What makes an abuser abuse?

[Alwayswanting1]

I was thinking about mine and he often doesn’t fit the stereotype of what I read.

He didn’t seem to enjoy what he was doing, he was incredibly unhappy, very childlike.

Honestly? Utter selfishness. Thats it. I hate all this " Oh they were damaged" BS. My mum had an awful childhood were her mother treated her horribly. She then proceeded to abuse me and use me as her punch bag and kicking post her whole life. She would deliberately hurt me( esp in public) as a way to give herself the power she felt her mum had taken from her. She managed to love and nurture my brother and sister perfectly well though. When i had kids my first thought was to love snd protect them and to never, ever do to them what my mother had done to me because i know exactly what it feels like. At the end of the day an abuser abuses because it meets a need for them and makes them feel good, which to them is worth more than the damage it does to the other person. They even believe they deserve to feel this way because of the abuse that has happened to them. As i said at the top of the post , utter selfishness.

Power.

Do you think they would admit that to themselves or do you think they've made up a justification for it in their heads?

Maybe park trying to understand or rationalise it for another day and focus on why you need to leave them. Why they are like this is their business, not yours. Whether they can change is their business, not yours. All you can do is respond in relationship to how they are right now. Not how they might be.

Misogyny which is an effect of the society we live in and conditioning from a young age that women are less than men.

I supposed they would have to be susceptible to this is the first place for reasons I do not know.

Thank you @yellowpigeons you too I hope the future is full of joy for you

I think its a combination of entitlement (to do whatever it takes to make THEM feel better), lack of empathy (they don't care how it makes you feel), their own feelings deep inadequacy (therefore destroying another human being makes them feel powerful), a need for control (makes them feel good) and lack of insight (which makes them feel justified in their actions). They are also extremely emotionally immature.

I think this sums it up exactly. These are the beliefs and processes that allow abusive behaviour to appear on an abuser’s menu when they wouldn’t appear on a normal person’s.

The rest of my previous post is cut and paste nonsense that posted by mistake!

My not so DH had a great childhood-caring parents, siblings, no money worries but he’s an abuser.

I had a very fractured childhood abusive father, death of my only sibling but am not an abuser.

I do wonder often what drives him to do it but as a person he’s extremely entitled, misogynistic & selfish.

@TheTrinity

I realised mine had a terrible relationship with his father who seems to be the very old fashion Victorian type and his word was the law, no one could even think of a discussion let alone challenge him. I think the frustration, powerlessness and humiliation this caused him combined with the kind of personality he has put him on track to be an angry and bitter person deep down, manipulative and abusive ultimately. His choice of career also reflected this. Not in a million years would he be able to connect his childhood experience with anything because he is so deluded and truly believes he's a great person.

@TheTrinity - That sums up - to a tee - what I would have posted! Mine thinks there is nothing wrong… as you say, in his eyes he’s a great person with a great career. Behind closed doors, to his immediate family, he’s someone else entirely…

My abuser was spoilt terribly as a child and his grandparents undermined his mother all the time. His father was the golden child and he then followed suit in his grandparents eyes. He and his mother lived with them for years.

It was a sight to behold when he arrived at their home as an adult, they literally rolled out the red carpet. Looking back I could see they both had narcissistic tendencies.

He was never pulled up on his behaviour, always told he was right and anyone trying to tell him otherwise was wrong. I can well believe why he genuinely thought he was right and everyone had to dance to his tune in all circumstances and nothing he demanded was out of order.

He wanted sex, he got it, he wanted my wages, he got it, he wanted to control me, he did, he hit me to stop me going out, that was ok. Everyone else was beneath him and at his disposal....

I think many of them justify it to themselves. My ex always sees himself as the victim and when I called him out on the constant put downs etc he would say it was to help me improve myself .

In addition to what others have said I think many abusers lack ability to take personal responsibility for anything it’s never their fault.

