“But you can’t treat your mother like that, no matter how angry you are! You just don’t do that!” The unspoken remainder of this statement, which we can fill in for my clients, is: “But you can treat your wife or girlfriend like that, as long as you have a good enough reason. That’s different.” In other words, the abuser’s problem lies above all in his belief that controlling or abusing his female partner is justifiable. This insight has tremendous implications for how counseling work with abusers has to be done, as we will see.
