Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men (7 page)

I sometimes ask my clients the following question: “How many of you have ever felt angry enough at your mother to get the urge to call her a bitch?” Typically, half or more of the group members raise their hands. Then I ask, “How many of you have ever acted on that urge?” All the hands fly down, and the men cast appalled gazes on me, as if I had just asked whether they sell drugs outside elementary schools. So then I ask, “Well, why haven’t you?” The same answer shoots out from the men each time I do this exercise: “But you can’t treat your
mother
like that, no matter how angry you are! You just don’t
do
that!”

The unspoken remainder of this statement, which we can fill in for my clients, is: “But you
can
treat your wife or girlfriend like that, as long as you have a good enough reason. That’s different.” In other words, the abuser’s problem lies above all in his belief that controlling or abusing his female partner is
justifiable.
This insight has tremendous implications for how counseling work with abusers has to be done, as we will see.

When I was new to counseling abusive men, my own loss-of-control myth collided repeatedly with the realities contained in the stories of my early clients. Kenneth admitted that he used to dim the lights and then insist to Jennifer that nothing had changed, trying to make her feel crazy. (He also stands out in my mind for his outspoken criticisms of his group mates for their insensitivity toward their partners, despite his own actions.) James told me that he sometimes would hide something his partner was looking for, such as her pocketbook or car keys, wait for her to become frantic and frustrated looking for it, and then put it back out in plain view and insist that it had been there all along. Mario measured the distance from his house to the supermarket, and when his wife reported going out to shop during the day, he would check the odometer of her car to make sure she hadn’t gone anywhere else.

One year my colleagues David and Carole were preparing a skit on abuse for a conference, and they decided to perform a rehearsal for their abuser group. Afterward, the group members rapid-fired their suggestions for improving the skit, directing them mostly at David: “No, no, you don’t make excuses for why you’re home late, that puts you on the defensive, you’ve got to turn it around on her, tell her you know she’s cheating on you.…You’re staying too far away from her, David. Take a couple of steps toward her, so she’ll know that you mean business.…You’re letting hersay too much. You’ve got to cut her off and stick to your points.” The counselors were struck by how aware the clients were of the kinds of tactics they use, and why they use them: In the excitement of giving feedback on the skit, the men let down their facade as “out-of-control abuser who doesn’t realize what he’s doing.”

As we review the stories of my clients throughout this book, you will observe over and over the degree of consciousness that goes into their cruel and controlling actions. At the same time, I don’t want to make abusive men sound evil. They don’t calculate and plan out every move they make—though they use forethought more often than you would expect. It isn’t that each time an abuser sweeps a pile of newspapers onto the floor or throws a cup against the wall he has determined ahead of time to take that course. For a more accurate model, think of an abuser as an acrobat in a circus ring who does “go wild” to some extent
but who never forgets where the limits are.

When one of my clients says to me, “I exploded” or “I just lost it,” I ask him to go step by step in his mind through the moments leading up to his abusive behavior. I ask, “Did you really ‘just explode,’ or did you actually decide at one point to give yourself the green light? Wasn’t there a moment when you decided you ‘had had enough’ or you ‘weren’t going to take it anymore,’ and at that instant you
gave yourself permission,
setting yourself free to do what you felt like doing?” Then I see a flicker of recognition cross my client’s eyes, and usually he admits that there is indeed a moment at which he turns himself loose to begin the horror show.

Even the physically violent abuser shows self-control. The moment police pull up in front of the house, for example, he usually calms down immediately, and when the officers enter, he speaks to them in a friendly and reasonable tone. Police almost never find a fight in progress by the time they get in the door. Ty, a physical batterer who now counsels other men, describes in a training video how he would snap out of his rage when the police pulled up in front of the house and would sweet-talk the police, “telling them what
she
had done. Then they would look at her, and she’d be the one who was totally out of control, because I had just degraded her and put her in fear. I’d say to the police, ‘See, it isn’t me.’” Ty managed to escape arrest repeatedly with his calm demeanor and claims of self-defense.

A few years ago, the partner of one of my clients went through an ordeal where her twelve-year-old son (from a previous marriage) disappeared for more than forty-eight hours. For two days Mary Beth’s heart was beating faster and faster as she drove around town looking for her son, made panicked phone calls to everyone she knew, and dropped her son’s photograph at police departments, newspapers, and radio stations. She barely slept. Meanwhile her new husband, Ray, who was in one of my groups, was slowly building to a boil inside. Toward the end of the second day he finally burst out yelling at her, “I am so sick of being ignored by you! It’s like I don’t even exist! Go fuck yourself!”

When people conclude that anger causes abuse, they are confusing cause and effect. Ray was not abusive because he was angry; he was angry because he was abusive. Abusers carry attitudes that produce fury. A nonabusive man would not expect his wife to be taking emotional care of
him
during a crisis of this gravity. In fact, he would be focused on what he could do for her and on trying to find the child. It would be futile to teach Ray to take a time-out to punch pillows, take a brisk walk, or concentrate on deep breathing, because his thinking process will soon get him enraged again. In Chapter 3, you will see how and why an abuser’s attitudes keep him furious.

When a new client says to me, “I’m in your program because of my anger,” I respond, “No you’re not, you’re here because of your
abuse.
” Everybody gets angry. In fact, most people have at least occasional times when they are
too
angry, out of proportion to the actual event or beyond what is good for their health. Some give themselves ulcers and heart attacks and hypertension. But they don’t necessarily abuse their partners. In Chapter 3, we’ll take a look at why abusive men tend to be so angry—and why at the same time their anger isn’t really the main problem.

