Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men (9 page)

So our next step is to carefully weave back together the tangled strands we have just unraveled, to form a coherent picture. As we do so, you will gradually find yourself relieved to leave these eye-bending distortions behind. An energizing clarity can then take their place, and the mystery that abusers work so hard to create will vanish.

• An abusive man’s emotional problems do not cause his abusiveness. You can’t change him by figuring out what is bothering him, helping him feel better, or improving the dynamics of your relationship.
  
• Feelings do not govern abusive or controlling behavior; beliefs, values, and habits are the driving forces.
  
• The reasons that an abusive man gives for his behavior are simply
  excuses.
  There is no way to overcome a problem with abusiveness by focusing on tangents such as self-esteem, conflict resolution, anger management, or impulse control. Abusiveness is resolved by dealing with abusiveness.
  
• Abusers thrive on creating confusion, including confusion about the abuse itself.
  
• There is nothing wrong with you. Your partner’s abuse problem is his own.
  

C
HRONIC MISTREATMENT
gets people to doubt themselves. Children of abusive parents know that something is wrong, but they suspect the badness is inside of them. Employees of an abusive boss spend much of their time feeling that they are doing a lousy job, that they should be smarter and work harder. Boys who get bullied feel that they should be stronger or less afraid to fight.

When I work with an abused woman, my first goal is to help her to regain trust in herself; to get her to rely on her own perceptions, to listen to her own internal voices. You don’t really need an “expert” on abuse to explain your life to you; what you do need above all is some support and encouragement to hold on to your own truth. Your abusive partner wants to deny your experience. He wants to pluck your view of reality out of your head and replace it with his. When someone has invaded your identity in this way enough times, you naturally start to lose your balance. But you can find your way back to center.

An abuser creates a host of misconceptions to get his partner to doubt herself and to make it possible for him to lead her down dead-end paths. Having dispelled those myths, we can now zero in on the roots of his steamrolling style. I believe you will recognize them.

The insights I share in the pages ahead have been taught to me primarily by the abused women themselves who are the experts on abuse. My other teachers have been my abusive clients, who lead us toward clarity each time that they accidentally reveal their true thinking.

My client Glenn arrived angry and agitated for his group session one night. His words spilled out rapidly:

Glenn was remarkably honest with me about his thought process and his motives, probably because of how justified he felt. He believed in his right to control his partner’s actions; he expected his word to be the last word; and he did not accept defiance. He considered it his right to punish Harriet—in the most severe way he could think of—if she took steps to recover ownership of her life. He talked proudly of how he had “allowed” her various freedoms while they were together, as if he were her parent, and defended his right to remove her privileges when he thought the time had come.

Control comes in many different forms. A few of my clients have been so extremely controlling they could have passed for military commanders. Russell, for example, went so far as to require his children to do calisthenics each morning before school. His wife was not allowed to speak to
anyone
without his permission, and he would order her back to her room to change clothes in the morning if he didn’t approve of her outfit. At dinnertime, he would sit back and comment like a restaurant reviewer on the strengths and weaknesses of what she had prepared and would periodically instruct her to go to the kitchen to get things for the children, as if she were a waitress.

Russell’s style was at one end of the spectrum of controlling behavior, however. Most of my clients stake out specific turf to control, like an explorer claiming land, rather than trying to run
everything.
One abuser may be fanatical about having to win every argument but leave his partner alone about what she wears. Another man may permit his partner to argue with him about the children, for example, but if she refuses to let him change the TV station when he wants, watch out. (Dozens of my clients have thrown or smashed remote controls; the television is tightly controlled by many abusers.) One abuser will have a curfew for his partner, while another will allow his partner to come and go as she pleases—as long as she makes his meals and does his laundry.

T
HE
S
PHERES OF
C
ONTROL

An abusive man’s control generally falls into one or more of the following central spheres:

A
RGUMENTS AND
D
ECISION
M
AKING

An intimate relationship involves a steady flow of decisions to be made, conflicting needs to negotiate, tastes and desires to balance. Who is going to clean up the mess in the kitchen? How much time should we spend alone together and how much with other friends? Where do our other hobbies and interests fit into our priorities? How will we process and resolve annoyances or hurt feelings? What rules will we have for our children?

The mind-set that an abuser brings to these choices and tensions can make him impossible to get along with. Consider how challenging it is to negotiate or compromise with a man who operates on the following tenets (whether or not he ever says them aloud):

1. “An argument should only last as long as my patience does. Once I’ve had enough, the discussion is over and it’s time for you to shut up.”
   
