is wrong;
you are responsible for your own actions; no excuse is
acceptable; the damage you are doing is incalculable; your
problem is yours alone to solve.
Who has the opportunity to have an impact on an
abuser’s thinking, and what can they do?
FRIENDS AND FAMILY
You are the front line. You have a better chance of turning
around an abuser’s attitude than everyone else—the abused
woman, a therapist, an abuser program, the courts—put
together. You are the hardest ones to discredit. He
dismisses the others on the list with a wave of his hand,
because they are “crazy” or “liars” or “hysterical” or “anti-
male.” But when his loved ones criticize him, he is likely to
experience some uncertainty for the first time.
Here are some guidelines to follow:
1. When someone you care about is accused
of abuse, don’t tell yourself that it can’t
possibly be true. Unfortunately, when an
abuser complains to his relatives in an
outraged voice, “M y partner accuses me
of being abusive,” they generally jump
blindly to his side. They shake their head
in disgust and outrage, and respond:
“How could she say that about you?
What a bitch!” Nobody asks any
questions.
Instead of falling prey to this knee-jerk
reaction, begin by finding out all you can.
What exactly does he do that she finds
abusive? How does she say she is affected
by him? What does she want him to do
differently? He will respond to these
questions by making her sound ridiculous.
He may say, for example, “She says that
if I’m ever grouchy or in a bad mood,
that’s abuse. Every time she doesn’t get
her way, she labels me an abuser.” Keep
pressing him about what her perspective
is. Ask him to give examples of specific
interactions. Refuse to jump on his
bandwagon. Show him that you are
reserving judgment.
Next, have a private conversation with his
partner. Tell her that he has revealed that
she feels abused and that you would like
to know what her concerns are. She may
tell you very little, depending on how
much she feels she can trust you. But if
she does open up, you are likely to find
that she doesn’t come out sounding like a
crazy bully the way he would like you to
believe her to be. When a woman
complains of abuse, the great majority of
the time she has valid and important
complaints about how her partner is
treating her.
2. Don’t repeat to him confidences she has
shared with you unless she gives you clear
permission. You may be persuaded that
he isn’t the type to retaliate, but she
knows better. Ask her which issues or
events are safe for you to bring up with
him and which ones are not. To the extent
that she gives you the go-ahead, press him
to think carefully about her complaints
and to make the improvements in his
behavior that she is requesting.
3. Don’t ignore events you witness directly.
It is awkward to address a loved one’s
conduct toward his partner, but silence
implies acceptance. Talk to each of them
separately, raising your concerns about
his behavior.
4. Follow up, especially with her. Find a
moment to ask her privately whether or
not the problem is persistent, and what
kind of help she could use.
I understand and value the loyalty of family members to
each other. There is a natural temptation to speak out
forcefully against abuse until the man whose behavior is
under the microscope is one of our own, and then we
switch sides. But we can’t have it both ways. Abuse won’t
stop until people stop making exceptions for their own
brothers and sons and friends.
Supporting a woman against a man’s abusiveness does
not necessarily mean taking her side in every conflict in
their relationship. They may have huge issues between
them that are a tangled mess—collisions about finances or
child rearing or choices of friends—in addition to the abuse.
When you challenge a loved one about mistreating his
partner, he will say: “You are siding with her; she’s turned
you against me.” Respond to these distortions by saying:
“I am not against you; I am against your hurtful behavior.
I’m not saying that she’s right about every issue between
you. What I am saying is that you won’t be able to work
out any of those other differences unless you first deal
with your abuse problem. As long as you keep bullying
her, you are the number-one problem.”
Nothing would work faster to end the abuse of women
than having the friends and family of abusive men stop
enabling them. And that begins, in turn, with making sure
that you listen carefully and respectfully to her side of the
story—something the abusive man never does.
THERAPISTS, CLERGYPEO PLE, AND OTHER
COUNSELO RS
While an abused woman may sometimes approach a
counselor and describe her struggle straightforwardly, an
abuser speaks in terms that are less direct. He seeks help
not because he senses that he is abusive but because he is
tired of the tension in his home or is afraid that his
relationship is going to split up. He will not typically
volunteer the fact that he swears, tears his partner down, or
frightens her. If he is physically violent, he will almost
certainly make no spontaneous mention of that fact.
However, he may give various hints. Some common ones
include:
“I have a bad temper, and I lose my cool sometimes.”
“My girlfriend claims that I don’t treat her right.”
“My partner is always making eyes at other men.”
“My wife attacked me, so I had to defend myself, and she
got hurt.”
None of these statements is proof of abuse in itself, but
each one is adequate cause for serious concern and should
be treated as an indication that the counselor needs to ask
many questions about the man’s behavior and his partner’s
perspective.
I recommend that counselors use tremendous caution in
accepting a man’s claim that he has been falsely accused of
abuse or that he is the victim of a violent or controlling
woman. You could easily become an unwitting source of
support and justification for his psychological—or
physical—assaults on his partner. Remain neutral until you
have learned a great deal about his circumstances and
attitudes.
When you are concerned that a man might have an abuse
problem, ask him to talk in detail about his partner’s
perspective and feelings about various aspects of her life,
including her view of conflicts with him. The abuser will
typically have difficulty looking through her eyes with
sympathy and detail, especially with respect to her
grievances against him. The more he ridicules and trivializes
her point of view, the greater reason you have to believe
that the problem lies with him. At the same time, if you
keep asking what she would say, you will find that you
often get critical clues to what his behavior and attitude
problems are.
Whether or not you suspect abuse, it is always valuable
to provide some basic education to any male about partner
abuse. Give some examples of abusive behaviors, describe
their destructive impact on women and children, and
explain that a man is entirely responsible for his own
actions. If you hear him use other people’s behavior as an
excuse for his own or if he blames stress or alcohol, point
out that he is rationalizing his mistreatment of his partner.
If he admits to abuse at any point, encourage him to
contact an abuser program.
POLICE, PRO SECUTO RS, JUDGES, AND
PROBATION OFFICERS
Various guidelines for law enforcement personnel are
included in Chapter 12. I will review just three critical
points here: (1) Abusers need to suffer consequences for
their actions now, not just receive warnings of future
sanctions, which have little impact on abusers. (2) He can’t
overcome his abuse problem by dealing with anything other
than the abuse. Working on stress or anger management,
alcoholism, or relationship dynamics will have little or no
impact on a man’s abusiveness. (3) Criticism from people
in positions of authority can sometimes have the greatest
impact of any fallout that abusers experience. On the other
hand, language from professionals that excuses or
minimizes abuse, or that attributes responsibility partly to
the victim—as in the case of a probation officer who says
to a man: “You and your wife really need to work out your
issues and stop abusing each other”—makes an important
contribution to enabling the abuser.
COMMUNITIES
Any community group or agency can help reach abusive
men by prominently displaying posters against abuse and
disseminating brochures and other literature. Bear in mind
that materials that prominently feature words such as
abuse or violence can be useful in getting the attention of
abused women, but abusers tend to think, That isn’t me
they’re talking to. Instead, use simple questions and
descriptions, such as:
“Do you have a problem with your temper?”
