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

“Sometimes the more educated an abuser, the more knots he knows how to tie in a woman’s brain, the better he is at getting her to blame herself, and the slicker is his ability to persuade other people that she is crazy. The more socially powerful an abuser, the more powerful his abuse can be—and the more difficult it can be to escape.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“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!”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“HE ISN’T ABUSIVE BECAUSE HE IS ANGRY; HE’S ANGRY BECAUSE HE’S ABUSIVE.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“The man’s rights and the woman’s rights are the same size. They have the right to have their opinions and desires respected, to have a 50 percent say in decision making, to live free from verbal abuse and physical harm. Their children’s rights are somewhat smaller but substantial nonetheless; children can’t have an equal say in decisions because of their limited knowledge and experience, but they do have the right to live free from abuse and fear, to be treated with respect, and to have their voices heard on all issues that concern them.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Have you ever heard a woman claim that the reason why she is chronically mistreating her male partner is because a previous man abused her? I have never run into this excuse in the fifteen years I have worked in the field of abuse. Certainly I have encountered cases where women had trouble trusting another man after leaving an abuser, but there is a critical distinction to be made: Her past experiences may explain how she feels, but they are not an excuse for how she behaves. And the same is true for a man.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“RESEARCH INDICATES THAT A WOMAN’S INTUITIVE SENSE OF WHETHER OR NOT HER PARTNER WILL BE VIOLENT TOWARD HER IS A SUBSTANTIALLY MORE ACCURATE PREDICTOR OF FUTURE VIOLENCE THAN ANY OTHER WARNING SIGN.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“This “gentle man” style of abuser tends to be highly self-centered and demanding of emotional catering. He may not be the man who has a fit because dinner is late but rather erupts because of some way his partner failed to sacrifice her own needs or interests to keep him content. He plays up how fragile he is to divert attention from the swath of destruction he leaves behind him.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Your abusive partner’s cycles of moving in and out of periods of cruelty can cause you to feel very close to him during those times when he is finally kind and loving. You can end up feeling that the nightmare of his abusiveness is an experience the two of you have shared and are escaping from together, a dangerous illusion that trauma can cause. I commonly hear an abused woman say about her partner, “He really knows me,” or “No one understands me the way he does.” This may be true, but the reason he seems to understand you well is that he has studied ways to manipulate your emotions and control your reactions. At times he may seem to grasp how badly he has hurt you, which can make you feel close to him, but it’s another illusion; if he could really be empathic about the pain he has caused, he would stop abusing you for good.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“For decades, many therapists have been attempting to help abusive men change by guiding them in identifying and expressing feelings. Alas, this well-meaning but misguided approach actually feeds the abuser’s selfish focus on himself, which is an important force driving his abusiveness.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Most abusive men put on a charming face for their communities, creating a sharp split between their public image and their private treatment of women and children. He may be: Enraged at home but calm and smiling outside Selfish and self-centered with you but generous and supportive with others Domineering at home but willing to negotiate and compromise outside Highly negative about females while on his own turf but a vocal supporter of equality when anyone else is listening Assaultive toward his partner or children but nonviolent and nonthreatening with everyone else Entitled at home but critical of other men who disrespect or assault women The pain of this contrast can eat away at a woman. In the morning her partner cuts her to the quick by calling her a “brainless fat cow,” but a few hours later she sees him laughing with the people next door and helping them fix their car. Later the neighbor says to her, “Your partner is so nice. You’re lucky to be with him—a lot of men wouldn’t do what he does.” She responds with a mumbled “Yeah,” feeling confused and tongue-tied. Back at home, she asks herself over and over again, “Why me?”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Besides knowing all about the world, Mr. Right is also an expert on your life and how you should live it. He has the answers to your conflicts at work, how you should spend your time, and how you should raise your children. He is especially knowledgeable about your faults, and he likes to inventory what is wrong with you, as if tearing you down were the way to improve you.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“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.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Boys’ aggressiveness is increasingly being treated as a medical problem, particularly in schools, a trend that has led to the diagnosing and medicating of boys whose problem may really be that they have been traumatized and influenced by exposure to violence and abuse at home. Treating these boys as though they have a chemical problem not only overlooks the distress they are in but also reinforces their belief that they are “out of control” or “sick,” rather than helping them to recognize that they are making bad choices based on destructive values. I have sometimes heard adults telling girls that they should be flattered by boys’ invasive or aggressive behavior “because it means they really like you,” an approach that prepares both boys and girls to confuse love with abuse and socializes girls to feel helpless.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Physical aggression by a man toward his partner is abuse, even if it happens only once.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Abuse is the product of a mentality that excuses and condones bullying and exploitation, that promotes superiority and disrespect, and that casts responsibility on to the oppressed.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Bringing about change in an abuser generally requires four elements: (1) consequences, (2) education, (3) confrontation, and (4) accountability.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“No woman in any of my cases has ever left a man the first time he behaved abusively (not that doing so would be wrong). By the time she moves to end her relationship, she has usually lived with years of verbal abuse and control and has requested uncountable numbers of times that her partner stop cutting her down or frightening her. In most cases she has also requested that he stop drinking, or go to counseling, or talk to a clergyperson, or take some other step to get help. She has usually left him a few times, or at least started to leave, and then gotten back together with him. Don’t any of these actions on her part count as demonstrating her commitment? Has she ever done enough, and gained the right to protect herself? In the abuser’s mind, the answer is no. Once again, the abuser’s double standards rule the day.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Outside of my professional life, I have known many couples over the years who had passion and electricity between them and who treated each other well. But unfortunately there is wide acceptance in our society of the unhealthy notion that passion and aggression are interwoven and that cruel verbal exchanges and bomblike explosions are the price you pay for a relationship that is exciting, deep, and sexy. Popular romantic movies and soap operas sometimes reinforce this image.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“A woman can feel that she is losing her mind—or develop actual psychiatric symptoms—if the obvious realities of her life, including abuse, are denied repeatedly by her partner.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Resistance never disappears; it waits in the shadows, sometimes for many years, and then eventually sprouts again. You may have gone through dark times when you felt, “I just can’t fight this anymore, I give up,” yet you rebound after a while to try again to recover your rights. And one day you will succeed.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“In the 1890s, when Freud was in the dawn of his career, he was struck by how many of his female patients were revealing childhood incest victimization to him. Freud concluded that child sexual abuse was one of the major causes of emotional disturbances in adult women and wrote a brilliant and humane paper called “The Aetiology of Hysteria.” However, rather than receiving acclaim from his colleagues for his ground-breaking insights, Freud met with scorn. He was ridiculed for believing that men of excellent reputation (most of his patients came from upstanding homes) could be perpetrators of incest.
Within a few years, Freud buckled under this heavy pressure and recanted his conclusions. In their place he proposed the “Oedipus complex,” which became the foundation of modern psychology. According to this theory any young girl actually desires sexual contact with her father, because she wants to compete with her mother to be the most special person in his life. Freud used this construct to conclude that the episodes of incestuous abuse his clients had revealed to him had never taken place; they were simply fantasies of events the women had wished for when they were children and that the women had come to believe were real. This construct started a hundred-year history in the mental health field of blaming victims for the abuse perpetrated on them and outright discrediting of women’s and children’s reports of mistreatment by men.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“The central attitudes driving the Terrorist are:
You have no right to defy me or leave me. Your life is in my hands.
Women are evil and have to be kept terrorized to prevent that evil from coming forth.
I would rather die than accept your right to independence.
The children are one of the best tools I can use to make you fearful.
Seeing you terrified is exciting and satisfying.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“There are two main principles to keep in mind when deciding how much potential an abuser has to become a kind, respectful partner in the long run:

