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

by Lundy Bancroft

Abuse of women by men is so rampant that, unless people can somehow make it women’s own fault, they are forced to take on a number of uncomfortable questions about men and about much of male thinking. So it may seem easier to just lay the problem at the feet of the man’s mother?

An abusive man who is adept in the language of feelings can make his partner feel crazy by turning each argument into a therapy session in which he puts her reactions under a microscope and assigns himself the role of “helping” her. He may, for example, “explain” to her the emotional issues she needs to work through, or analyze her reasons for “mistakenly” believing that he is mistreating her.

Been seeing the meme online a bunch of "Manipulation is when they blame you for your reaction to their disrespect." - this line could have saved 1/2 the book

Feeling sorry for your partner can be a trap, making you feel guilty for standing up to his abusiveness.

In fact, many of them express their feelings more than some nonabusive men. Rather than trapping everything inside, they actually tend to do the opposite: They have an exaggerated idea of how important their feelings are, and they talk about their feelings—and act them out—all the time, until their partners and children are exhausted from hearing about it all. An abuser’s emotions are as likely to be too big as too small. They can fill up the whole house. When he feels bad, he thinks that life should stop for everyone else in the family until someone fixes his discomfort. His partner’s life crises, the children’s sicknesses, meals, birthdays—nothing else matters as much as his feelings.

Mental illness doesn’t cause abusiveness any more than alcohol does. What happens is rather that the man’s psychiatric problem interacts with his abusiveness to form a volatile combination. If he is severely depressed, for example, he may stop caring about the consequences his actions may cause him to suffer, which can increase the danger that he will decide to commit a serious attack against his partner or children. A mentally ill abuser has two separate—though interrelated—problems, just as the alcoholic or drug-addicted one does.

The skill deficits of abusers have been the subject of a number of research studies, and the results lead to the following conclusion: Abusers have normal abilities in conflict resolution, communication, and assertiveness when they choose to use them.

No citations given

She had been working for a week on this college paper that she had put a lot of hours into and was going to hand in on Monday. She left it sitting right on top of her dresser, just asking for it. So I tore it up into little pieces. Then I ripped up a bunch of pictures of the three of us, and I left it all in a nice pile on the bed for her to come home to. I think she learned something from that.

First example used and I have experienced it (papers/clothes/oher possessions “presented” in a pile on my bed in disarray and destruction). Apparently not as creative as he thought he was.

needs. Just as common as the abuser who blows up because dinner is late is the one who explodes because his partner gets tired of listening to him talk endlessly about himself, or because she wants to spend a little time doing something alone that she enjoys, or because she didn’t drop everything to soothe him when he was feeling down, or because she failed to anticipate needs or desires he hadn’t even expressed.

Ding ding ding

YOUR ABUSIVE PARTNER DOESN’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HIS ANGER; HE HAS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR ANGER. One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him.

Life has been hard and unfair for the Victim. To hear him tell it, his intelligence has been chronically underestimated; he has been burned by people he trusted; and his good intentions have been misunderstood. The Victim appeals to a woman’s compassion and desire to feel that she can make a difference in his life. He often tells persuasive and heart-rending stories about how he was abused by his former partner, sometimes adding the tragic element that she is now restricting or preventing his contact with his children.

He knows he used to be able to control you with charm, affection, and promises. He also remembers how well intimidation or aggression worked at other times. Now both of these tools are losing their effectiveness, so he tries to increase the voltages. He may switch erratically back and forth between the two like a doctor who cycles a patient through a range of antibiotics, trying to find the one that will get the infection under control. And the analogy is an apt one, because an abuser sees his (ex-) partner’s growing strength and independence as a sickness rather than as the harbinger of health that it actually is.

Survivors of hostage-taking situations or of torture can exhibit similar effects, attempting to protect their tormentors from legal consequences, insisting that the hostage takers actually had their best interests at heart or even describing them as kind and caring individuals—a phenomenon known as the Stockholm syndrome.

