In their efforts to adopt victim status, my clients try to exaggerate their partners’ verbal power: “Sure, I can win a physical fight, but she is much better with her mouth than I am, so I’d say it balances out.” (One very violent man said in his group session, “She stabs me through the heart with her words,” to justify the fact that he had stabbed his partner in the chest with a knife.) But abuse is not a battle that you win by being better at expressing yourself. You win it by being better at sarcasm, put-downs, twisting everything around backward, and using other tactics of control—an arena in which my clients win hands down over their partners, just as they do in a violent altercation. Who can beat an abuser at his own game?