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

by Lundy Bancroft

Conversational control tactics are aggravating no matter who uses them, but they are especially coercive and upsetting when used by an abusive man because of the surrounding context of emotional or physical intimidation.

The abusive man wants particularly to discredit your perspective, especially your grievances.

The abusive man’s goal in a heated argument is in essence to get you to stop thinking for yourself and to silence you, because to him your opinions and complaints are obstacles to the imposition of his will as well as an affront to his sense of entitlement. If you watch closely, you will begin to notice how many of his controlling behaviors are aimed ultimately at discrediting and silencing you.

He makes sure to get his way—by one means or another. The bottom line with an abuser in an argument is that he wants what he wants—today, tomorrow, and always—and he feels he has a right to it.

Life with an abuser can be a dizzying wave of exciting good times and painful periods of verbal, physical, or sexual assault.

Abusers nurse their grievances. One of my former colleagues referred to this habit as The Garden of Resentments, a process through which an abuser plants a minor complaint and then cultivates it carefully while it grows to tremendous dimensions, worthy of outrage and abuse.

If we want abusers to change, we will have to require them to give up the luxury of exploitation.

RESEARCH INDICATES THAT A WOMAN’S INTUITIVE SENSE OF WHETHER OR NOT HER PARTNER WILL BE VIOLENT TOWARD HER IS A SUBSTANTIALLY MORE ACCURATE PREDICTOR OF FUTURE VIOLENCE THAN ANY OTHER WARNING SIGN. So listen closely to your inner voices above all.

Violence is behavior that does any of the following: Physically hurts or frightens you, or uses contact with your body to control or intimidate you Takes away your freedom of movement, such as by locking you in a room or refusing to let you out of a car Causes you to believe that you will be physically harmed Forces you to have sexual contact or other unwanted physical intimacy

My white American clients, for example, tend to be extremely rigid about how their partners are allowed to argue or express anger. If the partner of one of these clients raises her voice, or swears, or refuses to shut up when told to do so, abuse is likely to follow.

Abusiveness can be thought of as a recipe that involves a consistent set of ingredients: control, entitlement, disrespect, excuses, and justifications (including victim blaming)—elements that are always present, often accompanied by physical intimidation or violence.

For the most part, an abusive man uses verbally aggressive tactics in an argument to discredit your statements and silence you. In short, he wants to avoid having to deal seriously with your perspective in the conflict.

Abusive men find abusiveness rewarding. The privileged position they gain is a central reason for their reluctance to change.

Abusive men tend to be happy only when everything in the relationship is proceeding on their terms.

He’s not attracted to me anymore, which really hurts me.

It’s easier sometimes to just give in.

He never hits me, but he did force me to ...

He may make her feel guilty about his sexual frustration, tell her that he feels like she doesn’t love him anymore, or say that a man must have his needs met.

When people think about forced sex, they picture physical assault. So when an abuser forces sex through pressure or manipulation or sleep deprivation, a woman doesn’t know what to call it and may blame herself.

women whose partners abuse them sexually can have some of the greatest emotional difficulties, including depression, of any abused women.

My clients commonly believe that a woman gives up her right to decline sex once she becomes seriously involved with a man. It’s her responsibility to have sex with him to make him feel loved, to meet his sexual needs, or simply because that’s her job.

A majority of my clients seem to believe that the woman loses her right to refuse him if the man determines that it has been “too long” since they have had sex.

The underlying attitude comes bursting out of his words: He believes his wife is keeping something of his away from him when she doesn’t want intimate contact.

This depersonalizing of his partner can, in the long term, be as psychologically injurious to her as any of his other abusive behaviors.

It is common for abusive men to withhold sex as a control tactic.

Abusive men do not grasp how ugly they appear when acting cruel.

An abusive man lies a lot. Don’t believe what he tells you about what is happening in his relationships with other women, including what those women have supposedly said about you.

If a man cheats, that is 100 percent his own responsibility.

Abusive men love to portray themselves as unable to control their hormonal urges, which is nonsense.

The abuser who has frequent affairs is often the same one who interrogates his partner about her movements and social contacts and goes ballistic when he has the slightest suspicion that she is developing any kind of connection—sexual or otherwise—to another man.

there is simply no excuse for double standards or for any other aspect of abuse.

The shock to a woman of having her deepest vulnerabilities thrown back in her face by someone she has loved and trusted can cause a burning pain unlike any other. This is intimate psychological cruelty in one of its worst forms.

An abuser who forces his partner to have any form of sexual relations against her will is physically battering her.

It is rare, unfortunately, for any aspect of an abuser’s relationship with his partner to remain untouched by his entitlement and disrespect.

Addiction does not cause partner abuse, and recovery from addiction does not “cure” partner abuse.

At the same time, a man’s addictions can contribute in important ways to his cruelty or volatility. A drunk or drugged abuser tends to make his partner’s life even more miserable than a sober one does.

“I can handle my alcohol” is essentially a short form for saying, “I have been drinking too much for a long time now, so it takes a lot to get me drunk.”

For example, you as the partner of an abuser may have become increasingly depressed over time (because chronic mistreatment is depressing), and now he gets angry about the ways in which your decreased energy make you cater to him less enthusiastically.

abuse may diminish your drive for sex, and then he is hurt and enraged about your lack of desire for him.

Addicts and partner abusers share a capacity for convincing themselves that they don’t have any problem and for hotly denying the problem to other people.

Substance abusers prefer to spend their time with other people who abuse substances or with those who at least accept the addiction without making an issue of it, and who will listen sympathetically to the addict’s excuses for his behavior.

Both partner abusers and addicts can have chronic problems with lying to cover up their problem, escape accountability, and get other people to clean up the messes they make.

Both partner abusers and substance abusers tend to keep their partners and children walking on eggshells, never knowing what is going to happen next.

Deep and lasting change comes only through an extended and painstaking series of steps, although the process of change for substance abusers is quite different from that for partner abusers.

Substance abuse can be highly rewarding. It brings quick, easy pleasure and relief from emotional distresses. It often provides camaraderie through entrance to a circle of friends whose social life revolves around seeking and enjoying intoxication.

Alcohol provides an abuser with an excuse to freely act on his desires.

The verbally abusive man who escalates to physical violence or threats only when intoxicated:

The verbal abuser who becomes even more cruel and degrading when drinking but doesn’t escalate to violence:

Alcohol does not change a person’s fundamental value system.

People’s conduct while intoxicated continues to be governed by their core foundation of beliefs and attitudes, even though there is some loosening of the structure.