Apparently the author doesn’t realized this is a completely debunked “syndrome” that was invented to discredit a woman who criticized her “rescuers” methods as endangering herself and her fellow hostages.

saw these dynamics illustrated by a young boy who got a shock from touching an electric fence and was so frightened by it that he grabbed on to the fence for security—and wouldn’t let go as each successive shock increased his panic, until his sister was able to reach him and pull him off.

Two bad examples in a row - electric shock tenses the muscles so one is not able to let go - and even if that wasn’t the case, it hardly lends itself to proving a point about abused persons leaning on their abusers! What a weird point

Society has tended to label a woman “masochistic” or “joining with him in his sickness” for feeling grateful or attached to an abusive man. But, in fact, studies have shown that there is little gender difference in the traumatic bonding process and that males become as attached to their captors as women do.

Reference please?

The world of family courts, where legal struggles over custody and visitation take place, is a nightmare in the lives of many thousands of abused women across the United States and Canada. A woman who has overcome so many obstacles to finally free herself from abuse can suddenly find herself jerked back into the abuser’s grip, because he is the legal father of her children and chooses to continue his abuse through the legal system.

Not my experience (granted, without children) - family court seemed pretty familiar with the language, behaviors and manipulations of abusive men - but maybe mine was just too overt In any case, mediation and family court judges seemed to catch on very quickly, having seen so much of it before

I have read several evaluations that state that the man is unlikely to have perpetrated the reported acts of abuse because he is not mentally ill or because he doesn’t show signs of aggressiveness in the evaluator’s office. (On this erroneous basis, most abusive men could be declared to be victims of false accusations.) Unfortunately, many psychologists who take court appointments have been slow to accept that their standard array of theories and tests can lead to serious errors when applied to domestic-abuse cases.

How long ago? Again, I feel that the current daily court system is much more keen than this!

Regrettably, a growing number of abusive men succeed in using such claims of “parental alienation” to win custody or ample unsupervised visitation, even in cases where there is extensive evidence that the man has abused not only the mother but the children as well.

Citations please!?

First is the claim that fathers are widely discriminated against by family courts in custody disputes. The research actually shows the opposite, that in fact fathers have been at a distinct advantage in custody battles in the United States since the late 1970s, when the maternal preference went out of vogue.

Lack of citations now driving me crazy

Next often comes the myth that children of divorce fare better in joint custody, when the research shows overwhelmingly that they in fact do worse, except in those cases where their parents remain on good terms after the divorce and can co-parent cooperatively—which is almost impossible for a woman to do with an abusive ex-partner. Abusive

Again, this sounds reasonable but quotes zero references so I’m not sure it’s true

The treatment that protective mothers so often receive at the hands of family courts is among the most shameful secrets of modern jurisprudence. This is the only social institution that I am aware of that so frequently forbids mothers to protect their children from abuse. Fortunately, over the past few years, women and men (including many nonabusive fathers) across the United States and Canada have been waking up to the severity of this problem with the result that there are multiple initiatives currently in motion to demand family court reform.

Again, outrageous if true, but not backed by any references

Since so many people accept the misconception that abuse comes from bad relationship dynamics, they see the woman as sharing responsibility equally for “getting things to go better.”

This is the first time I’ve seen this asserted in this book (though I skipped much of the previous chapter) and again there are no references given

A psychologist who is currently one of the most influential professionals nationally in the field of custody disputes writes that women provoke men’s violence by “resisting their control” or by “attempting to leave.” She promotes the Oedipus complex theory, including the claim that girls wish for sexual contact with their fathers.

good time for a citation

Similar kinds of errors abound in the work of many individual and couples therapists. I’ve had couples counselors say to me, for example: “He just isn’t the type to be abusive; he’s so pleasant and insightful, and she’s so angry.” Women speak to me with shocked voices of betrayal as they tell me how their couples therapist, or the abuser’s individual therapist, or a therapist for one of their children, has become a vocal advocate for him and a harsh and superior critic of her. I have saved for years a letter

Again - not my experience. The minute one of his counselors talked to me or any couples counselors saw the two of us, they got it and started using the word “abuse” even when I never said it

A professional book I recently read offers a powerful example of how couples therapy works with an abuser.

Yet not cited