“Has your wife or girlfriend ever complained of being
afraid of you?”
“Do you sometimes swear or call her names?”
“Do you ever blame your behavior on your partner?”
The smaller print should explain that there is no excuse
for a man to insult, frighten, isolate, or lie to his partner,
even if he feels that she does the same things. Descriptions
of laws and potential legal consequences are helpful,
including the fact that he can be arrested for pushing,
poking, restraining, or threatening his partner, even if he
does not hit her. Few men are aware of this possibility, and
abusers are shocked when they get arrested for such
“lower-level” violence. If your area has a high-quality
abuser program include the telephone number, but
remember that few abusers follow through on counseling
unless someone demands it of them. The main purpose of
your posters and pamphlets is to educate abusers and
potential abusers about community values.
An abuser rejects at first what he hears from any of
these sources. But when positive social messages begin to
line up, that’s another matter. I have occasionally had
physically abusive clients, for example, who have been
criticized by the arresting officer, then prosecuted fully,
then criticized by the judge—in addition to having a
sentence imposed—then criticized by the probation officer,
and then finally confronted in an abuser program. This man
may also see a program on television about abuse or read a
pamphlet in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. His own
mother or brother may tell him that he needs to stop
bullying his partner. If all these different voices reinforce
each other, saying that he is responsible for his own
actions, refusing to let him blame the victim, breaking the
silence about the pain he is causing, and insisting that the
responsibility to change rests on his shoulders alone, the
abuser’s vast sense of entitlement starts to shrink. I have
watched it happen. Here is where change can begin.
REMEMBERING THE CHILDREN
Amid the screaming and insults, behind the cascade of
accusations and counteraccusations, lost in our panic as we
see a woman being repeatedly psychologically hammered
or physically beaten, we can forget that the abuser has
other victims too. The children can become invisible. The
police who go on a domestic abuse call sometimes have
been known to forget to even ask whether there are children
in the home. These children recede into the corners, trying
to keep themselves safe, and may remain unnoticed until
they are old enough to try to jump in to protect their
mothers.
As is true with almost every approach to abuse, we
have to begin by breaking the silence. Ask the mother
privately how she feels her children are being affected by
the man’s behavior and by the tension it creates. Does he
abuse her in front of them? How do they react? What are
her concerns about them? What does she feel they need?
(Remember, think with her, not for her.) Break secrecy with
the children as well. Let them know that you are aware of
what is happening and that you care about their feelings.
Ask:
“How are things going at home for you?”
“Is it hard for you when your parents argue?”
“What happens when they get mad at each other?”
“Does anyone at your house ever hurt any one else’s
feelings, or frighten anyone?”
“Would you like to tell me about that?”
Even if the child answers no to all of your inquiries, you
have demonstrated that he or she matters to you and that
you understand that the abuse—without calling it that—
can be hurtful or frightening. Then leave the door open to
future communication by saying: “You can tell me about
your life at home any time you want. It’s okay to talk
about it. Children can get upset sometimes when their
parents argue.”
Notice that I recommend using soft terms that neither
name abuse nor assign responsibility for it until you find
out how much the child knows. This language is important
to avoid alerting children to painful dynamics of which
they may not be aware. This guideline should be reversed,
however, if the child does disclose abuse directly to you or
if you know that he or she has directly witnessed explicit
verbal or physical abuse toward the mother. Then it
becomes important not to use neutral terms; children of
abused women already feel that they themselves and their
mothers are at least partly at fault, and you do not want to
reinforce those hurtful misconceptions. So once the secret
is out, avoid evenhanded language such as the problems
between your parents or the mean things they sometimes do
to each other.
Children do need to hear the following messages:
“It’s not your fault if someone in the family
says mean things or hurts someone.”
“It’s not your mother’s fault if someone
treats her badly.”
“No one should ever blame you for being
mean to you or hurting you.”
“A child can’t really protect his or her
mother, and it isn’t the child’s job.”
The term abuse doesn’t mean anything to children
younger than ten or twelve but may be useful in speaking
with teenagers. In general, descriptions work better than
labels.
If the abuser is the children’s father or father figure, take
particular caution not to speak badly of him as a person
but only to name and criticize his actions. Children do not
want to hear that their dad is mean, selfish, or bad. In cases
where the abuser is dangerous, it is helpful to discuss the
risks with the children, both to help them protect
themselves and to validate their reality. However, even a
violent, dangerous abuser is a human being, and children
tend to be acutely tuned in to the humanity of anyone they
know well. Don’t talk about him as if he were a monster.
You can say, for example, “Your dad has a problem that
makes him unsafe sometimes, doesn’t he?” These are terms
that make sense to children.
Those community members who work with the children
of abused women in a professional capacity, such as
teachers, police officers, therapists, or court employees,
can increase their effectiveness by being sensitive to the
family dynamics that partner abuse creates and by
remembering how manipulative abusers can be. Too many
children of abused women are labeled “ADD” or “ADHD”
and given medication instead of receiving the assistance
they need. Children need us to take an interest in their
predicament, help them to learn positive values, and
support their crucial connection to their mothers.
INFLUENCING YO UR CO MMUNITY’S RESPO NSE
TO ABUSE
One-on-one approaches to overcoming abuse work well
only when the wider community pulls together to create an
environment in which the victims are supported and the
abusers held accountable. You can play a role in making
your community an abuse-free zone, a haven where abused
women know that they can count on complete support and
where abusers know that they will not succeed in gaining
sympathy for their excuses or in avoiding the consequences
of their actions.
Here are just a few of the many steps you can take:
Offer to help your local program for abused
women as a volunteer, fund-raiser, public
speaker, or board member. These programs
are always short of both help and funds,
because the number of abused women
needing assistance is so tragically high.
Many programs offer free or low-cost
training for volunteers.
Get involved with an abuser program if
there is one in your area. You can be trained
to be a counselor for abusers or to be an
advocate for abused women within the
abuser program. Use your influence to
guide the program to keep improving the
support it offers abused women and their
children and the quality of education and
counseling it provides the abusers. If no
local program exists, contact one of the
abuser programs listed in “Resources” in
the back of this book for guidance in
starting one up.
Join or start an organization devoted to
education and activism regarding the abuse
of women. Such groups distribute
literature, hold protests, promote more
effective laws, sponsor artistic projects
related to domestic abuse, and take many,
many other forms of courageous and
creative action to end abuse. Your local
program for abused women may have a
“social action” or similarly named
committee, but efforts to promote social
change are sometimes more effective when
they come out of a separate organization
that is not trying simultaneously to provide
services.
Bring programs into your school system
that teach respect and equality for females
and that make children aware of
relationship abuse.
Join your local domestic abuse task force,
or start one if none exists. An effective task
force (or “roundtable”) includes
representatives from as many community
institutions as possible that deal with
families affected by abuse. Invite
therapists, clergypeople, school personnel,
police, personnel from the district
attorney’s office, and court personnel as
well as staff from programs for abused
women and for abusers. Such task forces
have been multiplying rapidly over the past
ten years, with countless laudable
accomplishments in coordinating services,
launching new programs, and educating the
public.
