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

by Lundy Bancroft

starts to give too much advice about how you should manage your own life and shows a hint of impatience when ...

Jealous behavior is one of the surest signs that abuse is down the road.

Possessiveness masquerades as love.

he is keeping tabs on you, essentially establishing that you are his domain.

these behaviors are about ownership, not love.

Jealous feelings are not the same as behaviors.

But if he indicates that he expects you to give up your freedom to accommodate his jealousy, control is creeping up.

Possessiveness shows that he doesn’t love you as an independent human being but rather as a guarded treasure.

Nothing is ever his fault.

He is self-centered.

He abuses drugs or alcohol.

He pressures you for sex.

If he says you need to have sex with him to prove that you truly love and care for him, give him his walking papers.

He gets serious too quickly about the relationship.

He intimidates you when he’s angry.

Any of the following behaviors should put you on alert: He gets too close to you when he’s angry, puts a finger in your face, pokes you, pushes you, blocks your way, or restrains you. He tells you that he is “just trying to make you listen.” He raises a fist, towers over you, shouts you down, or behaves in any other way that makes you flinch or feel afraid. He makes vaguely threatening comments, such as, “You don’t want to see me mad” or “You don’t know who you’re messing with.” He drives recklessly or speeds up when he’s angry. He punches walls or kicks doors. He throws things around, even if they don’t hit you.

He has double standards.

He has negative attitudes toward women.

He treats you differently around other people.

He appears to be attracted to vulnerability

THE WARNING SIGNS OF ABUSE He speaks disrespectfully about his former partners. He is disrespectful toward you. He does favors for you that you don’t want or puts on such a show of generosity that it makes you uncomfortable. He is controlling. He is possessive. Nothing is ever his fault. He is self-centered. He abuses drugs or alcohol. He pressures you for sex. He gets serious too quickly about the relationship. He intimidates you when he’s angry. He has double standards. He has negative attitudes toward women. He treats you differently around other people. He appears to be attracted to vulnerability.

His perceptions work this way because he feels so justified in his actions that he can’t imagine the problem might be with him. All he notices is that you don’t seem to be living up to his image of the perfect, all-giving, deferential woman.

How do I know when my partner is being abusive? Is there a distinct line that I can keep my eye on, so that I know when he has crossed it? How much is too much? Since nobody’s perfect, how do I know the difference between a bad day when he’s just being a jerk and a pattern that adds up to something more serious?

The term abuse is about power; it means that a person is taking advantage of a power imbalance to exploit or control someone else. Wherever power imbalances exist,

partner abuse has been found not to exist in societies where males and females have equal power.)

Thus the defining point of abuse is when the man starts to exercise power over the woman in a way that causes harm to her and creates a privileged status for him.

Has hurt me: sexual coercion, making me go to Denver, making me go to telluride in the middle of HBOT, generally seems to feel embarrassed about me when I’m not in good condition, has forced me to dress with skimpier clothes than I’m comfortable with by pressuring me and only buying the skimpy clothes, etc.

He retaliates against you for complaining about his behavior.

Similarly, you may say to your partner in an argument, “Stop yelling at me, I hate being yelled at,” so he raises his voice louder and blames it on you. These are signs of abuse.

Another way he can retaliate against you for resisting his control is to switch into the role of victim.

Suppose that you complain about being silenced by his constant interruptions during arguments. He then gets a huffy, hostile tone in his voice as if your objection were unfair to him and says sarcastically, “All right, I’ll just listen and you talk,” and acts as if you are oppressing him by calling him on his behavior. This is an effort to make you feel guilty for resisting his control and is the beginning of abuse.

This type of thing happens all the time…

He tells you that your objections to his mistreatment are your own problem.

“You’re too sensitive; every little thing bothers you. It shouldn’t be any big deal.”

Uhhhh helloooo

abuser can try to persuade you that: (1) you have unreasonable expectations for his behavior, and you should be willing to live with the things he does; (2) you are actually reacting to something else in your life, not to what he did; and (3) you are using your grievances as a power move against him.

All of these tactics are forms of discrediting your complaints of mistreatment, which is abusive.

His discrediting maneuvers reveal a core attitude, which he never explicitly states and may not even be aware of consciously himself: “You have no right to object to how I treat you.” And you can’t be in a fai...

He gives apologies that sound insincere or angry, and he demands that you accept them.

WOW- consistently

CLAIRE: I still feel like you don’t understand why I was upset by what you did. You haven’t even apologized. DANNY (Angry and loud): All right, all right! I’m sorry, I’M SORRY!! CLAIRE (Shaking her head): You don’t get it. DANNY: What the fuck do you want from me?? I apologized already! What, you won’t be satisfied until you have your pound of flesh?? CLAIRE: Your apology doesn’t mean anything to me when you obviously aren’t sorry. DANNY: What do you mean I’m not sorry?? Don’t tell me what I’m feeling, Little Ms. Analyst! You’re not inside my head.

This interaction only serves to make Claire feel worse, of course, as Danny adds insults and crazy-making denial to whatever she was already upset about.

he in fact feels entitled to forgiveness, and he demands it.

In other words, he becomes upset and accusatory when his partner exhibits the predictable effects of chronic mistreatment, and then he adds insult to injury by ridiculing her for feeling hurt by him.

It’s never the right time, or the right way, to bring things up.

In any relationship, it makes sense to use some sensitivity in deciding when and how to tackle a difficult relationship issue. There are ways to word a grievance that avoid making it sound like a personal attack, and if you mix in some appreciation you increase the chance that your partner will hear you.

But with an abuser, no way to bring up a complaint is the right way. You can wait until the calmest, most relaxed evening, prepare your partner with plenty of verbal stroking, express your grievance in mil...

Initial defensiveness or hostility toward a grievance is common even ...

Sometimes you have to leave an argument and come back to it in a couple of hours, or the next day, and then you find your partner more pre...

With an abuser, however, the passage of time doesn’t help. He doesn’t spend the intervening period digesting your comments and struggling to face what he did, the way a nonabusive person might. In fact he does the opposite, appearing to mentally build up his cas...

while a nonabusive partner might argue with you about how you are interpreting his behavior, the abuser denies his actions altogether.

The nonabusive man in these circumstances will be very concerned when you inform him that he is frightening you and will want to take steps to keep that from happening again—unconditionally.

It is rare to find a man who has gradually lost his freedom or self-esteem because of a woman’s aggressiveness.

I object to any form of physical aggression in relationships except for what is truly essential for self-defense, but I reserve the word abuse for situations of control or intimidation.