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

“Carl created the appearance of learning a great deal at each session, and his comments suggested serious reflection on the issues, including the effects of his abuse on his partner. What was happening each week inside his mind before he got home?”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Times when she puts her foot down the most firmly, he responds by becoming his angriest and most intimidating. When she stands up to him, he makes her pay for it—sooner or later. Friends say: 'Leave him.' But she knows it won’t be that easy. He will promise to change. He’ll get friends and relatives to feel sorry for him and pressure her to give him another chance.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child, difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the tender person she now sees. Sooner or later, though, the shadow comes back over him, as if it had a life of its own. Weeks of peace may go by, but eventually she finds herself under assault once again. Then her head spins with the arduous effort of untangling the many threads of his character, until she begins to wonder whether she is the one whose head isn’t quite right.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Explosions when he is irritated or when he doesn’t get his way. Her grievances constantly turned around on her, so that everything is her own fault. His growing attitude that he knows what is good for her better than she does. And, in many relationships, a mounting sense of fear or intimidation. But the woman also sees that her partner is a human being who can be caring and affectionate at times, and she loves him. She wants to figure out why he gets so upset, so that she can help him break his pattern of ups and downs.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment in relationships is that most abusive men simply don’t seem like abusers. They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor, especially in the early period of a relationship. An abuser’s friends may think the world of him. He may have a successful work life and have no problems with drugs or alcohol. He may simply not fit anyone’s image of a cruel or intimidating person.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Abuse won’t stop until abusers are made to accept responsibility for their own actions.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“A learned sense of entitlement, not emotional wounds, is the primary source of his problem.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Boys learn to be abusers primarily from social and cultural messages that surround them everywhere. This is why abusers find it so easy to get people to back them up.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“The combining of men and women in advocacy and shelter programs has opened the door to manipulation and intimidation by abusers, often under the guise of claiming to be the victim—a shrewd move that abusers tend to be skilled at.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Standing up to him more never accomplishes lasting change—in fact, he’ll escalate his behavior in response—and standing up to him less is toxic to your soul, leading to serious long-term emotional harm. The answers don’t lie in changing how you handle him.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Controlling and abusive men are still slick and sharp in their maneuvers while making them all look like accidents. Their explosions continue to look like the problem while the real issues hide in how they think and what they do between explosions. A woman still gets trapped into trying to manage the outbursts instead of recognizing the underlying patterns.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“One of the prevalent features of life with an angry or controlling partner is that he frequently tells you what you should think and tries to get you to doubt or devalue your own perceptions and beliefs.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Counseling abusive men is difficult work. They are usually very reluctant to face up to the damage that they have been causing women, and often children as well, and hold on tightly to their excuses and victim blaming.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“But you can treat your wife or girlfriend like that, as long as you have a good enough reason. That’s different.” In other words, the abuser’s problem lies above all in his belief that controlling or abusing his female partner is justifiable.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

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

“To remain neutral is to collude with the abusive man, whether or not that is your goal. If you are aware of chronic or severe mistreatment and do not speak out against it, your silence communicates implicitly that you see nothing unacceptable taking place. Abusers interpret silence as approval, or at least as forgiveness.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“One great way to keep people off of her side is to win them over to his side first. Besides, he feels that he deserves allies, because he considers himself the victim.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Your abusive partner doesn't have a problem with his anger; he has a problem with your anger.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Feeling sorry for your partner can be a trap, making you feel guilty for standing up to his abusiveness.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“hostility toward the human race may sprout from cruelty in his upbringing, but he abuses women because he has an abuse problem. The two problems are related but distinct.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“abusers of all varieties tend to realize the mileage they can get out of saying, "I'm abusive because the same thing was done to me.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“An abusive man may embellish his childhood suffering once he discovers that it helps him escape responsibility.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“My clients who have participated extensively in therapy or substance-abuse recovery programs sometimes sound like therapists themselves and a few actually have been as they adopt the terms of popular psychology or textbook theory. One addressing a problem as deep as this one." 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.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“In fact it typically gets worse, as he uses therapy to develop new excuses for his behavior, more sophisticated arguments to prove that his partner is mentally unstable, and more creative ways to make her feel responsible for his emotional distress. Abusive men are sometimes masters of the hard-luck story, and may find that accounts of childhood abuse are one of the best ways to pull heartstrings.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“In other words, a bad childhood doesn't cause a man to become an abuser, but it can contribute to making a man who is abusive especially dangerous.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Above all, the abusive man wants to avoid having you zero in on his abusiveness itself. So he tries to fill you head up with excuses and distortions and keep you weighed down with self-doubt and self-blame. And, unfortunately, much of the society tends to follow unsuspectingly along behind him, helping him to close your eyes, and his own, to his own problem”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“If you could follow the thread of his conduct over a series of relationships, you would find out that his behaviour isn't as erratic as it looks; in fact, it follows a fairly consistent pattern from woman to woman, except for brief relationships or ones he isn't that serious about.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“IN ONE IMPORTANT WAY, an abusive man works like a magician: His tricks largely rely on getting you to look off in the wrong direction, distracting your attention so that you won't notice where the real action is. He draws you into focusing on the turbulent world of his feelings to keep your eyes turned away from the true cause of his abusiveness, which lies in how he thinks. He leads you into a convoluted maze, making your relationship with him a labyrinth of twists and turns. He wants you to puzzle over him, to try to figure him out, as though he were a wonderful but broken machine for which you need only to find and fix the malfunctioning parts to bring it roaring to its full potential. His desire, though he may not admit it even to himself, is that you wrack your brain in this way, so that you won't notice the patterns and logic of his behaviour, the consiousness behind the craziness.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Unmasking the abuser also does him a favor because he will not confront-and overcome-his highly destructive problem as long as he can remain hidden”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“The abuser creates confusion because he has to. He can't control and intimidate you, he can't recruit people around him to take his side, he can't keep escaping the consequences of his actions, unless he can throw everyone off the track. When the world catches on the abuser, his power begins to melt away”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men