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

by Lundy Bancroft

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 order to bring about change in an abuser, we have to reshape his attitude toward power and exploitation.

An abuser who does not relinquish his core entitlements will not remain nonabusive.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Bringing about change in an abuser generally requires four elements: (1) consequences, (2) education, (3) confrontation, and (4) accountability.

high-quality abuser program is entirely different from therapy.

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...

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 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.

the last thing an abused woman needs is more people helping her abuser to work against her.

Establishing consequences for him for continued abusiveness.

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.

Focusing on your own healing and strength, so that he senses that he if he doesn’t change, you are ready to move on.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Once we tear the cover of excuses, distortions, and manipulations off of abusers, they suddenly find abuse much harder to get away with.