Help to get services going in your area for
children of abused women, especially
counseling groups. Press therapists who
work with children to educate themselves
on the issue of partner abuse and its effects
on children who are exposed to it.
Participate in public education efforts
regarding the reinjuring of abused women
and their children through custody and
visitation litigation. For more information
on all of these suggestions, see “Resources”
at the back of this book.
Join educational efforts in secondary
schools regarding abuse in teen dating
relationships, in order to stop abuse before
it starts. See the section on teen issues in
“Resources”.)
Advocate for expanded welfare benefits and
other forms of public economic support for
abused women. The cuts in public
assistance over the past decade have often
made it much more difficult for abused
women to leave their partners, especially if
they have children. Women can’t leave
abusive men if they are economically
trapped.
Protest TV and print media portrayals that
glorify abuse and sexual assault or that
blame victims, including news coverage.
If you are a former abused woman who is
no longer with her abuser, consider telling
your story in public. There is a tremendous
need for women who have had personal
experience with abuse to go to social
service agencies, schools, police
departments, and other groups and help
people to grasp more deeply what abuse
looks like and what tremors it sends
through so many lives. I have often seen
professionals and other community
members transformed by hearing the
account of a real-life woman who has lived
with psychological or physical assault.
Support women who are survivors of abuse
to take leadership in your community, and
make sure that they are represented on all
task forces and policy-making bodies
addressing domestic abuse.
CHANGING THE C ULTURE
Abuse is the product of a mentality that excuses and
condones bullying and exploitation, that promotes
superiority and disrespect, and that casts responsibility on
to the oppressed. All efforts to end the abuse of women
ultimately have to return to this question: How do we
change societal values so that women’s right to live free of
insults, invasion, disempowerment, and intimidation is
respected?
One way is simply to declare out loud to people in your
life that women have these rights unconditionally. M uch of
modern society remains regrettably unclear on this point. I
still hear: “Well, he shouldn’t have called her a ‘slut,’ but
she did dance all night with another man.” I hear: “He did
keep hassling her at her job even when she told him to stay
away, but he was heartbroken over their breakup.” I hear:
“He did use some force in having sex with her, but she had
really led him on to believe that they were going all the way
that night.” You can influence your friends, your religious
group, your bowling club, your relatives by having the
courage to stand up and say: “Abuse of a woman is wrong
—period.”
Next, put on pressure against songs, videos, “humor,”
and other media that aid and abet abusers. The flood of
complaints regarding Eminem’s Grammy award succeeded
in pressuring CBS to run a public-service announcement
about domestic abuse during the broadcast and led the
Grammy’s president to read an antiviolence statement from
the podium. A stream of complaints flowed into Simon &
Schuster for distributing a video game in which the object
was for the male character to successfully rape a female,
who was a tied-up Native American woman. When the
public decries the cultural agents that teach or excuse abuse,
the culture receives another strong push in the right
direction.
Refuse to go along with jokes that insult or degrade
women. If you are a man, your refusal to fall in step with
destructive jokes and comments can be especially
powerful. When someone tells you, “It’s just a joke,”
answer by asking, “How do you think an abuser reacts
when he hears this joke? Do you think it helps him realize
the harm he is doing? Or do you think that his sense of
justification gets even more solid than it was?”
Encourage the women in your life—your friends, sisters,
mothers, daughters—to insist on dignity and respect, to
have faith in themselves, to be proud. Expect boys and men
to be respectful, kind, and responsible, and don’t settle for
less. Again, men have a particularly important role to play
in cultural change. When a father tells his son, “I don’t
want to hear you saying bad things about girls,” or “No,
I’m not going to let you have a ‘boys only’ birthday party,
that’s prejudiced,” the boy sits up and takes notice. The
“Resources” section includes some organizations that are
particularly involved in helping men take leadership against
the abuse of women. Vocal leadership by men makes it
much more difficult for abusers to claim that the battle over
abuse is one between men and women rather than between
abusers and everyone else.
Finally, promote alternatives to abuse and oppression
by recognizing how intertwined different forms of abuse
and mistreatment are. The opposite of arrogantly defining
reality is listening respectfully to each person’s
perspective. The opposite of placing yourself above other
people is seeing them as equals. The opposite of
establishing a hierarchy in which the top few people lounge
comfortably while everyone else gets squashed is sharing
resources. The opposite of madly scrambling to the top,
whether it’s the top of the corporate ladder, the top of the
softball league, or the top of the household pecking order,
is building communities devoted to cooperation and
support, where everyone wins. To consider a world
without relationship abuse is to open up to even more
profound possibilities, to the potential for human beings to
live in harmony with each other and with their natural
environment.
Anger and conflict are not the problem; they are normal
aspects of life. Abuse doesn’t come from people’s inability
to resolve conflicts but from one person’s decision to claim
a higher status than another. So while it is valuable, for
example, to teach nonviolent conflict-resolution skills to
elementary school students—a popular initiative nowadays
—such efforts contribute little by themselves to ending
abuse. Teaching equality, teaching a deep respect for all
human beings—these are more complicated undertakings,
but they are the ones that count.
Some people may feel that I am unrealistic to believe in
a world that is free of abuse. But words like unrealistic,
naive, and impractical come from voices of superiority
who use them as put-downs to get people to stop thinking
for themselves. Abuse does affect us all. If you haven’t
been involved with an abusive partner yourself, even if no
woman that you love has ever suffered chronic
mistreatment, the quality of your life is still dragged down,
your horizons still circumscribed, by the existence of abuse
and the culture that drives it. The voice of abuse takes so
many different forms. You can hear it each time a child’s
dreams are shot down by an adult who thinks he or she
knows it all. It rings in the ears of anyone who has ever
been ridiculed for crying. It echoes through the mind of
each person who has dared to put a name to his or her own
mistreatment, or to the cruelty directed toward someone
else, and then has been derided with stinging words such as
sissy or mama’s boy or hysterical or thousands of others.
If you choose to believe that your life could be free of
abuse, or that the whole world could be, you will be
taunted by similar voices, some originating inside your own
head. Some people feel threatened by the concept that
abuse is a solvable problem, because if it is, there’s no
excuse for not solving it. Abusers and their allies are
reluctant to face up to the damage they have done, make
amends, and live differently in the future, so they may
choose to insult those who address the problem of abuse.
But the taunts and invalidation will not stop you, nor will
they stop the rest of us, because the world has come too
far to go back. There are millions of people who have taken
stands against partner abuse across the globe and are now
unwilling to retreat, just like the woman who gets a taste of
life without the abuser and then can’t live under his control
anymore, because the taste of freedom and equality is too
sweet.
KEY PO INTS TO REMEMBER
Once we tear the cover of excuses,
distortions, and manipulations off of
abusers, they suddenly find abuse much
harder to get away with.
If Mothers Against Drunk Driving can
change the culture’s indifference to alcohol-
related automotive deaths, we can change
the culture’s attitude toward partner abuse.