I can see some of reasons why my ex is abusive, however he sees himself as the good guy with the evil ex who ruined his life. He doesn’t see his behaviour as abusive and therefore will never be able to apologise to DS for treating his mother like dirt in front of him. My only regret is that I didn’t get myself and DS out of that environment sooner as I worry about the long term effect it has had on DS. It’s up to ex to sort himself out. I had to sort myself out and come to terms with the parts of myself that left me vulnerable to entering a relationship with an abuser. While it can sometimes be helpful to see why the person was abusive so that you can move on and not take all the blame for it on yourself. The priority has to be yourself when getting over an abusive relationship so that you can break the cycle and not end up in a similar situation again.

What Crunchingleaf said 100%

@Redannie118Annie

I think that trying to understand an abuser is a waste of time. It can be an attempt to 'forgive' them, which you'll be in a better position to do if you focus on making yourself happy and moving on, not drawing yourself further and further into their unhealthy minds. Their behaviour often doesn't make sense to them, and more often than not, they aren't even looking into why they're doing it.

It's much healthier to look at your own behaviours/emotions, and work out who you've allowed an abuser into your life. That's the work that'll make a difference to your future. That's what's worth spending your time on.

That's true @TheFoundations - I think there's actually something in the abuse itself that purposefully preoccupies you with thinking about the whys and wherefores, and all the behaviour changes. I think it's sort of a bedazzlement that saps your attention in that way.

@frozendaisy

Power.

The abuser I had a relationship with definitely wanted power and control. He wasnt physically abusive; what he wanted power & control over was his partner's interaction with other males.

Anything that made him feel.like he didn't have any power, specifically any control over my interaction (or potential interaction) with other males made him at best anxious & uncomfortable, at worst very angry, ranting, berating, critical, and threatening tonend the relationship or implying he was ending it.

He focused on two things - firstly, separate socialising; tried his best to persuade/brainwash/pressure etc me into agreeing to bo separate socialising.

(Even socialising or attending things together however still led to the occasional berating/criticism if he judged my interaction with another male to be somehow inappropriate (talked to long, was too familiar, didn't jnclude or centre him in the conversation, was too helpful etc).

Secondly, I suspect, he was engineering a way to get me out of the work force, by suggesting I work from home, in one of his outbuildings (converted to an office).

I have a vague theory that the kind of possessive, jealous, insecure, domineering behaviour he personified (which is very common among a type of abuser) is a sort of primitive/evolutionary "mate guarding". In that you want to stop any potential other mate from seeing, distracting, seducing, removing etc your mate once you've got them. Including impregnating your mate while you, if the male, may not even find out.

It seems like that sort of territorial, domineering, controlling behaviour might actually be effective, from an evolutionary/reproductive standpoint, because it does make it much less likely they'll be "taken" by someone else or be impregnated by someone else.

Obviously it makes the mate stressed but they don't care about that.

It was probably easier to get away with in the past, and is still normal in some regions around the world (eg in the middle east, and some developing countries). Its only in more modern times probably that people highlight it as wrong and these people (usually men) have an obstacle to behaving that way.

I should add that with some men like that, they actually make their partner more likely to.cheat; but I think that most of them try to lock their partner fmdown so tight and get such control that it would be nearly impossible to cheat.

I'd also add that in addition to the mate guarding taken to an extreme theory, ots usually the case that men like that tend to see women as possessions (and often any children too) and that underpins their behaviour.

With the abuser I had a relationship with, he'd experienced an early gf (first proper gf maybe) cheating incident, which left him angry, bitter, pride hurt etc. I wondered if that early/formative experience was one of the main things behind his jealous, possessive, controlling behaviour.

Or maybe it's not the case and he was always like that. I noticed his late parents had a big age gap (younger wife) and sounded like they had a very in each others pockets, "old school" relationship.

In fact that was the phrase he used to describe robe himself regularly; old school.

Old school and traditional actually mean chauvinist and controlling ime.

In addition to what others have said I think many abusers lack ability to take personal responsibility for anything it’s never their fault.

Definitely.

