No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

by Rachel Louise Snyder

And what strikes me immediately—in fact, deeply unsettles me in a way—is how incredibly normal they all seem. Like a bunch of guys I’d go have a beer with. They are charming. They are funny, gregarious, shy, high-strung. Good-looking or not, well-dressed or not. They are Everyman. One of the hallmarks of domestic violence, Adams told me, is this false idea that abusers are somehow angry generally; rather, their anger is targeted—at a partner or at the partner’s immediate family. As a result, friends and acquaintances of abusers are often surprised to hear that they committed an assault. “The most surprising thing is that [abusers] seem like such normal guys,” says Adams. “The average batterer is pretty likable.” For Adams this is the whole point: that we look for talons and tails, but find instead charm and affability. It’s how abusers attract victims in the first place. “We look for the rageaholic,” Adams says. But only about a quarter of batterers fit that definition. What he sees, instead, is an inflexible personality. “A rigid black-or-white thinker is what I most imagine,” Adams says.