Everyone has a role to play in ending
abuse.
If you are trying to assist an abused
woman, get help and support for yourself
as well (see “Resources”).
All forms of chronic mistreatment in the
world are interwoven. When we take one
apart, all the rest start to unravel as well.
Resources
BELOW YOU WILL FIND a wide collection of books,
videos, websites, and organizations. These resources offer
support, guidance, and inspiration to abused women, to
loved ones wishing to help them, and to community
members interested in addressing the wider problem of
abuse and violence in our society. M any of the resources
listed below refer to physical violence in their titles or
descriptions, but they are nonetheless all relevant to
women who have experienced verbal, economic, or sexual
coercion by a partner, regardless of whether actual assaults
or threats have been involved. If you do not have Web
access and are interested in pursuing some of the Internet
resources listed here, try your public library—many
libraries offer free time on computers connected to the
Internet.
FO R W O MEN O F ALL BAC KGRO UNDS
National Domestic Violence Hotline for the
United States and Canada: 1-800-799-
SAFE.
Call this number to receive a referral to the closest
hotline in your area for abused women. The use of this
number is not restricted to women who have experienced
physical violence: Women and teens are welcome to call
with any issue regarding verbal abuse or control in a
relationship, or just because something is happening in
their relationship that is making them uncomfortable.
Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network
Hotline (Rain): 1-800-656-4673.
Call this number if you have been sexually assaulted or
sexually abused by your partner or ex-partner (or by
anyone else), and you will be connected immediately to the
sexual assault hotline closest to you.
When Love Goes Wrong: What to Do When
You Can’t Do Anything Right, by Ann
Jones and Susan Schechter
(HarperPerennial).
This is the essential book for women who are seeking
guidance on how to cope with a controlling partner and
how to move toward freedom and recovery. It is practical,
down-to-earth, and accurate, and it covers in detail a wide
range of issues that women face.
It’sMyLife Now: Starting Over After an
Abusive Relationship or Domestic Violence,
by Meg Kennedy Dugan and Roger Hock
(Routledge).
Despite the title, this book is equally valuable for
women who are still involved with an angry or controlling
partner and for those who have left. This is a wonderful,
warm, compassionate book by authors who deeply
understand both emotional and physical abuse.
The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to
Recognize It and How to Respond, by
Patricia Evans (Bob Adams).
Evans’s book takes the reader through the details of
verbally abusive tactics in relationships, and it explains
how to understand their effects on you. The author offers
terrific insight and practical advice. (The book contains a
couple of the common misconceptions about the
psychology of abusers, but this is a very minor drawback
compared to its many strengths.)
Into the Light: A Guide for Battered
Women, by Leslie Cantrelli (Chas. Franklin
Press).
This booklet is short and simple, with accurate
information and good advice. This is a great resource for a
woman who does not have the time or energy for the longer
books listed above, or who wants to have quick inspiration
handy.
Not to People Like Us: Hidden Abuse in
Upscale Marriages, by Susan Weitzman
(Basic Books).
A valuable exposé of abuse among the wealthy, with
important guidance for abused women. Weitzman’s
descriptions of abusive men are accurate and helpful
(though a couple of the myths slip in). I recommend this
book highly.
FO R TEENAGERS AND THEIR PARENTS
What Parents Need to Know About Dating
Violence, by Barrie Levy and Patricia
Occhiuzzo Giggam (Seal Press).
The essential book for parents who are concerned that
their daughters or sons may be involved in abusive dating
relationships. Compassionate, insightful, and highly
practical, written by people who grasp the wide range of
anxieties and challenges that parents face.
In Love and Danger—A Teen’s Guide to
Breaking Free of Abusive Relationships, by
Barrie Levy (Seal Press).
A guide for the teenager herself in responding to an
abusive or controlling partner, written in just the right tone
and language to reach adolescents—an excellent book. It’s
out of print, so look for it used or at the library, or try to
find it online.
FO R W O MEN O F CO LO R
Chain Chain Change: For Black Women in
Abusive Relationships, by Evelyn C. White
(Seal Press).
This excellent book remains the key reading resource for
any African American woman who is involved with a
controlling or abusive partner. It provides general
information combined with guidance that is specific to the
black woman’s experience, and it includes a section that
speaks to abused black lesbians.
Mejor Sola Que Mal Acompañada: For the
Latina in an Abusive Relationship, by
Myrna Zambrano (Seal Press).
Zambrano’s book for Latina women in abusive
relationships is available in a bilingual edition, making it
readable for women who use either Spanish or English as
their primary language. This excellent resource speaks to
the cultural context in which Latinas live, and it offers
specific validation and recommendations.
Black Eyes All of the Time: Intimate
Violence, Aboriginal Women, and the
Justice System, by Anne M cGillivray and
Brenda Comaskey (University of Toronto).
The experience of abused indigenous (native) women is
told largely in their own voices in this wonderful and
groundbreaking volume. Although there are a few portions
where the writers use some difficult academic language, the
great majority of the book is highly accessible and moving.
Mending the Sacred Hoop
202 E. Superior St.
Duluth M N 55802
(218) 722-2781 www.duluth-model.org,
then select “M ending the Sacred Hoop”
This project of Minnesota Program Development
focuses on addressing the abuse of women in tribal
cultures.
Institute on Domestic Violence in the
African American Community
University of M innesota School of Social
Work
290 Peters Hall
1404 Gortner Ave.
St. Paul MN 55108-6142
(877) 643-8222 www.dvinstitute.org
This organization’s website includes resources for
abused women themselves, while also reaching out to
policy makers, researchers, and other concerned
community members.
National Latino Alliance for the Elimination
of Domestic Violence
P.O. Box 22086
Ft. Washington Station
New York NY 10032
(646) 672-1404 www.dvalianza.org
Mostly oriented toward research and policy. Extensive
listings.
Asian and Pacific Islander Institute on
Domestic Violence
942 Market St., Suite 200
San Francisco CA 94102
(415) 954-9964
www.apiahf.org, then select “Programs,”
then select the Institute.
FO R LESBIANS
Naming the Violence: Speaking Out About
Lesbian Battering, edited by Kerry Lobel
(Seal Press).
Regrettably, this 1986 book is out of print, but you can
find it through a library, a used-book store, or online. The
personal stories of many abused lesbians are shared here to
help you to identify the problem and know that you are
not alone.
Woman-to-Woman Sexual Violence: Does
She Call It Rape?, by Lori Girshick
Northeastern University Press).
With the stories of survivors of sexual assaults by same-
sex partners woven through, this book reports on an
important survey and helps bring to light a seldom-
examined aspect of intimate partner abuse.
Lesbians Talk: Violent Relationships, by
Joelle Taylor and Tracy Chandler (Scarlet
Press).
This is a short book that draws from the voices of
women themselves to describe the problem of abuse in
lesbian relationships and offers solutions.
Same-Sex Domestic Violence: Strategies for
Change, by Beth Leventhal and Sandra
Lundy (Sage Publications).
