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

by Lundy Bancroft

why should we let an angry and controlling man be the authority on partner abuse?

But a nonabusive man doesn’t use his past as an excuse to mistreat you. Feeling sorry for your partner can be a trap, making you feel guilty for standing up to his abusiveness.

IF IT IS AN EXCUSE FOR MISTREATING YOU, IT’S A DISTORTION. A man who was genuinely mistreated in a relationship with a woman would not be using that experience to get away with hurting someone else.

The great majority of abusive men are fairly calm and reasonable in most of their dealings that are unrelated to their partners.

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.

In short, an abuser’s core problem is that he has a distorted sense of right and wrong.

At the same time, I don’t want to make abusive men sound evil. They don’t calculate and plan out every move they make—though they use forethought more often than you would expect.

Abusers carry attitudes that produce fury.

In fact, most people have at least occasional times when they are too angry, out of proportion to the actual event or beyond what is good for their health.

Perhaps his loudest, most obvious, or most intimidating forms of abuse come out when he’s angry, but his deeper pattern is operating all the time.

Their value system is unhealthy, not their psychology.

Mental illness doesn’t cause abusiveness any more than alcohol does.

A mentally ill abuser has two separate—though interrelated—problems, just as the alcoholic or drug-addicted one does.

a man whose destructive behaviors are confined primarily or entirely to intimate relationships is an abuser, not a psychiatric patient.

No medication yet discovered will turn an abuser into a loving, considerate, appropriate partner. It will just take the edge off his absolute worst behaviors—if it even does that.

Most abusers don’t hate women. They often have close relationships with their mothers, or sisters, or female friends. A fair number are able to work successfully with a female boss and respect her authority, at least outwardly.

rather than personal experiences of being victimized by women. Some abusive men use the excuse that their behavior is a response to such victimization because they want to be able to make women responsible for men’s abuse.

But postseparation homicides of intimate partners are committed almost exclusively by men (and there is almost always a history of abuse before the breakup). If fear of abandonment causes postseparation abuse, why are the statistics so lopsided?

An abusive man expects catering, and the more positive attention he receives, the more he demands. He never reaches a point where he is satisfied, where he has been given enough. Rather, he gets used to the luxurious treatment he is receiving and soon escalates his demands.

The self-esteem myth is rewarding for an abuser, because it gets his partner, his therapist, and others to cater to him emotionally.

Think for a just a moment about how your partner’s degrading and bullying behavior has hurt your self-esteem. Have you suddenly turned into a cruel and explosive person? If low self-esteem isn’t an excuse for you to become abusive, then it’s no excuse for him either.

I have never once had a client whose behavior at home has improved because his job situation improved.

An abusive man is not unable to resolve conflicts nonabusively; he is unwilling to do so.

Abusers have normal abilities in conflict resolution, communication, and assertiveness when they choose to use them

The reason we don’t generally see these men is simple: They’re rare.

But don’t underestimate how humiliated a woman feels when she reveals abuse; women crave dignity just as much as men do. If shame stopped people from coming forward, no one would tell.

Abusive men commonly like to play the role of victim, and most men who claim to be “battered men” are actually the perpetrators of violence, not the victims.

You win it by being better at sarcasm, put-downs, twisting everything around backward, and using other tactics of control—an arena in which my clients win hands down over their partners, just as they do in a violent altercation. Who can beat an abuser at his own game?

Unlike alcoholics or addicts, abusive men don’t “hit bottom.” They can continue abusing for twenty or thirty years, and their careers remain successful, their health stays normal, their friendships endure.

Second, if a man has experienced oppression himself, it could just as easily make him more sympathetic to a woman’s distress as less so, as is true for childhood abuse

Alcohol cannot create an abuser, and sobriety cannot cure one. The only way a man can overcome his abusiveness is by dealing with his abusiveness.

Your abusive partner wants to deny your experience. He wants to pluck your view of reality out of your head and replace it with his. When someone has invaded your identity in this way enough times, you naturally start to lose your balance. But you can find your way back to center.

The abuser may repeatedly make negative comments about one of his partner’s friends, for example, so that she gradually stops seeing her acquaintance to save herself the hassle.

Never believe a man’s claim that he has to harm his partner in order to protect her; only abusers think this way.

“Your problem is not that you lose control of yourself, it’s that you take control of your partner. In order to change, you don’t need to gain control over yourself, you need to let go of control of her.”

Entitlement is the abuser’s belief that he has a special status and that it provides him with exclusive rights and privileges that do not apply to his partner.

Emotional caretaking can be even more important than homemaking services to the modern abuser.

Abusive men often hide their high emotional demands by cloaking them as something else.

But I notice that when he focuses on her, most of what he thinks about is what she can do for him, not the other way around. And when he doesn’t feel like focusing on her at all, he doesn’t bother.

But he’s not so much needy as entitled, so no matter how much you give him, it will never be enough. He will just keep coming up with more demands because he believes his needs are your responsibility, until you feel drained down to nothing.

In short, he wants sex on his terms or not at all.

Freedom from accountability means that the abusive man considers himself above criticism.

For each ounce he gives, he wants a pound in return. He wants his partner to devote herself fully to catering to him,

One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn’t rise and your blood shouldn’t boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone.

The abuser’s highly entitled perceptual system causes him to mentally reverse aggression and self-defense.

He wants to avoid having to think seriously about what she is saying and struggle to digest it. He feels entitled to swat her down like a fly instead.

objectification or depersonalization. Most abusers verbally attack their partners in degrading, revolting ways.

Objectification is a critical reason why an abuser tends to get worse over time. As his conscience adapts to one level of cruelty—or violence—he builds to the next. By depersonalizing his partner, the abuser protects himself from the natural human emotions of guilt and empathy, so that he can sleep at night with a clear conscience. He distances himself so far from her humanity that her feelings no longer count, or simply cease to exist.

Abuse and respect are diametric opposites: You do not respect someone whom you abuse, and you do not abuse someone whom you respect.

He may feel a powerful desire to receive your love and caretaking, but he only wants to give love when it’s convenient.