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It is also impossible to persuade an abusive man to change by convincing him that he would benefit, because he perceives the benefits of controlling his partner as vastly outweighing the losses. This is part of why so many men initially take steps to change their abusive behavior but then return to…

An abuser doesn’t change because he feels guilty or gets sober or finds God. He doesn’t change after seeing the fear in his children’s eyes or feeling them drift away from him. It doesn’t suddenly dawn on him that his partner deserves better treatment. Because of his self-focus, combined with the m…

I regret to say that a majority of abusers choose not to do the work. It isn’t that they can’t change (any abuser who doesn’t have a major mental illness can change) but that they decide they don’t wish to. They run a sort of cost-benefit analysis in their heads and decide that the rewards of remai…

• Therapy focuses on the man’s feelings and gives him empathy and support, no matter how unreasonable the attitudes that are giving rise to those feelings. An abuser program, on the other hand, focuses on his thinking. The feelings that the abuser program discusses are primarily his partner’s and h…

Bringing about change in an abuser generally requires four elements:(1) consequences, (2) education, (3) confrontation, and (4) accountability. Consequences, the first item on the list, are manifested primarily through the abuser’s experience of losing his relationship (at least temporarily if not …