The abuser I was involved with had a string of relationships before me; the breakdown of all of them was the exes faults. Either their behaviour or their character. And his general line was that it was because they they divorced or separated single mums, and that fucks women's heads up abd damages them. When he got together with me, he even told me he was telling his relatives "this one hasn't been married" and implying I wouldn't be damaged with baggage, abd it would go well.

He told me, as time went on, lots of stories about their apparent instability and nastiness (sometimes inadvertently telling me about his own behaviour too). One got a really angry, psycho look in her eyes sometumes apparently; as rge relationship progressed I came to understand why you would have an angry "psycho" look in your eyes while listening to.him.
Another tried to jump out of his moving car, damaged his back door kicking it, and used to bang her head of a door architrave; as the relationship progressed I understood why you might try to get out of a still moving car, and I certainly felt like banging my head off something on repeated occasions. He was an absolute dementor.

Ar one point I gave up defending himself against his latest berating & accusing session (about something I'd said or done wrong, usually involving the opposite sex) and lost ot and started shouting on repeat down the phone that I hadn't said that; he hung up calling me "psycho". Abd no doubt he told his next level interest that I was psycho too, while conveniently leaving out all his causative behaviour. He took no responsibility for anything. One of his exes family members hated him for his behaviour towards her and members of their family; and instead of looking at his behavior (two incidents of which he blabber to me and he was absolutely in the wrong( he just criticised and bitched about and undermined everything he could about them constantly.

He did it to make himself feel better, he hated the fact that I was a happy, sociable, confident, intelligent woman. By the end I hardly recognised myself, he had knocked every ounce of confidence out of me. I used to flinch if he came near me.

He'll treat the next woman the same as he treated me, he's clever though as he hides it under this great friend facade and now chooses women who aren't as strong so he can manipulate them more easily. A leopard never changes his spots.

@TheFoundations

I think that trying to understand an abuser is a waste of time. It can be an attempt to 'forgive' them, which you'll be in a better position to do if you focus on making yourself happy and moving on, not drawing yourself further and further into their unhealthy minds. Their behaviour often doesn't make sense to them, and more often than not, they aren't even looking into why they're doing it.

It's much healthier to look at your own behaviours/emotions, and work out who you've allowed an abuser into your life. That's the work that'll make a difference to your future. That's what's worth spending your time on.

Can be so true and again it is part of the abuse even though they are not there in your presence anymore. For me, he thought he had enough control over me to drop the mask and behave how he wanted to enforce his 'power' over me but it didn't work. Obviously I can't say the details and I know I was fortunate in being capable of ending the relationship before he was done with me. That was not part of his plan. I never gave him a second thought the moment he was out of my life. I knew how much he tried to change me and 'dim my light'.

Later I did think why he did what he did but only because one of my children (who is old enough to understand) asked me and I told the truth. This in turn led me to understand why I allowed him into our lives, why I ignored all the many red flags and I started the work on myself to become a much stronger person emotionally. Mentally, I've always been stubborn af so no change there lol!

People often blame it on trauma but there are plenty of abusers that have had blessed lives. It comes down to a self serving selfishness to get what they want and they don't care who they hurt in the process. They don't ever change but they can mask it for a while.

Ever wonder why it happens in private without an audience most of the time - that's because they have compete control of what they are doing and when.

I have been fooled in the past into believing in change. Mostly because I just wanted to be happy. It doesn't usually take long for the old behaviour to creep back in as soon as you are back in the trap.

It's because they can...

I think it depends on the pathology, of which their are many. Narcissism, sociopathy, borderline to name but a few.

The headline is that they have something “missing” within themselves that no matter how much love and attention an empath pours into them will never be enough to allow them to heal. In fact I am of the view it actually stalls any potential for growth and reflection. In fact in truth by doing that you effectively keep them broken. As meaningful change has to come from within and as long as they are enabled to keep the locus of control outside themselves (onto their victims) the path out of it is permanent blocked.

The chances of an abuser actually rehabilitating makes for pretty bleak reading I think it stands at something like 3% overall.