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

by Lundy Bancroft

clients: An abuser almost never does anything that he himself considers morally unacceptable. He may hide what he does because he thinks other people would disagree with it, but he feels justified inside. I can’t remember a client ever having said to me: “There’s no way I can defend what I did. It was just totally wrong.” He invariably has a reason that he considers good enough. In short, an abuser’s core problem is that he has a distorted sense of right and wrong.

The self-esteem myth is rewarding for an abuser, because it gets his partner, his therapist, and others to cater to him emotionally. Imagine the privileges an abusive man may acquire: getting his own way most of the time, having his partner bend over backward to keep him happy so he won’t explode, getting to behave as he pleases, and then on top of it all, he gets praise for what a good person he is, and everyone is trying to help him feel better about himself!

A large

part of his abusiveness comes in the form of punishments used to retaliate against you for resisting his control. This is one of the single most important concepts to grasp about an abusive man.