The abuser’s explosive anger can divert your attention from all the disrespect, irresponsibility, talking over you, lying, and other abusive and controlling behaviors that he exhibits even at times when he
isn’t
especially upset. Is it anger that causes such a high proportion of abusers to cheat on their partners? Does an abuser’s rage cause him to conceal for years the fact that a former girlfriend went into hiding to get away from him? Is it a form of explosiveness when your partner pressures you into dropping your friendships and spending less time with your siblings? No. Perhaps his loudest, most obvious, or most intimidating forms of abuse come out when he’s angry, but his deeper pattern is operating all the time.

When a man’s face contorts in bitterness and hatred, he looks a little insane. When his mood changes from elated to assaultive in the time it takes to turn around, his mental stability seems open to question. When he accuses his partner of plotting to harm him, he seems paranoid. It is no wonder that the partner of an abusive man would come to suspect that he was mentally ill.

Yet the great majority of my clients over the years have been psychologically “normal.” Their minds work logically; they understand cause and effect; they don’t hallucinate. Their perceptions of most life circumstances are reasonably accurate. They get good reports at work; they do well in school or training programs; and no one other than their partners—and children—thinks that there is anything wrong with them.
Their
value system
is unhealthy, not their psychology.

Much of what appears to be crazy behavior in an abuser actually works well for him. We already met Michael, who never broke his own stuff, and Marshall, who did not believe his own jealous accusations. In the pages ahead, you will encounter many more examples of the method behind the abuser’s madness. You will also learn how distorted his view of his partner is—which can make him appear emotionally disturbed—and where those distortions spring from.

The most recent research shows that even in physically violent abusers the rate of mental illness is not high. Several of my brutal battering clients have had psychological evaluations, and only one of them was found to have a mental illness. At the same time, some of my clients whom I have believed to be truly insane have not necessarily been among the most violent. Research does indicate that the most extreme physical batterers—the ones who choke their partners to unconsciousness, who hold guns to their heads, who stalk and kill—have increased rates of mental illness. But there is no particular mental health condition that is typical of these severe batterers; they can have a range of diagnoses, including psychosis, borderline personality, manic depression, antisocial personality, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and others. (And, even among the most dangerous abusers, there are many who do not show clear psychiatric symptoms of any kind.)

How can all these different mental illnesses cause such similar behavioral patterns? The answer is, they don’t. Mental illness doesn’t cause abusiveness any more than alcohol does. What happens is rather that the man’s psychiatric problem interacts with his abusiveness to form a volatile combination. If he is severely depressed, for example, he may stop caring about the consequences his actions may cause
him
to suffer, which can increase the danger that he will decide to commit a serious attack against his partner or children. A mentally ill abuser has two separate—though interrelated—problems, just as the alcoholic or drug-addicted one does.

The basic reference book for psychiatric conditions, the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV),
includes no condition that fits abusive men well. Some clinicians will stretch one of the definitions to apply it to an abusive client—“intermittent explosive disorder,” for example—so that insurance will cover his therapy. However, this diagnosis is erroneous if it is made solely on the basis of his abusive behavior; a man whose destructive behaviors are confined primarily or entirely to intimate relationships is an abuser, not a psychiatric patient.

Two final points about mental illness: First, I occasionally hear someone who is discussing a violent abuser say, “He must be delusional to think he can get away with this.” But, unfortunately, it often turns out that he
can
get away with it, as we discuss in Chapter 12, so his belief is not a delusion at all. Second, I have received just a few reports of cases in which an abuser’s behavior has improved for a while as a result of taking medication prescribed by a psychiatrist. His overall abusiveness hasn’t stopped, but the most devastating or terrifying behaviors have eased. Medication is not a long-term solution, however, for two important reasons:

1. Abusers don’t like to be medicated because they tend to be too selfish to put up with the side effects, no matter how much the improvement may benefit their partners, so they almost always quit the medication after a few months. The medication then can become another tool to be used in psychological abuse. For example, the abuser can stop taking his pills when he is upset with her, knowing that this will make her anxious and afraid. Or when he wants to strike out at her dramatically he may deliberately overdose himself, creating a medical crisis.
   
2. No medication yet discovered will turn an abuser into a loving, considerate, appropriate partner. It will just take the edge off his absolute worst behaviors—if it even does that. If your abusive partner is taking medication, be aware that you are only buying time. Take advantage of the (more) peaceful period to get support in your own healing. Begin by calling a program for abused women.
   

The notion that abusive men hate women was popularized by Susan Forward’s book
Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them.
Dr. Forward’s descriptions of abusive men are the most accurate ones I have read, but she was mistaken on one point: Most abusers don’t hate women. They often have close relationships with their mothers, or sisters, or female friends. A fair number are able to work successfully with a female boss and respect her authority, at least outwardly.

Disrespect for women
certainly is rampant among abusive men, with attitudes toward women that fall on a continuum from those who can interact fairly constructively with most women (as long as they are not intimately involved with them) to men who are misogynists and treat most women they encounter with superiority and contempt. In general, I find that my clients’ view that their partners should cater to their needs and are not worthy of being taken seriously does indeed carry over into how they view other females, including their own daughters. But, as we will see in Chapter 13, the disrespect that abusive men so often direct toward women in general tends to be born of their cultural values and conditioning rather than personal experiences of being victimized by women. Some abusive men use the
excuse
that their behavior is a response to such victimization because they want to be able to make women responsible for men’s abuse. It is important to note that research has shown that men who have abusive mothers do not tend to develop especially negative attitudes toward females, but men who have abusive
fathers
do; the disrespect that abusive men show their female partners and their daughters is often absorbed by their sons.