Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men (11 page)

The abusive man has another reason to exaggerate and ridicule his partner’s statements (and mine): He wants to avoid having to think seriously about what she is saying and struggle to digest it. He feels entitled to swat her down like a fly instead.

Sheldon’s relationship with Kelly was over. He was required to enter my program because he had violated a restraining order but denied that he had ever been violent or frightening to Kelly. Now he was attempting to get custody of their three-year-old daughter, Ashley. He claimed that Kelly had never looked after Ashley from the time of her birth and had “never bonded with her.” He added, “I don’t consider her Ashley’s mother. She’s just a vessel, just a channel that Ashley came through to get into this world.”

Sheldon had reduced Kelly to an inanimate object in his mind, a baby-producing machine. When he spoke of her, he twisted his face up in disgusted expressions of contempt. At the same time, he never sounded upset; he considered Kelly too far beneath him to raise his ire. He had the same attitude you might have if an annoying but harmless little dog were nipping at your heels. His tone of condescension indicated how certain he was of his superiority to Kelly.

As memorable as Sheldon’s smug derision was, it was only a few notches worse than the common thinking of many abusive men. The abuser tends to see his partner as less intelligent, less competent, less logical, and even less
sensitive
than he is. He will tell me, for example, that she isn’t the compassionate person he is. He often has difficulty conceiving of her as a human being. This tendency in abusers is known as
objectification
or
depersonalization.
Most abusers verbally attack their partners in degrading, revolting ways. They reach for the words that they know are most disturbing to women, such as
bitch, whore,
and
cunt,
often preceded by the word
fat.
These words assault her humanity, reducing her to an animal, a nonliving object, or a degraded sexual body part. The partners of my clients tell me that these disgusting words carry a force and an ugliness that feel like violence. Through these carefully chosen epithets—and my clients sometimes admit that they use the most degrading words they can think of—abusers make their partners feel both debased and unsafe.

Objectification is a critical reason why an abuser tends to get worse over time.
As his conscience adapts to one level of cruelty—or violence—he builds to the next. By depersonalizing his partner, the abuser protects himself from the natural human emotions of guilt and empathy, so that he can sleep at night with a clear conscience. He distances himself so far from her humanity that her feelings no longer count, or simply cease to exist. These walls tend to grow over time, so that after a few years in a relationship my clients can reach a point where they feel no more guilt over degrading or threatening their partners than you or I would feel after angrily kicking a stone in the driveway.

Abuse and respect are diametric opposites: You do not respect someone whom you abuse, and you do not abuse someone whom you respect.

Here are comments my clients commonly make to me:

An abusive man often tries to convince his partner that his mistreatment of her is proof of how deeply he cares, but the reality is that abuse is the opposite of love. The more a man abuses you, the more he is demonstrating that he cares only about himself. He may feel a powerful desire to
receive
your love and caretaking, but he only wants to
give
love when it’s convenient.

So is he lying when he says he loves you? No, usually not. Most of my clients do feel a powerful sensation inside that they call love. For many of them it is the only kind of feeling toward a female partner that they have ever had, so they have no way of knowing that it isn’t love. When an abusive man feels the powerful stirring inside that other people call love, he is probably largely feeling:

• The desire to have you devote your life to keeping him happy with no outside interference
  
• The desire to have sexual access
  
• The desire to impress others by having you be his partner
  
• The desire to possess and control you
  

These desires are important aspects of what romantic love means to him. He may well be capable of feeling genuine love for you, but first he will have to dramatically reorient his outlook in order to separate abusive and possessive desires from true caring, and become able to really
see
you.

The confusion of love with abuse is what allows abusers who kill their partners to make the absurd claim that they were driven by the depths of their loving feelings. The news media regrettably often accept the aggressors’ view of these acts, describing them as “crimes of passion.” But what could more thoroughly prove that a man did
not
love his partner? If a mother were to kill one of her children, would we ever accept the claim that she did it because she was overwhelmed by how much she cared? Not for an instant. Nor should we. Genuine love means respecting the humanity of the other person, wanting what is best for him or her, and supporting the other person’s self-esteem and independence. This kind of love is incompatible with abuse and coercion.

Let’s examine the following interactions between an abusive man named David and his partner Joanne:

• David is yelling at Joanne, pointing his finger and turning red in the face. Joanne tells him he’s too angry and she doesn’t like it. He yells even louder, saying, “I’m not angry, I’m just trying to get my point across and you’re not listening! Don’t tell me what I’m feeling, I hate that! You’re not inside me!”
  
• One day Joanne tells David that his outbursts are getting to her and she needs to take some time off from their relationship. David says, “What you are saying is that you don’t love me anymore. I’m not sure you ever loved me. You don’t understand how strong my feelings are for you,” and he looks close to tears. The conversation shifts to Joanne reassuring David that she isn’t abandoning him, and her complaints about his behavior get lost in the shuffle.
  
• On another occasion, Joanne brings up the fact that she would like to go back to school. David responds negatively, saying, “We can’t afford it,” and refuses to look after the children while she’s at class. Joanne proposes a number of strategies for dealing with both money and child care, all of which David finds something wrong with. Joanne finally decides it’s impossible to continue her education, but David then insists that he wasn’t trying to talk her out of it. She winds up feeling that the decision not to go back to school is her own.
  

