Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men (14 page)

Well, why was Brad denying a history of assault (while actually admitting to one) when I hadn’t said anything about violence? The possibility that he might be physically abusive had never occurred to me before, but it certainly did now. The signs were all there: bullying Deanna that weekend and then insisting it was for her own good; feeling entitled to ignore an important agreement; blaming his earlier girlfriend for his assault of her and minimizing it—the strength of the shove he gave me would have shaken up most women. I now doubted that the assaultive incident he had described was his only occasion of physically intimidating a woman.

At this point I required Brad to leave the workshop. I then had to deal with a mini-insurrection from some of the other workshop participants, who couldn’t believe I was ejecting this gentle man who was so in touch with his feelings. He
cries
after all; how could he be abusive?

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.

T
HE
P
LAYER

The Player is usually good looking and often sexy. (But sometimes he just thinks he is.) In the early part of a relationship he seems head over heels in love and wants to spend as much time as possible in bed together. He is a pretty good lover. You may feel lucky that you have caught someone who knows how to turn you on and feel proud to be seen with him. Your self-opinion gets a nice boost.

After a while, though, a few things start to bother you. You notice that apart from sex his interest in you is waning, and even his sexual energy is dropping off a little. He seems to lock his eyes pretty hard onto women that walk by. He flirts with waitresses, clerks, or even friends of yours. Sexual undertones seem to run through most of his interactions with females, except for ones he finds completely unattractive. Rumors start to come back to you that he’s been seen with this woman, that he is sleeping with that one, that he is pursuing another one but she isn’t interested yet. At first you discount these rumors as hurtful gossip, but after a while you start to wonder.

The Player often starts to stall on moving in together or agreeing to be exclusive, even though earlier he couldn’t wait to get serious. He may say that he’s been hurt or has a fear of commitment (“I’m just not ready”), but the real issue is that he doesn’t want restrictions on his freedom. Much of his satisfaction in life comes from exploiting women and feeling like a sexual animal. Women around the Player seem to get angry
at each other
a lot, rather than at him, and sometimes get into physical confrontations. These tensions work out well for him, diverting attention from his infidelity and dishonesty. He sets up this dynamic with some combination of the following tactics:

1. He knows how to make each woman feel that she’s the special one and yet at the same time keep her off balance, so that she never feels quite sure of where she stands with him.
   
2. He tells each one that the others are lying about their involvements with him because they are jealous of her, or because he turned them down, or because he used to be involved with them but isn’t anymore.
   
3. He tells each one stories about how other women have mistreated him, or shares other bits of information—largely invented—to make previous, or current, women in his life sound conniving, vindictive, or addicted to substances.
   
4. He breaks up with women and gets back together with them, so that no one can keep track of what’s going on.
   
5. He includes one or two women in his circle who feel unattractive, because he knows he can have more power over them, and manipulates them into hating the women who are seen as more attractive.
   

If this is your partner’s style, you won’t necessarily ever be sure whether he is really having sex with other women or if he just flirts because he enjoys the attention and likes you to feel threatened. He may hotly deny that he ever cheats and try to turn the tables by accusing you of being too suspicious. But even if he’s telling the truth—which he probably isn’t—his constant flirtatious behavior can be as damaging as actual affairs. Either way, he will damage your other relationships, because you will start to perceive any woman as a potential threat to you. If he has a history of hitting on women who are close to you, such as your sister or best friend, you can end up isolated from the women you care about most, because you’re afraid he will have affairs with them unless you keep them away.

Chronic infidelity is abusive in itself, but the Player doesn’t stop there. He is irresponsible, callous in dealing with his partner’s feelings, and periodically verbally abusive. As the relationship progresses, he may start to go for long periods giving his partner next to no attention and barely speaking to her, so she feels shelved. He probably refuses to take responsibility for safe sex (such as using a condom), and he may have fathered children who he is not supporting. His abusiveness can escalate abruptly if he is confronted or caught in his infidelities, and he may turn physically frightening at this point. In a strange but dangerous twist, the Player sometimes hits his partner for catching
him
cheating rather than the reverse.

The Player’s constant flirting and cheating help him to get away with other forms of mistreatment. His partner is likely to focus on her hurt feelings about his infidelities and pour effort into stopping him from straying and, in the process, lose sight of his pattern of abuse. When she asks me whether I think her partner will ever settle down and be faithful to her—if they get married, for example—I answer, “He may some day, but what you will have then is a faithful abuser.” His promiscuity is a symptom of a deeper problem: He is incapable of taking women seriously as human beings rather than as playthings. With that mind-set, he’ll be a destructive partner whether he cheats or not.

