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

by Lundy Bancroft

I shouldn’t argue with him, because I just come out feeling like an idiot.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He exaggerates and overvalues his own contributions.

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.

When he doesn’t get what he feels is his due, he punishes you for letting him down.

When he is generous or supportive, it’s because he feels like it. When he isn’t in the mood t...

The longer you have been with him, the more his generous-seeming actions appear self-serving.

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!”

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.

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.

It’s your job to do things for me, including taking care of my responsibilities if I drop the ball on them.

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 l...

He speaks with absolute certainty, brushing your opinions aside like annoying gnats.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In short, Mr. Right finds some way to ensure that his partner regrets her insistence on having her own mind.

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.”

Mr. Right isn’t interested in debating ideas; he wants ...

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 sl...

If you would just accept that I know what’s right, our relationship would go much better. Your ow...

When you disagree with me about something, no matter how respectfully or meekly, t...

If I put you down for long enough, some d...

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 psychologica...

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 frus...

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.

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.”

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.

As long as I’m calm, you can’t call anything I do abusive, no matter how cruel.

He starts to exhibit a mean side that no one else ever sees and may even become threatening or intimidating.

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.

AN ABUSER’S BEHAVIOR IS PRIMARILY CONSCIOUS—HE ACTS DELIBERATELY RATHER THAN BY ACCIDENT OR BY LOSING CONTROL OF HIMSELF—BUT THE UNDERLYING THINKING THAT DRIVES HIS BEHAVIOR IS LARGELY NOT CONSCIOUS.

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.

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 tells you that he is “just trying to make you listen.”