Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

by Lundy Bancroft

You deserve to have your life be about you; you are worth it.

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.

more sophisticated arguments to prove that his partner is mentally unstable, and more creative ways to make her feel responsible for his emotional distress.

a nonabusive man doesn’t use his past as an excuse to mistreat you.

An abuser almost never does anything that he himself considers morally unacceptable.

In short, an abuser’s core problem is that he has a distorted sense of right and wrong.

Ray was not abusive because he was angry; he was angry because he was abusive.

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.

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.

An abusive man is not unable to resolve conflicts nonabusively; he is unwilling to do so.

Abusers have normal abilities in conflict resolution, communication, and assertiveness when they choose to use 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.

There is nothing wrong with you. Your partner’s abuse problem is his own.

“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.”

He may not accept having his sexual advances rejected, yet turn her down whenever he feels like it.

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.

YOUR ABUSIVE PARTNER DOESN’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HIS ANGER; HE HAS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR ANGER. One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him.

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.

When he then injured her further, he claimed he was defending himself against her abuse.

Because in his mind she’s supposed to be listening, not talking. If she expresses herself at all, that’s too much.

The abuser tends to see his partner as less intelligent, less competent, less logical, and even less sensitive than he is.

Most abusers verbally attack their partners in degrading, revolting ways.

Abuse and respect are diametric opposites: You do not respect someone whom you abuse, and you do not abuse someone whom you respect.

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.

Getting you to blame yourself or blame other people, for what he does.

Abusers externalize responsibility for their actions, believing that their partners make them behave in abusive ways.

“He says she does the same things to him, so I guess they abuse each other.”

In other words, abuse is a problem of values,

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.

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.

However, abuse always comes back eventually unless the abuser has dealt with his abusiveness.

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

If your partner criticizes or puts you down for being badly affected by his mistreatment, that’s abuse.

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

No assault in a relationship, however “minor,” should be taken lightly.

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.

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

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

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.

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,

Remorse usually tends to decline as abusive incidents pile up.

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

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.

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.

he can’t accept your differences of opinion and doesn’t want to let his thinking be influenced by yours.

If you watch closely, you will begin to notice how many of his controlling behaviors are aimed ultimately at discrediting and silencing you.

The abusive man tends to mentally collect resentments toward you until he feels that you deserve a punishment.

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.

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.