This well-written and insightful book offers guidance to
community members who want to address the needs of
abused lesbians and gay men, explaining the structuring of
service provision and the overcoming of institutional
barriers.
On the Web, try going to Gayscape and
doing a search for “domestic violence”—
many listings are available for
organizations, publications, and websites.
FO R IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE WO MEN
Family Violence Prevention Fund
383 Rhode Island St., Suite 304
San Francisco CA 94103-5133
(415) 252-8900
www.endabuse.org, then select “Immigrant
Women,” then select “Help Is
Available”
FVPF helps abused immigrant women to get information
about their rights and options and to find referrals to
programs in their area.
NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund
Immigrant Women’s Project
1522 K St., NW, Suite 550
Washington DC 20005
(202) 326-0040
www.nowldef.org, then select “Issues,”
then select “Immigrant Women”
National Lawyers Guild
National Immigration Project
14 Beacon St., Suite 602
Boston M A 02108 617) 227-9727
www.nlg.org, then select “National
Immigration Project,” then select
“Domestic Violence”
ABO UT CHILDREN O F ABUSED WO MEN
Childhood Experiences of Domestic
Violence, by Caroline McGee (Jessica
Kingsley).
Although this is a professional book, it is very readable
and compassionate. McGee understands the challenges an
abused mother faces. Told largely in the words of mothers
and children themselves, this is the single best introduction
I have found to the experiences of children exposed to an
abusive man, with extensive guidance for how to effectively
assist them to safety and recovery.
The Batterer as Parent: Addressing the
Impact of Domestic Violence on Family
Dynamics, by Lundy Bancroft and Jay
Silverman (Sage Publications).
Although this professional book focuses on physically
abusive men, the great majority of what we cover applies
to verbally abusive and controlling men as well. We explain
how an abusive man can affect the relationships between a
mother and her children and between siblings, and how
abusers may try to continue their control through the
children postseparation. Abused mothers, including those
involved in the family court system, report finding this
book both validating and helpful.
Children Who See Too Much: Lessons
From the Child Witness to Violence Project,
by Betsy M cAlister Groves (Beacon
Press).
This book is for parents or professionals who are
assisting children who have been exposed to serious
physical violence, including domestic violence, to help
them understand children’s emotional reactions and their
recovery needs. It is brief but very clear and helpful.
ABO UT CHILD CUSTO DY, DIVO RCE, AND CHILD
SUPPO RT
Resource Center on Domestic Violence:
Child Protection and Custody, operated by
the National Council of Juvenile and
Family Court Judges. 1-800-527-3223.
The Resource Center offers a free packet of information
for abused women in custody and visitation litigation. It
does not become involved in specific cases or provide legal
advice. The Center also offers a book called Managing Your
Divorce that helps women prepare for the process of
resolving child custody, visitation, and child support.
Women and Children Last: Custody
Disputes and the Family “Justice” System,
by Georgina Taylor, Jan Barnsley, and
Penny Goldsmith of the Vancouver (BC)
Custody and Access Support and
Advocacy Association.
This excellent book prepares abused mothers for the
difficult emotional and legal challenges of family court
litigation, to help increase their ability to keep their
children safe and maintain custody. Advocates and
concerned community members can also benefit from the
explanations of how the family court system works and
why abused women can find the environment so hostile.
(For ordering information, call Vancouver Status of Women
at (604) 255-6554.)
The Battered M others Testimony Project:
A Human Rights Report on Child Custody
and Domestic Violence.
This activist project interviewed forty abused women
about their experiences of being revictimized by family
courts through the abuser’s use of custody and visitation
litigation, and also interviewed numerous judges, custody
evaluators, and advocates. The project report, which
exposes these systemic abuses as violations of women’s
internationally recognized human rights, is available from:
Publication Office, Wellesley Centers for Women,
Wellesley College, (781) 283-2510, or at
www.wcwonline.org.
Small Justice: Little Justice in America’s
Family Courts,” a video by Garland Waller
of Boston University.
This one-hour video documents three cases in which
abused women faced systematic mistreatment by family
courts as they attempted to protect their children from
domestic violence and sexual abuse. This well-made and
carefully researched film is an important resource for
community members working for court reforms. (Available
from Intermedia, 1-800-553-8336)
Divorced from Justice: The Abuse of
Women and Children by Divorce Lawyers
and Judges, by Karen Winner (Regan
Books).
This is another book that is out of print, but you can
find it at libraries, used-book stores, or online. The stories
are painful ones, and this makes the book heavy reading,
but Winner offers crucial advice to women and to anyone
who is trying to help them, and she also gives important
suggestions to people interested in working for court
reform.
The Hostage Child: Sex Abuse Allegations
in Custody Disputes, by Leora Rosen and
Michelle Etlin (Indiana University Press).
An eye-opening education for people interested in
working toward family court reform, this book documents
the obstacles that abused women can encounter while
attempting to protect their children from abuse, even in
cases where extensive evidence exists. (I don’t recommend
this book for abused women to read themselves if they are
currently involved in litigation—it’s very frightening, and
most cases don’t go as badly as the ones presented here.)
National Child Support Enforcement
Association
444 North Capitol St., Suite 414
Washington DC 20001-1512
(202) 624-8180 www.ncsea.org
NCSEA provides information on child support
collection, with links to specific child support resources in
your geographical area.
FO R MO THERS O F SEXUALLY ABUSED C HILDREN
A Mother’s Nightmare—Incest: A Practical
Legal Guide for Parents and Professionals,
by John E. B. Myers (Sage Publications).
Written by a smart and compassionate attorney, this is a
critical book for any woman who has reason to suspect
that her child has been sexually abused by the child’s father
or stepfather, whether or not the child has explicitly
disclosed.
ABO UT GENERAL PARENTING ISSUES
The books listed in this section are general parenting
guides, full of tremendous practical help and insight. I have
found all of these titles to be terrific. However, two words
of caution: First, these books tend not to address the
impact on children of exposure to a man who abuses their
mother, including the role that abuse plays in as much as
half of divorces. Second, with the exception of Real Boys,
these books do not offer detailed guidance to parents who
have a gay or lesbian teen (though Reviving Ophelia
touches on the issue briefly).
You can also find additional parenting resources in your
phone book, such as parental stress hotline numbers,
Parent’s Anonymous, and various kinds of parent
education classes, or do an Internet search for “Parent
Education.”
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen
So Kids Will Talk, by Adele Faber and
Elaine Mazlish (Avon).
Siblings Without Rivalry, by Adele Faber
and Elaine Mazlish (Avon).
The Courage to Raise Good Men, by Olga
Silverstein and Beth Rashbaum (Penguin).
Consider this book a must read for any
parent of a son, especially if that son has
been exposed to a man who mistreats the
son’s mother.
Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of
Adolescent Girls, by M ary Pipher
(Grosset/Putnam).
Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the
Myths of Boyhood, by William Pollack
(Random House).
How to Mother a Successful Daughter, by
Nicky M arone (Three Rivers).
How to Father a Successful Daughter, by
Nicky M arone (Fawcett Crest).
