Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men (12 page)

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.

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:

Many clients express guilt or remorse when they first begin attending counseling, but as soon as I start to press them to look at their histories of abusive behavior, they switch back to defending their actions. They don’t mind glibly saying, “I know what I did was wrong,” but when I ask them to describe their verbal or physical assaults in detail, they leap back to justifying.

Abusive men are masters of excuse making. In this respect they are like substance abusers, who believe that everyone and everything except them is responsible for their actions. When they aren’t blaming their partners, they blame stress, alcohol, their childhood, their children, their bosses, or their insecurities. More important, they feel
entitled
to make these excuses; when I point out that other men under the same pressures choose not to be abusive, they tend to become irate or contemptuous.

Does this mean that abusers are psychopaths who lack any conscience that could cause them to feel guilt or responsibility? Generally not, although I have had a small number (perhaps 5 percent of my clients) who are. Most abusers
do
have a conscience about their behavior outside of the family. They may be willing to be answerable for their actions at work, at the club, or on the street. At home, however, their sense of entitlement takes over.

The abusive man commonly believes he can blame his partner for
anything
that goes wrong, not just his abusiveness. Did he just suffer a disappointment? She caused it. Is he embarrassed by a mistake he made? She should have prevented it. Is one of the children in a difficult period? She’s a bad mother. Everything is someone else’s fault, and “someone else” is usually her.

One of my areas of specialization is court-related work involving abusers who are physically violent or who abuse their children. I frequently encounter court personnel who say: “Well, she accuses him of abusing her, but he denies it.” They then drop the matter, as if the man’s denial closes the case. They also tell me: “He says she does the same things to him, so I guess they abuse each other.” This kind of denial and cross-accusation tells us nothing about whether the woman is telling the truth. If the man is abusive,
of course
he is going to deny it, partly to protect himself and partly because his perceptions are distorted.
If he were ready to accept responsibility for his actions in relationships, he wouldn’t be abusive.
Breaking through denial and minimization is one of the main tasks facing an abuse counselor. Most of the men in my groups admit to some abusive behavior—although they don’t see it as abusive, of course—but they acknowledge only a small portion of what they have actually done, as I learn when I interview the abused partners.

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

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

“What are you
talking
about?” he gasps. “You’re a fucking drama junkie. I was clear across the room from you when your towel fell off. You’re going to blame that on me? You’re nuts.” And he walks off shaking his head.

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

The partners of this style of abuser ask me: “After an incident, it seems like he really believes the abuse didn’t happen. Is he consciously lying?” The answer in most cases is yes. Most abusers do not have severe memory problems. He probably remembers exactly what he did, especially when only a short time has passed. He denies his actions to close off discussion because he doesn’t want to answer for what he did, and perhaps he even wants you to feel frustrated and crazy. However, a small percentage of abusers—perhaps one in twelve—may have psychological conditions such as narcissistic or borderline personality disorder, in which they literally block any bad behavior from consciousness. One of the clues that your partner may have such a disturbance is if you notice him doing similar things to other people. If his denial and mind messing are restricted to you, or to situations that are related to you, he is probably simply abusive.

Denial and minimization are part of most destructive behavior patterns, whether they be alcohol abuse, gambling, or child abuse. Partner abuse is no exception.

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.

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.

A
BUSIVE 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.

• 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.
  

T
HE QUALITIES 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. My 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.

T
HE
D
EMAND
M
AN

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.

M
R.
R
IGHT

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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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.