VII. Aspects of an Abusive Home Environment

Part VII of Living and Dying with Abuse

Lack of and hindrance to accountability, teaching, learning, development

• “Complaints against him, including drawing any attention to how his behavior had hurt other people in the family, he is quick to stifle.” (Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That, p. 59)
• Accountability comes with the willingness to be held accountable. Abusers withhold it while simultaneously feeling entitled to be in a position for which it is required.
• Abusers want the abused to be under their judgement, never themselves under the abused’s.
• The abuser simultaneously knows that his abuse damages you in a way that makes you more controllable and thinks that he isn’t mistreating you at all. Abusers gain relief for their emotions and the control they want through their behavior. They see themselves completely justified and therefore not in any wrong — to them, the one who is always in the wrong is you, their abusive behavior is to “correct” you. The question whether an abuser does anything deliberately or unwittingly is easily dissolved if you focus on the fact that he acts according to his value system and his thinking that his needs, opinions, wants, and feelings are the most important.
• Abusers don’t want an environment of reciprocal learning, that would mean involvement, labor, and attentiveness, and would nullify their gaslighting and the obedience they want. They are unable to have or maintain the habit of teaching skills without using intimidation tactics, and to be attuned to other human beings.
• One can become afraid of openly owning up to mistakes lest the abuser takes it as an opportunity to punish, shame, insult, heep his own faults onto one’s shoulder, and make use of it for further abuse.
• His snoring is ear-shattering and maddeningly loud, uncomparable to anyone else’s. Instead of taking care of it after being asked every time, he immediately resorts to snarking back with “Mami snores too”. The abuser will only take care of something if it impairs himself, not anyone else.
• “Mami [does it] too” is also a tool to deflect blame and accountability and make the children think that both parents are equally to blame in order to keep them from taking the abused mother’s side.
• He pulls a false equivalent of someone else’s lesser misdoing or neutral trait and pulls it to his level of flaws, abuse, and damage.

Lack of and hindrance to intimacy, connection, communication, honesty

• “Why does an abuser sow divisions in these ways? One reason is that his power is decreased if the family remains unified. (…) Many abusers take steps to avoid this outcome, using the principle of “divide and conquer”: If the people in the family are busy fighting with each other, attention is diverted from the man’s cruelty or control.” (Bancroft, p. 254)
• The abuser’s sowing divisions makes it hard to intuitively know what other’s standpoint is and makes one fear openly seeking clarification. The pain of abuse can twist people in different ways, and then they start grinding at each other.
• The lack of honesty among family members feeds the legitimacy of the abusive man in his behavior and his presence in the family.
• An abuser’s presence kills connection and intimacy which would be both vital and simply lovely to have.
• Honesty and intimacy needs vulnerability which is frightening and dangerous to show within an abusive environment.

Lack of and hindrance to fairness, equality

• “Abusers attach themselves tightly to their privileges and come to find the prospect of having equal rights and responsibilities, living on the same plane as their partners, almost unbearable. They resent women who require them to change and persuade themselves that they are victims of unfair treatment because they are losing their lopsided luxuries.” (Bancroft, p. 345)
• It becomes this shaky unequal environment in which everyone secretly cleans up after the other, but mostly after him. It’s an environment of fraught and frustrating coexistence, bereft of collaboration.
• A mother’s constant domestic labor at home can make girls or AFAB children fear being pushed into the same role. The abuser can also influence the children in such a way that they neglect their share of the work. This can translate into the mother taking on even more work.
• The abusive man treats his spouse as if he were both her child and her superior. This extends to his own children in that his sense of responsibility and accountability is never higher than that of his children at any age they are in. With age children may demand more responsibility from the abuser which in turn the abuser deflects with demanding more of them instead.
• The abuser is making you prove your worth when you are trying to make him see the damage he does or take on more accountability. The abuser will always demand more of you, even to the point of proving that you deserve dignity from an intimate partner or parent instead of mistreatment. It’s as if you have to bargain and argue for your perspective, your opinions, your pain, your intrinsic self.

Lack of and hindrance to comfort, stress-relief, freedom of expression

• The consistency and repetition of abuse never makes one truly recover.
• Being treated like a therapist or dumping-ground for his monologues, opinions, grievances while having your problems not be taken seriously, or rather, be a risk to be used against you for further control, the lack of having room and a framework to work through problems and stress in the open and with considerate support is making stress fester and mount.
• The divisions sowed by the abuser and personal neglect arising from emotional and mental distresses affect compassion, comfort, and dedication for the people we care about, and even the consideration of needing care yourself — which are all vital for maintaining or improving health, quality of life, life expectancy, and for providing mediation from other hardships.

Lack of and hindrance to authenticity

• Abuse feigns to be something it isn’t: love, support, connection, intimacy — but it is image, status, superficiality, control, possession, retaliation.
• “He gives apologies that sound insincere or angry, and he demands that you accept them” (Bancroft, p. 125). He apologizes like a child with a tone meant to reprehend anyone for calling him out. His sincerest apologies happen when he bumps into someone which are just immediate responses of etikett devoid of self-reflection. (Apologies may start to sound more sincere when the stakes are higher, but it is the same in that his abuse doesn’t cease afterwards.)

Contradictions and confusion

• The contradictory conditions within an abusive environment have confusion as their goal: “The abuser creates confusion because he has to. He can’t control and intimidate you, he can’t recruit people around him to take his side, he can’t keep escaping the consequences of his actions, unless he can throw everyone off the track” (Bancroft, p. 20). It occupies your time, it is hard to navigate or even to point out at first, it makes you feel isolated as you wonder what everybody else’s experiences and thoughts are, and you wonder if anybody else is also confused. As your life is filled with contradictions due to the abuse and their goal to obscure its nature, in your confusion and distress you may unwittingly create and seek out further contradictions and further confuse yourself.
• The abuser is unwilling to coexist with other people, including vulnerable people (children) who need to be focused on for nurture and accommodations for their needs. The abuser’s hostility towards contributing to the family is in stark contrast to his entitlement to having one and abusing abuse to keep control.
• Coupled with mounting symptoms, you may have contradictory and confusing feelings about owning up to your mistakes and being afraid of appearing vulnerable and open for more abuse, about compulsive lying due to trauma or rejection sensitivity, about building confidence to assert yourself and being afraid to be manipulative and abusive yourself.
• The confusion doesn’t end, no matter how much you read about abuse. You may be certain for a moment but then questioning again. It likely won’t completely end after abuse is escaped from, but it is definitely worse when the abuser is still present.

Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? (2002), Berkley Books