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ABUSIVE MEN COME in every personality type, arise from good childhoods and bad ones, are macho men or gentle, “liberated” men. No psychological test can distinguish an abusive man from a respectful one. Abusiveness is not a product of a man’s emotional injuries or of deficits in his skills. In reality, abuse springs from a man’s early cultural training, his key male role models, and his peer influences. In other words, abuse is a problem of values, not of psychology. When someone challenges an abuser’s attitudes and beliefs, he tends to reveal the contemptuous and insulting personality that normally stays hidden, reserved for private attacks on his partner. An abuser tries to keep everybody—his partner, his therapist, his friends and relatives—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.
Mr. Right tries to sanitize his bullying by telling me, “I have strong opinions” or “I like debating ideas.” This is like a bank robber saying, “I’m interested in financial issues.” Mr. Right isn’t interested in debating ideas; he wants to impose his own.
The central attitudes driving Mr. Right are:
- You should be in awe of my intelligence and should look up to me intellectually. I know better than you do, even about what’s good for you.
- Your opinions aren’t worth listening to carefully or taking seriously.
- The fact that you sometimes disagree with me shows how sloppy your thinking is.
- If you would just accept that I know what’s right, our relationship would go much better. Your own life would go better, too.
- When you disagree with me about something, no matter how respectfully or meekly, that’s mistreatment of me.
- If I put you down for long enough, some day you’ll see.
The Water Torturer’s style proves that anger doesn’t cause abuse. He can assault his partner psychologically without even raising his voice. He tends to stay calm in arguments, using his own evenness as a weapon to push her over the edge. He often has a superior or contemptuous grin on his face, smug and self-assured. He uses a repertoire of aggressive conversational tactics at low volume, including sarcasm, derision—such as openly laughing at her—mimicking her voice, and cruel, cutting remarks. Like Mr. Right, he tends to take things she has said and twist them beyond recognition to make her appear absurd, perhaps especially in front of other people. He gets to his partner through a slow but steady stream of low-level emotional assaults, and perhaps occasional shoves or other “minor” acts of violence that don’t generally cause visible injury but may do great psychological harm. He is relentless in his quiet derision and meanness.
The impact on a woman of all these subtle tactics is that either her blood temperature rises to a boil or she feels stupid and inferior, or some combination of the two. In an argument, she may end up yelling in frustration, leaving the room crying, or sinking into silence. The Water Torturer then says, “See, you’re the abusive one, not me. You’re the one who’s yelling and refusing to talk things out rationally. I wasn’t even raising my voice. It’s impossible to reason with you.”
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You seem to be hurting his feelings constantly, though you aren’t sure why, and he expects your attention to be focused endlessly on his emotional injuries. If you are in a bad mood one day and say something unfair or insensitive, it won’t be enough for you to give him a sincere apology and accept responsibility. He’ll go on and on about it, expecting you to grovel as if you had treated him with profound cruelty. (Notice the twist here: This is just what an abuser accuses his partner of doing to him, when all she is really looking for is a heartfelt “I’m sorry.”)
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When your feelings are hurt, on the other hand, he will insist on brushing over it quickly. He may give you a stream of pop-psychology language (“Just let the feelings go through you, don’t hold on to them so much,” or “It’s all in the attitude you take toward life,” or “No one can hurt you unless you let them”) to substitute for genuine support for your feelings, especially if you are upset about something he did. None of these philosophies applies when you upset him, however.
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With the passing of time, he increasingly casts the blame on to you for anything he is dissatisfied with in his own life; your burden of guilt keeps growing.
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He starts to exhibit a mean side that no one else ever sees and may even become threatening or intimidating.
ack
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.
The central attitudes driving Mr. Sensitive are:
- I’m against the macho men, so I couldn’t be abusive.
- As long as I use a lot of “psychobabble,” no one is going to believe that I am mistreating you.
- I can control you by analyzing how your mind and emotions work, and what your issues are from childhood.
- I can get inside your head whether you want me there or not.
- Nothing in the world is more important than my feelings.
- Women should be grateful to me for not being like those other men.
The central attitudes driving the Player are:
- Women were put on this earth to have sex with men—especially me.
- Women who want sex are too loose, and women who refuse sex are too uptight. (!)
- It’s not my fault that women find me irresistible. (This is a word-for-word quotation from a number of my clients.) It’s not fair to expect me to refuse temptation when it’s all around me; women seduce me sometimes, and I can’t help it.
- If you act like you need anything from me, I am going to ignore you. I’m in this relationship when it’s convenient for me and when I feel like it.
- Women who want the nonsexual aspects of themselves appreciated are bitches.
- If you could meet my sexual needs, I wouldn’t have to turn to other women.
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 maneuvers the woman into hating his ex-partner and may succeed in enlisting her in a campaign of harassment, rumor spreading, or battling for custody.
oh GOD
If you are involved with the Victim and want to escape his abuse, you may find that you feel guilty toward him, despite his treatment of you, and have difficulty ending the relationship as a result. You may feel that because his life has been so hard, you are reluctant to add to his pain by abandoning him. You may worry that he won’t take care of himself if you leave, that he will wither away from depression, won’t eat or sleep, or might even try to kill himself. The Victim knows how to present himself as helpless and pathetic so that you will find it harder to take your own life back.
oh no
So, if he isn’t laying plans to hurt her, what is going on in his mind? First, he is gazing longingly at the image he holds of the future, where the woman meets all of his needs, is beautiful and sexy at all times of the day and night, has no needs of her own, and is in awe of his brilliance and charm. He desires a woman who will cater to him and never complain about anything he does or darken his day with frustrations or unhappiness about her own life.
The abusive man doesn’t expose these self-focused fantasies to his new partner. In fact, he is largely unaware of them himself. So she has no way of knowing that he is looking more for a personal caretaker than for a partner. In fact, abusers tend to use the language of mutuality during the dating period:
“We are going to be really good for each other.”
“I want to be with you all the time.”
“I really want to be there for you.”
“You can stop working for now so that you can finish school, and we can live off of my income.”
“I’ll help you study for that medical assistant exam, so that you can get that promotion.”
He may truly believe his own promises, because he wants to see himself as a generous and thoughtful partner, one who does not use or disrespect women. Later, when he begins to control the woman and take advantage of her, he will find ways to convince himself that it’s not happening or that it is her fault. Abuse is not his goal, but control is, and he finds himself using abuse to gain the control he feels he has a right to.
AN ABUSER IS A HUMAN BEING, NOT AN EVIL MONSTER, BUT HE HAS A PROFOUNDLY COMPLEX AND DESTRUCTIVE PROBLEM THAT SHOULD NOT BE UNDERESTIMATED.
The common view of abusive men as evil, calculating brutes can make it difficult for a woman to recognize her partner’s problem. She tends to think: My partner really cares about me and has a good side to him. He has feelings; he’s not a sadist. He couldn’t be an abuser. She doesn’t realize that he can have all these positive qualities and still have an abuse problem.