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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

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Original poster

abusive men.

87 replies

saddest · 15/04/2010 10:46

There seem to be so many of them, and they are all exactly the same.

I have some questions that have not been answered by anyone yet....maybe someone here can help.

I have been told/read, that they know that they are doing it. But really do they? Or is it just that they are so conditioned that it is almost a pavlovian thing. Wife=abuse. If they really know that they are doing it, in a consious way, that makes them psychpathic doesn't it?

If as I have read, they split off their cut off feeling and personality traits and deposit them in their partner, how do they rationalise this? Do they really not understand that hte partner is a whole individual in her own right?

How does it FEEL to be so cut off from your own personality, do they have an inkling that it may be them that's odd, weird, wrong whatever?

How come they are so utterly convinced of their "rightness". Often they are bright, and I just don't get how someone can be so completely irrational and determined to destroy everything for the sake of never being wrong. Ultimately, they hurt themselves more.

How come they can cope with other human beings but not their partner....although I have read that they can plant their cut off bits into employers, children etc.

If my Psychotherapist could plant trigger words in my subconsious that gave me the balls to stop the relationship....why can't someone plant triggers in these many, many men to get them to get help and stop it.

The thing that really gets me is this. The wall between them and health is very high and very wide, but it is also paper thin. All it takes is humility (which they may have in other circumstances) and a decision to get help.

Why is all this so destructive and so hard?

OP posts:

TheButterflyEffect · 15/04/2010 10:55

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

cestlavielife · 15/04/2010 10:56

very good questions! the lundy bancroft book goes some way into the why but not all of it...they "chose" a victim? people close? who they know "ought" to love and put up with them? i know my exP also used his mother as a verbal punchball and controlled her - it was horrible to see ....her co=wering in corner when he had gone on and on at her for buying him the "wrong" present.... and it took a while til i realised he was doing same to me

Littleblue · 15/04/2010 11:03

I boiled it down to a sense of entitlement that got hard wired into them from the womb probably..its a behaviour thats passed down through the generations..i too watched my exe verbally abusing his mother,as did his brother and father/grandfather etc..they don't see it as wrong..they are singing from a different hymn sheet to 'normal' men,and invariarably they do not change...ever.

SolidGoldBrass · 15/04/2010 11:19

A big part of it with abusive men (and I am not ignoring the fact that women can be abusers too, but there is a difference) is they are absolutly hardwired into thinking that only men are human, and that a 'wife' is property, a servant, and object and inherently 'less' than the man.

Littleblue · 15/04/2010 11:20

junglist1 · 15/04/2010 11:24

I reckon it's the massive sense of ownership over a female partner, mixed with the entitlement that comes with it. This explains why they can respect their mums, sisters etc because they don't own them

junglist1 · 15/04/2010 11:25

And it also explains why a woman answering back leads to punishment

Littleblue · 15/04/2010 11:28

They dont all respect their mums..and for the record,my exe MIL was on my side for years..til i left,then i became the devil,she even sent him a St Christopher ffs!

TheButterflyEffect · 15/04/2010 11:28

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

Original poster

saddest · 15/04/2010 11:32

I found the Lundy Bancroft book really good for helping me to identify the problem, and realise that, that was my life, however distressing that was to find out.

I have found the Patricia Evans books more useful in explaining the splitting off stuff. It makes perfect sense, although I find it very difficult to believe. I spoke at length to a friend whose wife is a psychiatrist, who confirmed that the "splitting" and projecting does indeed happen.

I am not convinced that all these men have personality disorders, more that it is learned behaviour. My BIL and FIL are both very aggressive, loud, opinionated and ALWAYS RIGHT! Even when it is patently clear that they are not. When my dd was born, FIL said that we were not to let the health visitors and midwives anywhere near us...not entirely sure why, but I laughed....so did h, but nervously. So he knows it's a wrong mindset, at some level.

They are also very cut off from the world and all the wrong and scary people in it.

And don't get me started on the hypocisy!!! They MUST know that they are ridiculous...they must! Although if you have no contact with other people, how would you ever know?

I look at my sister in law, (married to h's brother), and she is what I would have become had I not put my foot down. She reminds me of Muriel's mum in Muriels wedding. She almost doesn't exist anymore.

But my h is very bright, clued up etc, so how can he be so utterly unaware? He, ironically, has more self help books, mainly about power and control, than anyone I have ever met, so he clearly feels that there is/was a problem He had these books before we got together, so he MUST rationally know that I am NOT the cause of his perceived powerlessness.

I struggle with the entitlement thing I must confess. My h has very low self esteem, he hates himself, that's the stuff he's been transplanting into me....more so since he lost some work.

I just don't get why they don't get it....at some level.

Are they just terrified? My h often reminds me of a petrified little boy. That fits with the Patricia Evans stuff.....maybe his childhood was far more hideous than either of us knows?