1. He cannot change unless he deals deeply with his entitled and superior attitudes. No superficial changes that he may make offer any real hope for the future.

2. It makes no different how nice he is being to you, since almost all abusers have nice periods. What matters is how respectful and noncoercive he chooses to become.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Almost no abuser is mean or frightening all the time. At least occasionally, he is loving, gentle, and humorous and perhaps even capable of compassion and empathy. This intermittent, and usually unpredictable, kindness is critical to forming traumatic attachments. When a person, male or female, has suffered harsh, painful treatment over an extended period of time, he or she naturally feels a flood of love and gratitude toward anyone who brings relief, like the surge of affection one might feel for the hand that offers a glass of water on a scorching day. But in situations of abuse, the rescuer and the tormentor are the very same person.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Some people may feel that I am unrealistic to believe in a world that is free of abuse. But words like unrealistic, naive, and impractical come from voices of superiority who use them as put-downs to get people to stop thinking for themselves. Abuse does affect us all. If you haven’t been involved with an abusive partner yourself, even if no woman that you love has ever suffered chronic mistreatment, the quality of your life is still dragged down, your horizons still circumscribed, by the existence of abuse and the culture that drives it. The voice of abuse takes so many different forms. You can hear it each time a child’s dreams are shot down by an adult who thinks he or she knows it all. It rings in the ears of anyone who has ever been ridiculed for crying. It echoes through the mind of each person who has dared to put a name to his or her own mistreatment, or to the cruelty directed toward someone else, and then has been derided with stinging words such as sissy or mama’s boy or hysterical or thousands of others. If”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Addiction does not cause partner abuse, and recovery from addiction does not “cure” partner abuse.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“An abuser tries to keep everybody focused on how he feels, so that they won’t focus on how he thinks, perhaps because on some level he is aware that if you grasp the true nature of his problem, you will begin to escape his domination.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“I have never seen a client make a serious effort to confront his abusiveness unless somebody required him to do the work. The abuser who truly enters counseling voluntarily, with no one holding anything over his head, quits within a few sessions, unless he finds a counselor he can manipulate.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“The vast majority of women who say that they are being abused are telling the truth. I know this to be true because the abusers let their guard down with me, belying their denial.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Every aspect of the multipronged legal system even today is dominated by males: police, prosecutors, judges, probation officers. In addition, the state legislatures that make the laws are still disproportionately male. So how does the abuser come to the far-fetched conclusion that women are somehow lurking in the shadows, pulling strings to cause him to suffer consequences for his actions when he thinks there shouldn’t be any? This absurd leap occurs for two reasons. One is that he already has wellentrenched habits of blaming women for his own behavior. So when society sends him the message that he is responsible for what he does, he just widens the scope of his blame-projecting machine to target all women. The second is that if he didn’t blame women, he would have to accept the fact that a large proportion of men are opposed to what he is doing. Cultural values are changing, slowly but surely, and abusers cannot always count on other men to back them up anymore—a fact that makes them feel betrayed so they close their eyes to it.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men