Few abusive men rely entirely on verbal abuse or intimidation to control their partners. Being a nonstop bully is too much work, and it makes the man look bad. If he is abusive all the time, his partner starts to recognize that she’s being abused, and the man may feel too guilty about his behavior. The abuser therefore tends to switch frequently to manipulating his partner to get what he wants. He may also sometimes use these tactics just to get her upset or confused.

There are some signs of manipulation by abusers that you can watch for:

• Changing his moods abruptly and frequently,
  so that you find it difficult to tell who he is or how he feels, keeping you constantly off balance. His feelings toward
  you
  are especially changeable.
  
• Denying the obvious about what he is doing or feeling.
  He’ll speak to you with his voice trembling with anger, or he’ll blame a difficulty on you, or he’ll sulk for two hours, and then deny it to your face. You know what he did—and so does he—but he refuses to admit it, which can drive you crazy with frustration. Then he may call you irrational for getting so upset by his denial.
  
• Convincing you that what
  he
  wants you to do is what is best for you.
  This way the abuser can make his selfishness look like generosity, which is a neat trick. A long time may pass before you realize what his real motives were.
  
• Getting you to feel sorry for him,
  so that you will be reluctant to push forward with your complaints about what he does.
  
• Getting you to blame yourself, or blame other people, for what he does.
  
• Using confusion tactics in arguments,
  subtly or overtly changing the subject, insisting that you are thinking or feeling things that you aren’t, twisting your words, and many other tactics that serve as glue to pour into your brain. You may leave arguments with him feeling like you are losing your mind.
  
• Lying or misleading you about his actions, his desires, or his reasons for doing certain things,
  in order to guide you into doing what he wants you to do. One of the most frequent complaints I get from abused women is that their partners lie repeatedly, a form of psychological abuse that in itself can be highly destructive over time.
  
• Getting you and the people you care about turned against each other
  by betraying confidences, being rude to your friends, telling people lies about what you supposedly said about them, charming your friends and then telling them bad things about you, and many other divisive tactics.
  

In some ways manipulation is worse than overt abuse, especially when the two are mixed together. When a woman gets called “bitch,” or gets shoved or slapped, she at least knows what her partner did to her. But after a manipulative interaction she may have little idea what went wrong; she just knows that she feels terrible, or crazy, and that somehow it seems to be her own fault.

If you are involved with an abusive man, you may spend a lot of your time trying to figure out what is wrong with
you,
rather than what is wrong with
him.
If he gets along well with other people and impresses them with his generosity, sense of humor, and friendliness, you may wind up wondering, “What is it about me that sets him off? Other people seem to think he’s great.”

Most abusive men put on a charming face for their communities, creating a sharp split between their public image and their private treatment of women and children. He may be:

• Enraged at home but calm and smiling outside
  
• Selfish and self-centered with you but generous and supportive with others
  
• Domineering at home but willing to negotiate and compromise outside
  
• Highly negative about females while on his own turf but a vocal supporter of equality when anyone else is listening
  
• Assaultive toward his partner or children but nonviolent and nonthreatening with everyone else
  
• Entitled at home but critical of other men who disrespect or assault women
  

The pain of this contrast can eat away at a woman. In the morning her partner cuts her to the quick by calling her a “brainless fat cow,” but a few hours later she sees him laughing with the people next door and helping them fix their car. Later the neighbor says to her, “Your partner is so nice. You’re lucky to be with him—a lot of men wouldn’t do what he does.” She responds with a mumbled “Yeah,” feeling confused and tongue-tied. Back at home, she asks herself over and over again,
“Why me?”

D
O
A
BUSIVE
M
EN
H
AVE
S
PLIT
P
ERSONALITIES?

Not really. They are drawn to power and control, and part of how they get it is by looking good in public. The abusive man’s charm makes his partner reluctant to reach out for support or assistance because she feels that people will find her revelations hard to believe or will blame her. If friends overhear him say something abusive, or police arrest him for an assault, his previous people-pleasing lays the groundwork to get him off the hook. The observers think,
He’s such a nice guy, he’s just not the type to be abusive. She must have really hurt him.

The abuser’s nice-guy front helps him feel good about himself. My clients say to me, “I get along fine with everyone but her. You should ask around about what I’m like; you’ll see. I’m a calm, reasonable person. People can see that she’s the one who goes off.” Meanwhile, he uses the difficulties that she is having in her relationships with people—many of which may be caused by him—as further proof that she is the one with the problem.

One of the most important challenges facing a counselor of abusive men is to resist being drawn in by the men’s charming persona. As they sit chatting and joking in their group meeting, cruelty and selfishness seem faraway. I find myself wondering the same thing the neighbors do: Could this guy really get that mean? And even after he admits to what he does, it’s
still
hard to believe. This contrast is a key reason why abusers can get away with what they do.

Among my clients I have had: numerous doctors, including two surgeons; many successful businesspeople, including owners and directors of large companies; about a dozen college professors; several lawyers; a prominent—and very mellow-sounding—radio personality; clergypeople; and two well-known professional athletes. One of my violent clients had spent every Thanksgiving for the past ten years volunteering at his local soup kitchen. Another was a publicly visible staff member of a major international human rights organization. The cruelty and destructiveness that these men were capable of would have stunned their communities had they known.