FO R W O MEN INVO LVED WITH LAW
ENFO RCEMENT O FFICERS
Spouse Abuse by Law Enforcement
(SABLE)
Life Span
P.O. Box 445
Des Plaines IL 60016
(847) 824-0382 www.policedv.com
SABLE offers a booklet called Police Domestic Violence:
A Handbook for Victims for $5 (including shipping) from
the above address.
FO R W O MEN IN FAITH CO MMUNITIES
Minnesota Center Against Violence and
Abuse
www.mincava.umn.edu, then select “Faith
Response”
This website offers many readings and resources
regarding the abuse of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic
women, and a collection of interfaith writings and
organizations. A terrific resource for women whose
spiritual or religious involvement is an important part of
their lives.
Keeping the Faith: Guidance for Christian
Women Facing Abuse, by M arie Fortune
(Harper San Francisco).
Fortune offers clarity, advice, and validation, along with
new interpretations of scriptural texts, to help abused
Christian women escape entrapment and draw strength
from their spiritual beliefs. (I am not currently aware of
similar books for women of other faiths, but you may find
one, as new resources on abuse appear every day.) ABO UT
ABUSIVE MEN
The organizations listed here offer literature, videos, and
training for people interested in starting or improving
counseling programs for men who abuse women.
Emerge: Counseling and Education to End
Domestic Violence
2380 Massachusetts Ave., Suite 101
Cambridge MA 02140
(617) 547-9879
www.emergedv.com
Domestic Abuse Intervention Project
206 West Fourth St.
Duluth M N 55806
(218) 722-2781
www.duluth-model.org
FO R THO SE ASSISTING ABUSED WO MEN
To Be an Anchor in the Storm: A Guide for
Families and Friends of Abused Women, by
Susan Brewster (Ballantine Books).
An outstandingly caring, practical, and wise book for the
loved ones of an abused woman. If you are trying to assist
a woman who is in a bad relationship, read this book. It
will help you to feel better and make you a much more
effective helper. (However, one word of caution: A section
at the end of the book on reporting child abuse contains
information that I find ill-advised. Before you involve child
protective services with a mother you care about, call a
program for abused women in your area and seek advice
about whether and how to make a child-abuse report.)
Safety Planning with Battered Women, by
Jill Davies, Eleanor Lyon, and Diane
Monti-Catania (Sage Publications).
This is a professional book, but it is very readable and
helpful for anyone who wants to understand what is really
involved when a woman is considering leaving an abusive
partner, and it provides guidance for how to help a woman
be safer even if she can’t leave or doesn’t want to. The
authors talk about much more than just safety planning—
they address the full range of practical realities that abused
women face in a way that I have found in no other book.
Trauma and Recovery, by Judith Herman
(Basic Books).
Dr. Herman’s book is the bible of trauma, especially for
those kinds of traumatic experiences for which the society
tends to blame the victim or deny the reality of her/his
experience. An outstandingly brilliant work.
ABO UT O VERC O MING PARTNER ABUSE IN
CO MMUNITIES
National Coalition Against Domestic
Violence
1532 16th St., NW
Washington DC 20036
(202) 745-1211
www.ncadv.org
Join this organization to support policy and service
development to benefit abused women and their children
NCADV also has various resources that you can order (at a
discount if you are a member) and listings of other sources
of information.
Next Time She’ll Be Dead: Battering and
How to Stop It, by Ann Jones (Beacon
Press).
This terrific work elucidates the cultural influences and
institutional actions that support abuse and gives to-the-
point suggestions for concerned community members on
how to end the abuse of women.
Rural Woman Battering and the Justice
System: An Ethnography, by Neil Webs-
dale (Sage Publications).
This excellent book describes the special challenges
faced by abused women who live far from large population
centers, who may be very isolated and may face local
communities that are not supportive of escaping abuse.
Groundbreaking and insightful, with concrete strategies for
how agencies and institutions can better serve abused
women in rural areas.
Coordinating Community Responses to
Domestic Violence: Lessons from the
Duluth Model, edited by M elanie Shepard
and Ellen Pence (Sage Publications).
Detailed guidance on how to draw from the United
States’s premier model of collaborative work in
communities to assist abused women, hold abusers
accountable, and change community values about partner
abuse.
Pornography: The Production and
Consumption of Inequality, by Gail Dines,
Robert Jensen, and Ann Russo (Routledge).
This highly readable book provides the most reasonable
and persuasive explanations that I have encountered of how
pornography can shape men’s ways of perceiving and
interacting with women, and of the various excuses that
groups and individuals use to avoid looking at the damage
that pornography can do.
Dream Worlds II,” a video by the Media
Education Foundation.
This powerful and disturbing video reveals the attitudes
toward women that are taught by today’s music videos.
Available from MEF, 26 Center St., Northampton M A
01060, 1-800-897-0089, www.mediaed.org.
“Tough Guise,” a video by the Media
Education Foundation.
This widely acclaimed video created by Jackson Katz
shows how popular portrayals of masculinity force boys
and men into unhealthy roles and teach males to be abusive
toward females. (See ordering information under previous
listing.)
Transforming Communities
734 A St.
San Rafael CA 94901-3923 (415) 457-2464
www.transformcommunities.org
Transforming Communities has a tremendous collection
of resources and ideas for how to combat the abuse of
women and children.
FO R MALE ALLIES
Many opportunities exist for men who want to be
active in stopping the abuse of women, and more appear
every day. Below are just a few examples.
Men Overcoming Violence
1385 Mission St., Suite 300
San Francisco CA 94103
(415) 626-MOVE [6683]
www.menovercomingviolence.org
Public speakers, counseling groups, and opportunities
for activism.
Men Can Stop Rape
P.O. Box 57144
Washington DC 20037
(202) 265-6530
www.mencanstoprape.org
MCSR describes its mission as being “to promote
gender equity and build men’s capacity to be strong
without being violent.” M any programs, including outreach
to youth and education on teen-dating violence.
Family Violence Prevention Fund
www.endabuse.org
Information is available on the FVPF website about their
program “Coaching Boys Into M en” (with a brochure that
you can download), and a new initiative for reaching out to
boys called “Teach Early” has recently been launched. (The
FVPF website is also full of information and resources on
many aspects of partner abuse, including guidebooks for
health-care providers and many other materials.)
Men’s Initiative for Jane Doe
14 Beacon St., Suite 507
Boston M A 02108
(617) 248-0922
www.menscampaign.org
A new project that offers various ideas for how men can
get involved as allies to abused women.
You can also visit the Campus Outreach Services
website at www.campusoutreachservices.com: go to
“Resources,” and then select “Men Against Violence
Against Women Organizations,” and you will be provided
with descriptions and links for twenty different men’s
groups around the country that are focused on stopping the
abuse of women.
