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

by Lundy Bancroft

If I’m unhappy about any aspect of my life, whether it has to do with our relationship or not, it’s your fault.

The central attitudes driving the Water Torturer are: You are crazy. You fly off the handle over nothing. I can easily convince other people that you’re the one who is messed up.

As long as I’m calm, you can’t call anything I do abusive, no matter how cruel. I know exactly how to get under your skin.

THE MENTALLY ILL OR ADDICTED ABUSER

Even when mental illness or addiction is a factor, it is not the cause of a man’s abuse of his partner, but it can contribute to the severity of his problem and his resistance to change.

Substance abuse, like mental illness, does not cause partner abuse but can increase the risk of violence. Like the mentally ill abuser, the addicted abuser doesn’t change unless he deals with his addiction, and even that is only the first step.

In addition, the following attitudes tend to be present: I am not responsible for my actions because of my psychological or substance problems. If you challenge me about my abusiveness, you are being mean to me, considering these other problems I have. It also shows that you don’t understand my other problems.

I’m not abusive, I’m just _____ (alcoholic, drug addicted, manic-depressive, an adult child of alcoholics, or whatever his condition may be). If you challenge me, it will trigger my addiction or mental illness, and you’ll be responsible for what I do.

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.

The abuser comes and goes as he pleases, meets or ignores his responsibilities at his whim, and skips anything he finds too unpleasant.

That isn’t self-defense, which means using the minimal amount of force needed to protect oneself.

Is he severely verbally abusive? (Research studies indicate that the best behavioral predictor of which men will become violent to their partners is their level of verbal abuse.)

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

Violence is not just punches and slaps; it is anything that puts you in physical fear or that uses your body to control you.

Be cautious, and seek out assistance. You don’t deserve to live like this, and you don’t have to. Try to block his words out of your mind and believe in yourself. You can do it.

As an abusive man adapts to a certain degree of mistreatment of his partner, his feelings of guilt nag at him less and less, so he is then able to graduate to more serious acts. He becomes accustomed to a level of cruelty or aggression that would have been out of the question for him a few years earlier.

Deep and lasting change comes only through an extended and painstaking series of steps,

Alcohol provides an abuser with an excuse to freely act on his desires. After a few drinks, he turns himself loose to be as insulting or intimidating as he feels inclined to be, knowing that the next day he can say, “Hey, sorry about last night, I was really trashed,” or even claim to have completely forgotten the incident, and his partner, his family, or even a judge will let him off the hook.

The alcohol arms the abuser with an excuse and helps him to overcome any shame or embarrassment that might hold him back.

Beware of the man who

believes that drugging or drinking makes him violent. If he thinks it...

The verbally abusive man who escalates to physical violence or threats only when intoxicated: When I ask the partner of such a man to describe his day-to-day behavior, she usually reports that he gets meaner and scarier when he’s drinking but that his name-calling, disrespect, and selfishness are the same, whether he is drunk or sober. She tends to feel that his physically scary behaviors would stop if she could get him into recovery and that she could manage

the rest of his abusive behaviors. This soothing hope is a false one for two reasons: (a) When this style of abuser gets sober, he gradually accustoms himself to using violence without the assistance of alcohol, usually over a period of one or two years; and (b) even if he is among the small number of exceptions to this rule, the woman usually discovers that his psychological abuse can be as destructive to her as his violence was, which tosses her back into having to figure out what to do.

If your partner’s behavior becomes much worse when he’s intoxicated, you may tend to focus your attention on trying to manage his drinking, so that you

never fully realize how abusive he is when he’s sober. His substance-abuse problem can thereby create a huge diversion from critical issues.

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. Alcohol encourages people to let loose what they have simmering below the surface.

Finally, even if substances could cause people to “lose control,” the abusive man would still be responsible for his actions while intoxicated because he made the choice to impair himself with alcohol or drugs.

Notice that when a man uses substances as a weapon, he ends up contributing to his own problem with substances. Thus partner abuse can feed the problem of addiction, and not just vice versa. They are two separate issues, neither of which causes the other but which do help to keep each other stuck. A man’s abusiveness strengthens his denial of his substance-abuse problem, as he can blame all of his life difficulties on his partner. His negative attitudes toward her allow him to easily dismiss concerns that she raises about his addiction.

ENTITLEMENT AND ADDICTION An abusive man typically believes that his use or abuse of substances is none of his partner’s business. No matter how his addiction may lead him to abuse his partner economically (because he pours money into the substance and/or has trouble holding down a job) no matter how burdened she is with household responsibilities because he is out partying, no matter how much worse he may treat her while intoxicated,

he nonetheless feels entitled to use substances as he chooses. If she criticizes him for his selfishness or confronts him with the effects that his partying has on her life, he feels justified in calling her a “nag” or a “bitch” or labeling her “controlling.” In short, irresponsible use of alcohol or drugs is another one of the privileges that the abusive man may award himself, and he may use psychological or physical assaults to punish his partner for challenging it.

Alcohol or drugs cannot make an abuser out of a man who is not abusive. Even while intoxicated, abusers continue to make choices about their actions based on their habits, attitudes, and self-interest. The primary role that addiction plays in partner abuse is as an excuse.

Abusiveness and addiction are two distinct problems requiring separate solutions.

Countless clients of mine claim self-defense as an excuse, but then they admit that they were not frightened or injured by their partners nor was the woman able to successfully control their movements or keep them from saying whatever they wanted. It’s payback, not self-defense. Among the two thousand clients

women are noticeably more likely to tell the truth to the police than they were fifteen years ago. Although the abuser may say, “You put me in jail!”, the reality is that he put himself there, and an increasing number of people are beginning to understand this crucial point.

Why should you have to suffer abuse to protect him from

the pain or humiliation of being locked up? He knows what he needs to change in order to keep the police from being c...

Women often berate themselves for not following through with prosecution. A woman may say to me: “What an idiot I was. I don’t know why the hell I believed his promises. I should have gone ahead and testified. Now look at the mess I’m in.”

Ask for help, ask for help, ask for help. I can’t say it enough. Dealing with the police and courts can leave you feeling isolated, afraid, and disempowered. Some women decide, after getting a taste of this cold and sometimes hostile system, that they will never reach out for official assistance again. One antidote is to draw upon every resource available to you.

If the abuser is on probation, ask for a face-to-face meeting with

the probation officer; it will make it harder for your partner to paint a distorted picture of you and may make the probation officer feel responsible for your safety. If the prosecutor is considering

a plea bargain, demand to be included in the process of negotiation, so that your needs are considered before any deal is made. If the abuser is mandated to attend an abuser program, communicate frequently with the ab...

Abusers rarely change if they aren’t forced to suffer any consequences.

A man should be required to complete an abuser program in conjunction

with, not instead of, legal c...

Her first call should be to a program for abused women.

Any form of physical aggression, including a push, poke, shove, or threat, is illegal in most states and provinces. You do not need to wait until you are severely injured to seek police assistance.