2. “If the issue we’re struggling over is important to me, I should get what I want. If you don’t back off, you’re wronging me.”
   
3. “I know what is best for you and for our relationship. If you continue disagreeing with me after I’ve made it clear which path is the right one, you’re acting stupid.”
   
4. “If my control and authority seem to be slipping, I have the right to take steps to reestablish the rule of my will, including abuse if necessary.”
   

The last item on this list is the one that most distinguishes the abuser from other people: Perhaps any of us can slip into having feelings like the ones in numbers one through three, but the abuser gives himself permission to
take action
on the basis of his beliefs. With him, the foregoing statements aren’t feelings; they are closely held
convictions
that he uses to guide his actions. That is why they lead to so much bullying behavior.

P
ERSONAL
F
REEDOM

An abusive man often considers it his right to control where his partner goes, with whom she associates, what she wears, and when she needs to be back home. He therefore feels that she should be
grateful
for any freedoms that he does choose to grant her, and will say something in a counseling session like, “She’s all bent out of shape because there’s one sleazy girl I don’t let her hang out with, when all the rest of the time I allow her to be friends with anyone she wants.” He expects his partner to give him a medal for his generosity, not to criticize him for his oppressiveness. He sees himself as a reasonably permissive parent—toward his adult partner—and he does not want to meet with a lot of resistance on the occasions when he believes that he needs to put his foot down.

Sometimes this control is exercised through wearing the woman down with constant low-level complaints, rather than through yelling or barking orders. The abuser may repeatedly make negative comments about one of his partner’s friends, for example, so that she gradually stops seeing her acquaintance to save herself the hassle. In fact, she might even believe it was her own decision, not noticing how her abuser pressured her into it.

Is the abusive man’s thinking distorted? Certainly. A man’s partner is not his child, and the freedoms he “grants” her are not credits to be spent like chips when the urge to control her arises. But his rules make sense to him, and he will fight to hang on to them.

P
ARENTING

If the couple has children, the abusive man typically considers himself the authority on parenting, even if he contributes little to the actual work of looking after them. He sees himself as a wise and benevolent head coach who watches passively from the sidelines during the easy times but steps in with the “correct” approach when his partner isn’t handling the children properly. His arrogance about the superiority of his parenting judgment may be matched only by how little he truly understands, or pays attention to, the children’s needs. No matter how good a mother his partner is, he thinks she needs to learn from
him,
not the other way around.

T
HE ABUSIVE MAN CLAIMS
that his control is in his partner’s best interest. This justification was captured by my client Vinnie:

Does Vinnie really believe that he is abusing his partner for her own good? Yes and no. To some extent he does, because he has convinced himself. But his real motivation is plain to see: Olga wants out of the car in order to escape Vinnie’s control, and he wants to make sure she can’t.

Unfortunately, an abuser can sometimes succeed at convincing people that his partner is so irrational and out of control, that her judgment is so poor, that she has to be saved from herself. Never believe a man’s claim that he has to harm his partner in order to protect her; only abusers think this way.

When a man starts my program, he often says, “I am here because I lose control of myself sometimes. I need to get a better grip.” I always correct him:
“Your problem is not that you
lose
control of yourself, it’s that you
take
control of your partner. In order to change, you don’t need to
gain
control over yourself, you need to
let go
of control of her.”
A large part of his abusiveness comes in the form of
punishments
used to retaliate against you for resisting his control. This is one of the single most important concepts to grasp about an abusive man.

Entitlement
is the abuser’s belief that he has a special status and that it provides him with exclusive rights and privileges that do not apply to his partner. The attitudes that drive abuse can largely be summarized by this one word.

To understand entitlement, we first need to look at how rights should properly be conceived of in a couple or family.

The man’s rights and the woman’s rights are the same size. They have the right to have their opinions and desires respected, to have a 50 percent say in decision making, to live free from verbal abuse and physical harm. Their children’s rights are somewhat smaller but substantial nonetheless; children can’t have an equal say in decisions because of their limited knowledge and experience, but they do have the right to live free from abuse and fear, to be treated with respect, and to have their voices heard on all issues that concern them. However, an abuser perceives the rights of the family like this:

Not only are the rights of his partner and children diminished—with some abusers those little circles disappear altogether—but his rights are greatly inflated. My fundamental task as a counselor is to get the abusive man to
expand
his perception of his partner’s and children’s rights to their proper size and to
shrink
his view of his own rights down to where it belongs. The abusive man awards himself all kinds of “rights,” including:

• Physical caretaking
  
• Emotional caretaking
  
• Sexual caretaking
  
• Deference
  
• Freedom from accountability