Index
Abandonment, fear of
Abused women
and abuser’s change of behavior
arrest of
counselors and
denial of abuse
social views of
support for
resources
See also Women Abuse-free environment
Abuse of women
physical
psychological Abusers
and addiction
allies of
and arguments
arrest of
tactics after
breaking up with
brief separations
change of behavior
child abuse by
counseling of
resources
ending of relationship
leaving safely
and legal system
as parents
and pornography
as role models
and sex
traumatic bonding with types of
Demand Man
Drill Sergeants
mentally ill or addicted
Mr. Right
Mr. Sensitive
Players
Rambo
Terrorists
Victims
Water Torturer
See also Abused women; Abusive behavior Abusive
behavior
addiction and
benefits of
conciousness of
development of
ending of
respect and
violent
See also Change of behavior Abusive men. See Abusers
Accountability for actions
Accounts of abuse, differing
Accusations, distorted
Addiction
of abused women
as excuse for abuse
to sex
Admission of abuse
Advocates for abused women
self as
Aggression
reversal into self-defense Aggressive personality, as
excuse Alcohol, and abusive behavior
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)
Alcoholism
recovery from, and partner abuse
See also Addiction Allies of abusive men
Anger
at counseling program
denial of
of women
abusive men and Anti-abuse movement, men in
Anti-female attitudes of boys
Antisocial personality disorder Apologies
insincere
Arguments
Arrests of abusers, tactics after Attachment, intimacy and
Attention, abusive men and
Attitudes
change of
contradictory
negative, toward women Attorneys, abuse of power by
Authoritarian behavior
Authoritarian parents
Authority:
challenge to, anger seen as
parental
Batterers Anonymous groups
Battering men
and child abuse
See also Abusers; Physical violence Bedtime for
Francis, Hoban Behavior, feelings and
See also Abusive behavior; Change of behavior Beliefs
contradictory Benefits of abusive behavior
Blame, shifting of
abusers as role models
for breakup of relationship
among family members
to mother of abuser “T he Boiler T heory of Men,”
Boss, abusive
employees of Boys, socialization of
Breaking up with abusers
Brewster, Susan, To Be an Anchor in the Storm Brief
separations, abusers and Bullying behavior
Caretaking, sense of entitlement to Carrey, Jim
Change of behavior
abuser’s outlook on
assessment of
and benefits of abuse
context for
illusions of
predictions of
psychotherapy and
steps to
substance abuse and Child abuse
Childhood abuse of abuser, myth of Children:
of abused women
fathers as role models
and parents’ breakup
services for
abuse of women and
abusive fathers viewed by
of abusive parents
control of mother through
rights of
Chronic abuse
Chronic anger
Chronic infidelity
Clay, Andrew Dice
Clergypeople, and change of abusers Collective punishment
Color, women of, abuse of
Commitment to change
Community:
and abusive behavior
and change of abusers
support for abused women Complaints, discrediting of
Computer games, and abuse of women Conflict, abusive men
and
between women
verbal
Confrontation, abuser programs and Confusion tactics
Conscience
Consequences of actions
and change of behavior Contempt for women
Contrasting behaviors, public and private Control
financial
loss of
as excuse for abuse
of partner’s thinking
sexual relationships and
tactics of
in arguments
vulnerability and Controlling behavior
abusers as role models
excuses for
extreme
parenting and Conversational control
Counseling:
of abusers
for children Couples therapy
Courts
and abused women
and abusers
Criticism
abusers and
Cultural differences in abuse
Culture
and abuse of women
change of
Custody disputes
Custody evaluators
abuse of power Cycles of behavior
Daily life, abusive men in
Danger signs of violence
Daughters of abusers
See also Children Decision-making, abusive control of
Deference, entitlement to
Defining reality
Degradation of women, pornographic Demanding men
Denial of abuse
by victim
Denial of the obvious
Depersonalization of women
pornography as Derision
Devaluation of partner’s labor Discrediting of partner
Discrimination
violence against women as Disrespect of women
Distorted thinking
District attorneys
Divisive tactics
Divorce, abuse of women and
Domestic abuse:
family courts and
social support for
See also Abused women; Abusers; Abusive behavior
Domestic abuse task forces
Domestic-violence specialists
Domination, sexual
Double bind, abused mothers in Double standards
Doubt of self
Early warnings of abusive behavior Economic abuse, addiction
as
Economic exploitation of women Education about abuse
Emerge program
Eminem
Emotional abuse
of children
Emotional caretaking, entitlement to Emotional problems
Emotions:
as excuse for abuse
suppression of Empathy
lack of
Employees, of abusive boss
Employers, abuse of power by
Entertainment industry, and abuse of women Entitlement
addiction and
arguments and
and breaking up
and change of behavior
conscience and
fathers as role models
to forgiveness
and jealousy
parenting and
remorse and
sexual relationships and Environment, abuse-free
Escalation of abuse
Escape from abusive relationships
See also Breaking up with abusers Ethnic differences in
abuse
Excuses for abuse
aggressive personality
alcohol
anger
cultural differences in
cultural influences as
discrimination
fear of intimacy and abandonment
hatred of women
interpersonal skill deficits
job stresses loss of control
low self-esteem
mental illness
self-defense
strong feelings
victim status Expectations, unrealistic
Explanations for abuse, mythology of
abused men
abuser as victim
aggressive personality
alcoholism
anger
childhood abuse of abuser
depth of feeling
discrimination
fear of intimacy
hatred of women
job stresses loss of control
low self-esteem
mental illness
mistreatment by previous partner
skill deficits
suppression of emotions Exploitation of women,
economic, sexual Externalization of responsibility,
parenting and
Fairy tales, and abuse of women False allegations of domestic
violence Families of abusive men
and change of behavior
decisions in
divisions in Family court, abusive men and
Fantasies, romantic, of abusive men Fathers, abusers as
children’s views of
and disrespect for women Favoritism
Favors, excessive
Fear, abused women and
Feelings
as excuse for abuse Financial control
Financial imbalance in custody disputes Flirtatious behavior
Forgiveness, demands for
Former partners, warning signs Forward, Susan, Men Who
Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them Freedom,
personal, interference with Freud, Sigmund
Friends
of abused women
and change of behavior Frustrations, taken out on
partners Fundamentalist religious groups
Games, sexual
Gay men
negative attitudes toward women Generosity, excessive
“Gentle man” style of abuser
Girls, socialization of
Good times between abusive episodes Grievances, cultivation
of
Group counseling, for children Guilt feelings, abusers and
Guns ’n’ Roses
Hatred of women, as excuse for abuse Help for abused women
resources
See also Hotlines for abused women Herman, Judith,
Traum a and Recovery Hoban, Russel, Bedtime for
Francis Home, abusive attitudes learned in Homicide
breakup and
Homosexuality
Hotlines for abused women
when to call Household responsibilities
Human rights
Immigrant women, resources
Incest
Indebtedness, creation of
Independence, interference with Ineffective abuser programs
Infidelity
Informational support for abuse Internet, and pornography
Interpersonal skill deficit
Interpretations, twisted
Intimacy:
fear of
as excuse for abuse
loss of
Intimidation
Irresponsibility
Isolation
Jail sentences for abusers
Jealousy