Is a rotten childhood a common factor for these men?

OP posts:

Anniegetyourgun · 15/04/2010 11:33

XH occasionally peers through the wall, but it hurts too much to look, so he withdraws back behind it and carefully papers over the break.

RubyPink · 15/04/2010 11:34

What do you think about when the abuse/insults are dressed up as a 'joke'. I get a lot of that from my DH and now for a while my eldest son (23 y/old)has been doing it too. For instance... he says he wants to see a certain film or read a certain book and I express an interest and say I would too then he says 'no you wouldn't like it, it's too intellectual for you'. This is supposed to be a joke according to him but it happens a lot and there are many similar instances as well.

Original poster

saddest · 15/04/2010 11:41

I find the psychological splitting and dumping a more convincing idea.

Although I have known men who do truly believe that women are inferior and answerable to men.....they are either dead or very old now.

It's the complete inability to see himself and the damage he's causing, not just to me and his beloved kids, but to himself too that really gets me bewildered.

Absolute stone faced refusal to admit that it may just be, just a tiny weeny ickle bit, him.....despite all his self help books.

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Original poster

saddest · 15/04/2010 11:43

Ruby....it's too intellectual for him!!!!! He's planting that in you maybe, because he can't face it in himself?

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RubyPink · 15/04/2010 12:02

No I don't think it's that saddest... he's pretty clever and went to Oxford uni. I wouldn;t mind the odd 'joke' like that I guess but it's fairly constant and gets me down

Original poster

saddest · 15/04/2010 12:09

The "joke" thing is very common though isn't it?

My h refers to me and all my female singing colleagues as, "shrieking hags" That's a joke as well.

Never made me laugh.

I suppose it stops him from feeling inferior in any way? I just don't know...but that's the nub of it. I REALLY want to know what's wrong with all these men, and given that they all have the same "symptoms"....why can't they all be "treated".

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Littleblue · 15/04/2010 12:12

Jokes are meant to be funny..my exe did that too..covered up no end of cruelty with that pisspoor excuse for abuse.

NicknameTaken · 15/04/2010 12:15

I think Annie is spot on: "XH occasionally peers through the wall, but it hurts too much to look, so he withdraws back behind it and carefully papers over the break."

I found the explanations in "Men who Hate Women" also very good (I used never be a self-help book reader before getting involved with ex - now I'm a connoisseur!)

In my case, it would have been pyschologically devestating for my ex to look at his own behaviour too clearly. As a small child, he was forced to choose between his mother and his father and he chose his father. After our dd was born, I represented too much of his mother and he could neither give nor take affection from me. To acknowledge this would be to risk being overwhelmed by his own infant terror and vulnerability.

Original poster

saddest · 15/04/2010 12:22

It's so very sad isn't it?

I suspect that, like anyone else, they just want to be loved.

I have been assured that once they do tear through the paper wall, it really isn't THAT difficult to help them...not least according to my therapist, and friends wife.

The really hard part is the acknowledgement.

But once again...if I can have triggers planted...why can't they?

OP posts:

NicknameTaken · 15/04/2010 12:25

Because you want to change and abusers rarely do.

RubyPink · 15/04/2010 12:49

I guess it might just be funny if it was once or twice, but when it's a constant theme running through most days is tends to grind me down and erode my fragile self esteem. I just don't see the point of it really, why make a 'joke' that doesn't make people laugh?

Original poster

saddest · 15/04/2010 13:05

Is that true for many of us? That the abusive man has very few friends?

I tried to arrange a surprise party for my h. He found out and was horrified. There are a lot of people in his life, yes, but no friends and no one wanted to come to the party. People lied about it too. We cancelled the function room through lack of interest, and went to a local carnival instead. One of the "friends" who said he couldn't come as he was working abroad was there.

That is heartbreaking!

His f and b seem to be isolated too.

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SolidGoldBrass · 15/04/2010 13:09

Saddest: Abusive men often don't have many friends because they are wankers, and nice people see this and therefore don't want to be around them. Often, other people are uncomfortable socialising with an abusive man because they are perfectly aware that the man is abusing his partner and don't want to feel complicit in the abuse. So the abusive man, isolated by his own actions, carries on abusing his partner because he's got to have someone he can feel 'better than'.

NicknameTaken · 15/04/2010 13:17

My abusive ex was Mr Popularity, though. Total street angel, house devil.

Original poster

saddest · 15/04/2010 13:27

I though my h was mr popularity too...until this party episode.

There are loads of people nearly in his life, or that he gives work to, (hmmm) but no one socially. He just doesn't socialise. Although when forced to, as I did in the end, he is the "life and soul".

That was always such a battle ground.

Actually, professionally and geographically, he is weirdly "limited" it's hard to explain. Is this familiar?

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