Certainly the abusive man also loses a great deal through his abusiveness. He loses the potential for genuine intimacy in his relationship, for example, and his capacity for compassion and empathy. But these are often not things that he values, so he may not feel their absence. And even if he would like greater intimacy, that wish is outweighed by his attachment to the benefits of abuse.

A: No, it was revenge. My clients often report having hit their partners back “so that she’ll see what it’s like” or “to show her that she can’t do that to me.” That isn’t self-defense, which means using the minimal amount of force needed to protect oneself. He uses her hitting him as an opening to let his violence show, thereby putting her on notice about what might happen in the future if she isn’t careful. His payback is usually many times more injurious and intimidating than what she did to him, making his claims of self-defense even weaker; he believes that when he feels hurt by you, emotionally or physically, that gives him the right to do something far worse to you.

In a typical abusive inversion, my clients often attempt to convince me that they are the sexual victims in their relationships. As one man said: “My partner uses sex to control me, that’s how women jerk men around. Women are the ones that really have the power over men because they know they have what we want the most, and they have the power to shut us out. My wife wants me to be her little puppy dog, begging and drooling and wagging my tail, that’s the only way I’ll get sex.” The underlying attitude comes bursting out of his words: He believes his wife is keeping something of his away from him when she doesn’t want intimate contact. He sees sexual rights to a woman as akin to mineral rights to land—and he owns them.

I asked him to describe Lynn’s injuries, and he told me that she had black-and-blue marks and welts up and down both of her legs. I inquired about any other injuries, and he said there were none. I was surprised, given the brutality of the attack. “Lynn had no bruises on her arms, or on her face? Why not?” Max’s face changed shape, suddenly peering at me as if I must not be very bright, and he sputtered, “Oh, well, of course I wasn’t going to do anything that would show.”

Lynn confirmed to me later that Max had indeed been stumbling drunk that night. But had his inebriation caused him to lose control? Clearly not. He had remained focused on his desire to protect his own reputation and to avoid putting himself at risk of arrest, and so he had restricted Lynn’s injuries to places where they would be covered by clothing the next day. He could scarcely be termed “out of control.”

An abusive man typically believes that his use or abuse of substances is none of his partner’s business. No matter how his addiction may lead him to abuse his partner economically (because he pours money into the substance and/or has trouble holding down a job) no matter how burdened she is with household responsibilities because he is out partying, no matter how much worse he may treat her while intoxicated, he nonetheless feels entitled to use substances as he chooses. If she criticizes him for his selfishness or confronts him with the effects that his partying has on her life, he feels justified in calling her a “nag” or a “bitch” or labeling her “controlling.” In short, irresponsible use of alcohol or drugs is another one of the privileges that the abusive man may award himself, and he may use psychological or physical assaults to punish his partner for challenging it.

However, over a period of three or four months, Van began to realize that Gail was not taking a break from their relationship in order to rebuild her trust in him, as he had believed. She was getting herself unhooked. As it dawned on him that she was thinking seriously about closing the door permanently, he started a rapid backslide before my eyes. First, he surprised me one day by saying that Gail “should really give our relationship another chance.” I was stunned. “Why on earth should a woman stay with a partner who gave her a beating that nearly killed her? I certainly wouldn’t want to do it.”

Van said, “The pain in our relationship wasn’t all hers, you know. She hurt me a lot too.” I asked if that somehow justified battering her. “No,” he answered, “I’m not justifying it. I’m just saying it isn’t like I was all bad and she was all good.”

“And so that means she owes you another chance? How many times do you get to beat a woman up before she stops owing you?” To this, Van just muttered under his breath and lightly shook his head.

Van’s group was alarmed by his reversion, and members raced to try to get him back on track, pointing out to him that (1) he was claiming to have made great changes, but his entitled insistence that Gail owed him loyalty was evidence of an abuser who wasn’t changing; (2) he was slipping back into minimizing how destructive his abusiveness and violence had been to Gail, to an extreme where he was convincing himself that he was a more constructive presence in her life than other people were; and (3) he was failing to accept the reality that a woman does not have to be “all good” in order to have the right to live free of abuse. I kept an additional thought to myself, which was that based on my conversation with her I was confident that Gail’s life was not “going nowhere” and that her primary goal at that point was to heal from what he had done to her. When he made disparaging references to “her issues,” he was ignoring the reality that her issues were 90 percent him. I remained silent on this point because I was concerned, given the state of mind he was in, that the better he understood her healing process, the more effectively he would take steps to sabotage it.

ABUSERS’ RESPONSES TO A POSSIBLE BREAKUP

Promising to change
Entering therapy or an abuser program
Not drinking, attending AA
Making apologies
Telling you that you will be lost without him
Telling you that no one else will want to be with you
Threatening suicide
Saying that you are abandoning him, making you feel guilty
Threatening to kidnap or take custody of the children
Threatening to leave you homeless or with
no financial resources
Turning very nice
Getting other people to pressure you into
giving him another chance
Taking care of things that you have been complaining
about for a long time (e.g., finally fixing a hazardous
situation in the house, getting a job, agreeing that you
can go out with your friends)
Behaving in self-destructive ways so that you will worry
or feel sorry for him (e.g., not eating, drinking heavily,
skipping work, never talking to his friends)
Spreading rumors about you, trying to ruin
your friendships or reputation
Starting a new relationship/affair to make you
jealous or angry
Insisting that he already has changed
Spreading confidential information
about you to humiliate you
Threatening or assaulting anyone you try to start a new
relationship with, or anyone who is helping you
Getting you pregnant
Stalking you
Physically or sexually assaulting you
Trashing your house or car
Threatening to harm you or kill you

Second, Van believed that it was unreasonable to expect a man to be nonabusive unless his partner never hurt his feelings or failed to cater to him. He felt that we were being unfair and unrealistic about a man’s inherent nature, as if we were asking a tiger to be vegetarian. Without saying so directly, he revealed his attitude that a woman needs to accept the fact that a certain amount of abuse just comes with the territory of being involved with a man, unless she can be perfect.

When a family affected by partner abuse splits up, some children discover how much more pleasant life is without their father in the home and may choose to distance themselves from him. This can be a sign of emotional health and recovery. The abuser then often claims, predictably, that the mother is turning the children against him; in his mind, what else could it be?