sexual
unreasonable Job stresses, as excuse for abuse Joint
custody, myth of
Judges
and change of behavior Justifications
cultural differences
for double standards
Kindness, unpredictable, by abusers
Labor, uncompensated, by partner Laws, and abuse of women
Learning of abusive behavior
Legal representation
Legal system
abusive men and Leisure gained by abusive behavior
Lesbians, resources for
Lie-detector tests
Losses, abusive behavior and
Loss of control
Love
abuse and
Lying by abusers
after breakup
in custody disputes
denial of abusive behavior
to police
Male domination of legal system Manipulative behavior
abusers as role models
and change
and child abuse
legal system and
parenting and
responses to possible breakup
substance abuse and
with woman’s relatives Marijuana, and abusive behavior
Media, and abuse of women
Mediating the intimacy
Medication, abusive men and
Men:
abused by women, myth of
abusive. See Abusers
non-abusive
Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them,
Forward Mental cruelty. See Psychological abuse Mental
illness
Mentality, abusive
Mind of partner, control of
Minimization of abuse
Misdirection of attention
Mistreatment by previous partner, myth of Money, problems
of
Mood changes
Morality, and loss of control
Mother, blaming of, by abusive men Mother-child
relationships
See also Children, of abused mothers
Mothers, abused, social views
See also Abused women; Women Motivation for
behavior change Movies, and abuse of women
Murder of women by partners
postseparation Music videos, and abuse of women
Mythology, of abusers
Narcissistic personality disorder Needs, emotional,
entitlement and Negative attitudes toward women Neutrality,
myth of
New partners of abusive men
Non-abusive men
Objectification:
of children, of women Obvious situations
denial of
Oedipus complex
Oppression, abuse as
Ownership, ideas of:
of children
of partner
breaking up and
Parental alienation claims
Parenting
See also Children Partners of abusive men
new
See also Abused women; Former partners Passive
aggression
Patterns of behavior
Peace bonds. See Restraining orders Peer influences, and
abusive behavior Perceptions:
distorted
reversal of facts
taught to children
by women, manipulation of Performers, and abuse of
women Personal freedom, controlling behavior and
Personal goals
Physical abuse
of children
Physical caretaking, entitlement to Physical violence, and
mental illness
See also Abusive behavior; Violence Play, sexual
Player (type of abuser)
Police
and abused women
and change of behavior Pornography
Possessiveness
of children
Postseparation homicides
Power
family divisions and
oppression and
other abusers of
sexual relationships and Powerlessness, feelings of, as
excuse for abuse Predictability, lack of
Probation officers
and change of abusive men, Probation periods
Problems, dumping of
Professionals:
abuse of power
support for abused women Programs:
for abused women
for abusers
See also Counseling, of abusers Projection
Promises, unkept
Prosecution of abusers
Prosecutors, and change of behavior Protective orders. See
Restraining orders Psychiatric problems
Psychological abuse
addiction and
of children
manipulative behavior
medications and
and physical violence Psychological evaluations, in
custody disputes Psychological problems
Psychologists:
and abusive behavior
and breaking up
and children of abusive fathers
and fear of intimacy Psychotherapy
abuser programs and
and abusive behavior
and conflict management Public image of abuser
misleading
parenting and Punishment, collective
Racial differences in abuse
Racial discrimination, as excuse for abuse Racism, and abuse
of women
Random abuse
Rape
Rationalizations
Reality, inversion of
Recognition of abusive behavior Recording of abusive
behavior
Recovery from addiction, and partner abuse Relationships:
abusive
early stages
benefits of abusive behavior in
early training Relatives:
of abused women
of abusers
Religions, and abuse of women
fundamentalist Remorse for abuse
feigned, in custody disputes Resistance to abuse
Resources
Respect for women
change of behavior and
children and
love and
Responsibility for actions
acceptance of
avoidance of
externalization of Restraining orders
dropping of
judges and
violations of Retaliation for complaints
Reversal of facts
Rewards of abusive behavior
Ridicule
Right and wrong, distorted sense of Rights:
to anger
by women
of children
in family, abusers and Role models
abusers as
Role reversal, in parenting
Roles in marriage, abusers and
Sadistic behavior
Safety from abuse
in breakup situation Same-sex relationships, abuse in
Sarcasm
Schools, and violent behavior by boys Secrecy about abuse,
children and Self:
advocacy for
doubt of
chronic mistreatment and
and signs of abuse
trust of
Self-centeredness
and change of behavior
and child abuse
parenting and
recovery from addiction and
severe
and sexual relations
of Victim types Self-defense, as excuse for abuse Self-
destructive behavior
Self-esteem, low, as excuse for abuse Self-examination,
substance abuse and Self-image
Self-pity
Self-protection against abuse
Sentences for violent abuse
Separation from abusers
and change of behavior Sex object, partner as
Sex roles
early training Sexual abuse
of children
resources
Sexual caretaking, entitlement to Sexual promiscuity
Sexual relations
forced
loss of interest in
pressure for Shaming of children
Sibling relationships
Siblings of abused women
Silence about observed abuse
Silencing of partner
Social class, and abusiveness
Socialization of boys
Society:
and abused mothers
attitudes toward abuse Sons:
of abused women, opposition to abuse
of abusers
relationship with mother See also Children Stalking
Steps to change of behavior
Stereotype of abusive men
Stockholm syndrome
Strategic safety plans
Subordination, sexualization of Substance abuse
and partner abuse
differences
as excuse
similarities
by women, partner violence and Suicide of women,
partner violence and Superiority, sense of
parenting and Support for abused women
and change of abuser’s behavior
difficulties obtaining
resources
Suppression of anger, by women Suppression of feelings, as
excuse for abuse Symptoms of abuse
Tension, building of
Terminology
Terror, control by
Theater, and abuse of women
Therapists
abuse of power T herapy. See Psychotherapy Thinking:
independent
of partner, control of T hinking patterns of abusers
confusion of love with abuse
control
disrespect of partner
entitlement
justifications
maintenance of public image
origins of
as parents
reversal of facts
social class and
views of separation Threats
To Be an Anchor in the Storm, Brewster Tolerance,
adaptation to abuse Traum a and Recovery, Herman
Traumatic bonding
Tribal cultures, and abuse
Trouble with Homework Trust, of self
Twelve-step programs
Unreasonable behavior
Unsupervised visitation
Values
and abusive behavior
of abusive men, breaking up and
alcohol and
of children, development of
distorted
societal, change of Verbal abuse
and violence Verbal conflict, abusers and
Versions of abuse, differing
Victims:
abusers as
in same-sex relationship
blaming of
Video games
Violence
alcohol and
by boys
breaking up and
against children
entitlement to
mental illness and
predictions of
sexual assault
among siblings
See also Abusive behavior Vulnerability
sex and
War, relationship as
Warning signs of abusive behavior Weapons:
children as
substance abuse as Winning of arguments
Women:
abuse of
abusers’ views of
taught to sons
conflicts between, abusers and
hatred of, as excuse for abuse
labor of
male attitudes toward
physical aggression by
religious fundamentalists and
See also Abused women World, abuse-free
