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

by Lundy Bancroft

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

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

The Water Torturer’s style proves that anger doesn’t cause abuse. He can assault his partner psychologically without even raising his voice. He tends to stay calm in arguments, using his own evenness as a weapon to push her over the edge.

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 psychological harm. He is relentless in his quiet derision and meanness.

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.

Omg this is how I feel quite often

The psychological effects of living with the Water Torturer can be severe. His tactics can be difficult to identify, so they sink in deeply.

psychologically assaulted, with little idea why, after an argument with The Water Torturer, she may turn her frustration inward. How do you seek support from a friend, for example, when you don’t know how to describe what is going wrong?

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.”

The Water Torturer is payback-oriented like most abusive men, but he may hide it better.

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.

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.

If you are in a bad mood one day and say something unfair or insensitive, it won’t be enough for you to give him a sincere apology and accept responsibility. He’ll go on and on about it, expecting you to grovel as if you had treated him with profound cruelty. (Notice the twist here: This is just what an abuser accuses his partner of doing to him, when all she is really looking for is a heartfelt “I’m sorry.”)

After an aggressive incident, he will speak of his actions as “anger” rather than as “abuse,” as though there were no difference between the two. He blames his assaultive behavior on you or on his emotional “issues,” saying that his feelings were so deeply wounded that he had no other choice.

Women sometimes ask me: “But what if a man I am dating really was victimized by his former girlfriend? How can I tell the difference?” Here are some things to watch for: If you listen carefully, you often can hear the difference between anger toward an ex-partner, which would not be worrisome in itself, and disrespect or contempt, which should raise warning flags. A man who has left a relationship with bitterness should nonetheless be able to talk about his ex-partner as a human being, with some understanding of what her side of the conflicts was and some ways he might have contributed to what went wrong. If he speaks in degrading or superior ways about her, or makes everything that went wrong in the relationship her fault, be careful, because it is likely that he was the abusive one. Try to get him to talk about his own conduct in the relationship, especially around the time of the breakup. If he blames his own behavior on her, that’s a bad sign. Be particularly careful with a man who claims to have been the victim of physical violence by a previous female partner. The great majority of men who make such claims are physical abusers. Ask him for as much detail as you can about the violent incidents, and then try to talk to her or seek out anyone else who could give you a different perspective on what happened. Watch for warning signs of abusiveness (see Chapter 5). Pay attention to how he talks and thinks about abused women. A genuine male victim tends to feel sympathy for...

Those who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder have a highly distorted self-image. They are unable to accept that they might have faults and therefore are unable to imagine how other people perceive them.

Clues to the presence of this disorder include: (a) Your partner’s self-centeredness is severe, and it carries over into situations that don’t involve you; (b) he seems to relate everything back to himself; and (c) he is outraged whenever anyone criticizes him and is incapable of considering that he could ever be anything other than kind and generous.

This disorder is highly resistant to therapy and is not treatable with medication. The abuser with this disorder is not able to change substantially through an abuser program either, although he sometimes makes some minor improvements.

Many abusers who are not mentally ill want women to think that they are, in order to avoid responsibility fo...

An abuser of any type can have days when he turns loving, attentive, and thoughtful. At these times, you may feel that his problem has finally gone away and that the relationship will return to its rosy beginning. However, abuse always comes back eventually unless the abuser has dealt with his abusiveness.

Is he deliberately hooking her emotionally so he can be cruel to her later? The answer is usually no. The abuser doesn’t picture himself yelling, degrading her, or hurling objects at her. As he falls in love, he dreams of a happy future of conjugal bliss, just as the woman does.

First, he is gazing longingly at the image he holds of the future, where the woman meets all of his needs,

desires a woman who will cater to him and never complain about anything he does or darken his day with frustrations or unhappiness about her own life.

The abusive man doesn’t expose these self-focused fantasies to his new partner. In fact, he is largely unaware of them himself.

So she has no way of knowing that he is looking more for a personal careta...

“We are going to be really good for each other.” “I want to be with you all the time.”

He may truly believe his own promises, because he wants to see himself as a generous and thoughtful partner,

Abuse is not his goal, but control is, and he finds himself using abuse to gain the control he feels he has a right to.

a certain number of my clients are consciously manipulative from the outset. A man of this style smiles knowingly at me, assuming that every man uses the same ploys,

even this man is generally not calculating to abuse the woman later.

he doesn’t consider manipulation abusive.

AN ABUSER IS A HUMAN BEING, NOT AN EVIL MONSTER, BUT HE HAS A PROFOUNDLY COMPLEX AND DESTRUCTIVE PROBLEM THAT SHOULD NOT BE UNDERESTIMATED.

An abusive man has to bury his compassion in a deep hole in order to escape the profound inherent aversion that human beings have to seeing others suffer. He has to adhere tightly to his excuses and rationalizations, develop a disturbing ability to insulate himself from the pain he is causing, and learn to enjoy power and control

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.

!!!***

By the time he reaches adulthood, he has integrated manipulative behavior to such a deep level that he acts largely on automatic. He knows what he is doing but not necessarily why.

Lance wanted me to go skiing with him this weekend, but I really didn’t feel like it because I’d had an exhausting week and wanted to spend time with my friends. When I said no, he dove into criticizing me. He said the reason why I’ve never become a good skier is that I won’t stick with it, that I’m not willing to give things a chance and work at them, that I’m lazy and that’s why I never get good at anything, and so forth. It felt awful . . . But, you know, I think in a way he’s right—maybe I should be more disciplined about learning to ski.

real issue concerned what Lance wanted for himself: He wanted Kelsea to keep him company for the weekend because he didn’t feel like going skiing alone. He resented her choice to make her friendships central in her life—a common theme with abusive men—and believed that it was her duty to be by his side and focus on him.

The following warning flags mean that abuse could be down the road, and perhaps not far: • He speaks disrespectfully about his former partners.

When you hear that another woman considers him abusive, always find a way to get her side of the story.

Be cautious of the man who says that you are nothing like the other women he has been involved with, that you are the first partner to treat him well,

You will be tempted to work doubly hard to prove that you aren’t like those other women, and one foot will already be in the trap.

He is disrespectful to ward you.

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.

Disrespect also can take the form of idealizing you and putti...

The man who worships you in this way is not seeing you; he is seeing his fantasy, and when you fail to live up ...

He does favors for you that you don’t want or puts on such a show of generosity that it makes you uncomfortable. These can be signs of a man who is attempting to create a sense of indebtedness.

He is controlling.

Control usually begins in subtle ways, far from anything you would call abuse. He drops comments about your clothes or your looks (too sexy or not sexy enough);

starts to pressure you to spend more time with him or to quit your job or to get a better job that pays more;