The Players I have worked with sometimes claim to suffer from “sex addiction,” and join Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (which they may discover is a good place to pick up women). But sex addiction doesn’t cause dishonesty, verbal abusiveness, or intimidating behavior. The Player is not a sex addict at all. If he is addicted to anything, it’s to the thrill of using women without regard for the effects on them.

R
AMBO

Rambo is aggressive with everybody, not just his partner. He gets a thrill out of the sensation of intimidating people and strives to handle all life situations by subtly or overtly creating fear. He has an exaggerated, stereotypical view of what a man is supposed to be, which goes hand in hand with seeing women as delicate, inferior, and in need of protection. Rambo often comes from a home or neighborhood where he was the target of violence himself and learned that the only way to feel safe is to be stronger, tougher, and less caring than everybody else. He has little patience for weakness, fragility, or indecision. Often he has a criminal record for violence, theft, drunk driving, or drug dealing.

Early in a relationship, Rambo is likely to be loving and kind to his partner, like most abusers. Because he lacks fear—or pretends to—he can make a woman feel safe and protected. This style of abuser can therefore be particularly appealing to a woman who comes from a violent home herself or to one
who is in the process of leaving another abusive relationship.
Rambo can make you feel as though his aggressiveness would never be directed toward you, because he loves you; he wishes to look after your safety as if you were his daughter. He enjoys the role of protector, feeling like a gallant knight. However, he lacks respect for women, and this disrespect, combined with his general violent tendencies, means that it is only a matter of time before he will be the one you need protection
from.

Many highly “masculine” men are
not
Rambo. The notion that all macho men are likely to abuse women is based largely on class and ethnic prejudices, the same misconceptions that allow Mr. Sensitive or Mr. Right to skate by undetected. There are plenty of “tough guys” out there who are friendly to everyone and avoid aggressive interactions whenever possible but enjoy lifting weights, playing rough sports, hunting, and other aspects of stereotypical masculinity. They may be good fighters, but only in self-defense. It isn’t macho that women need to watch out for. The danger signs are violence and intimidation toward anyone, and disrespect and superiority toward women.

Sometimes Rambo is a psychopath or sociopath, which can make him all the more emotionally abusive and in some cases physically abusive as well. Later we will take a look at psychopaths and other mentally disordered abusers.

T
HE
V
ICTIM

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.

As a counselor of abusive men, I have dozens of times been in the position of interviewing a man’s former partner and then speaking with the new one. The new partner usually speaks at length about what a wicked witch the woman before her was. I can’t tell her what I know, much as I wish I could, because of my responsibility to protect the confidentiality and safety of the former partner. All I can say is: “I always recommend,
whenever
there are claims of emotional or physical abuse, that women talk to each other directly and not just accept the man’s denial.”

Women sometimes ask me: “But what if a man I am dating really was victimized by his former girlfriend? How can I tell the difference?” Here are some things to watch for:

1. If you listen carefully, you often can hear the difference between
   anger
   toward an ex-partner, which would not be worrisome in itself, and
   disrespect
   or
   contempt,
   which should raise warning flags. A man who has left a relationship with bitterness should nonetheless be able to talk about his ex-partner as a human being, with some understanding of what her side of the conflicts was and some ways he might have contributed to what went wrong. If he speaks in degrading or superior ways about her, or makes everything that went wrong in the relationship her fault, be careful, because it is likely that he was the abusive one.
   
2. Try to get him to talk about his own conduct in the relationship, especially around the time of the breakup. If he blames his own behavior on her, that’s a bad sign.
   
3. Be particularly careful with a man who claims to have been the victim of physical violence by a previous female partner. The great majority of men who make such claims are physical abusers. Ask him for as much detail as you can about the violent incidents, and then try to talk to her or seek out anyone else who could give you a different perspective on what happened. Watch for warning signs of abusiveness (see Chapter 5).
   
4. Pay attention to how he talks and thinks about abused women. A genuine male victim tends to feel sympathy for abused women and support their cause. The Victim, on the other hand, often says that women exaggerate or fabricate their claims of abuse or insists that men are abused just as much as women are.
   

The Victim may adopt the language of abuse victims, claiming, for example, that his ex-partner was “focused on power and control,” disrespected him, and always had to have her own way. In a few years, he will be using similar reality-inversion language about you—unless, of course, you kowtow to him to his satisfaction.