I feel like an abuser when I walk out on my husband of ten yesrs to get high. I bring the drug home and get high but the look on his face is one of horror. He continues too smile at me kiss me and love me but I feel like i'm abusing him. What do you think??

OK not sure i am comfortable with putting this out there but here it goes...My life has been filled with abuse pretty much from my first memory...not going into details cuz i am not here to write a novel lol...after i left my ex to be with my current husband (he was trying to save me i guess) he started to abuse me too. Wow did that fuck me up in the head.. i guess i went numb for a while until it all came to a halt the last time he hit i called the cops they forced him out of the home to get help we were not allowed to see each other...so he was put in a position to look at what was most important to him...work on his probs and get help or forget the marriage altogether.... he chose to get help...he got therapy..now 4 years later we have another baby and life is ok...i am not speaking for any abusers at all but his probs stemmed from how he grew up now we talk to each other and he does have days when i fear he will slip up but we learned communication and we talk it over...there is no easy answer or way to fix things but because he chose to get help i decided that maybe we could work on the probs...now i have the man i fell in love with back...i don't know why i felt the need to post this maybe cuz i wanted to get it out that not all abuser's are going to be just that forever but i also know he is a rare case too...oh well there ya have it.

I think your best bet would be to get your hands on the book "Why Does He Do That?" by Lundy Bancroft. It does as much to explain the abusers mentality as anything.

What concerns me about this topic though is that an abuser can explain until they are blue in the face, and it just isn't going to make sense to anyone. Because most people do not think like an abuser thinks what they are saying about power and control and entitilement and the lack of consequences to their actions just sounds psychopathic to most everyone else on the planet.

Why do they do it? Because it brings them power and control.

What keeps them doing it? A sense of entitilement to that power and control.

What has helped them stop? Damn near nothing. Abusers have a less than 3% chance of actually stopping and that is only after years, and I mean that, YEARS, of intensive therapy.

What scared me the most in my marriage with my ex is that I had the potential to be an abuser to him. I had to stop so many times when he would yell at me over the most stupidest crap not to just walk over and smack him across his face! I did fight back but I didnt do it violently. I had to fight in other ways. He said I couldnt do this or that, I did it anyway. He threatened to hit me I said go ahead and see what happens. He KNEW I would kick his ass right out the door, and the final time I did just that..its been 6 years now. We rarely talk or see each other. He doesnt even stop by to see his son and Im fine with that.

I think we all have the potential when we're angry enough but its a matter of finding an inner resolve to find a more positive and constructive means of not only dealing but ending the abuse.

The fact that only 3% of abusers improve after many years of therapy is a very sad truth (thanks revpatty for your info). Why is that? Are abusers not motivated to change,or they can't help it?

Although I'm a victim of abuse, I found in certain situations I took on the role of the abuser. For example, there were times when I would emotionally abuse my husband just like my sister abuses me. At the time, I didn't realize I was doing it. It was only much later that I was able to recognize it. I've managed to change my behaivor but in thinking back to that time, I think that I took on the role of the abuser because of what was going on inside of me. Usually, I felt very low self-esteem and my husband's success or happiness made me feel even worse so I would say something mean to make myself feel better. Other times, it might've been about control. I think self-esteem and control are a big reason why abusers abuse. It often times has very little to do with the victim's behaivor though as I victim I still have trouble with this concept.

Well in my opinion they don't want to change...sad i know but they like having the control over ppl and won't give that up

wow alot of great feedback. I grew up being abused and in thinking about why he did it (stepfather)I guess it was the way he was raised. His father was unimagineablely cruel from what I have been told and I guess and he (sf) had very little education. Sometime ago I realized that it really had to suck to be him. I mean think about it....if the only way you can feel good about yourself is to control and to dehumanize the wife and little children you are supposed to love...it can't be good to have to feel that inside. He could not have had any self esteem himself. His only means of communication was physical violence, intimidation, emotional abuse and control.

I,too, am abused by my partner. When he's good, he's AWESOME but when he's bad, I believe he's possessed by the devil.... Full of hate and anger flashing from his eyes directly at me. There have been times when I've been so angry at him for treating me so badly, then mocking me for being hurt by it that I've wanted to just haul off and hit him in the face as hard as I could. I could actually see it in my mind, see him falling to the floor with me standing over him saying "How does it feel, you hateful son-of-a-bitch! How does it feel, now?" Whew, I can still feel the emotion behind that as I type.... That's about as close as I've come to abuse, thinking about doing that to him.

My dad was verbally abusive to my mother and all of us kids. He taught me a lesson that I've never forgotten. Once something is said, it's ALWAYS said. You can't take it back and whoever you said it to will NEVER forget it. A good, simple rule to live by, I think.

The reason that only 3% ever truly change is because only 3% ever really see what they do in a relationship as wrong. They bring themselves power and control by doing what they do. The feel entitiled to that power and control. They see absolutely nothing wrong with anything and feel that they are right and everyone else is wrong. The truly and absolutely believe it. They are not motivated to change because they like what their actions bring them.

Queenvalerie is right on (again.) Their behavior gets them what they want, so where is the incentive to change. One sad truth is that WE can really have no part in their recovery. To use an Al-Anon term, we enable their behavior. IF they were to seek help, which usually only happens after we leave them, the point at which they "win us back" by showing us that "they can change" is where their "recovery" stops, because now they have what they want and there is no reason to continue the arduous task of a complete and total personality transplant. :-)

The behaviors that are rooted deep into the personality of an abuser has their view of the world and others with themselves as the center of the universe. Who wouldn't want to be "king of the world." Lowering someone from that pedistal that they have erected themselves on is a long and torutuous task, takes a lot of hard work and to the abuser, a lot of self sacrifice. When he no longer realizes that he can't and won't get everything he wants, and his old behaviors would result in that, the inevitable relapses occur, because there comes "breaking points" to what he or she feels like (s)he can give up.

My sisters husband is the verbally abusive one but doesn't seem to feel that he is the center of the universe. He just is mean and nasty and annoyed when things don't go his way. He gets angry at himself alot too. His own father was the nastiest man I ever met and never had a nice thing to say about anyone.

I am sincerely not trying to be disagreeable here but your brother in law absolutely feels that he is the center of the universe and he fully expects every single person in your sisters house to acknowledge that. He is mean and nasty because that is how he makes that happen. Every time he gets abusive it is because he isn't getting his way, every time he shouts for attention it is because he thinks he is deserving of it and wants every eye in the house centered on him, every time he makes demands it is because he feels entitiled to whatever it is he is demanding. And it's working too, isn't it. When he is abusive there isn't one eye in the house that isn't on him. How to calm him down, how to deal with him, how to make it stop. Yes they are unhappy about it and yes your sister is trying to distance herself from him but he still gets what he wants, which is power and control, by being abusive. He has no incentive to change because his current abusive actions are getting him exactly what he wants.

Since his father was the same way, clearly now you know where he learned it from. He saw those actions as the way to be strong and get what you want. I bet his father got what he wanted too. That is why it is so incredibly difficult for an abuser to actually change their ways. What they are doing is paying off so why stop.

There was a point about two years ago that I was so fed up with being the "doormat" for my abusive stbx...I told him that from now on, you get what you give, I became like him, ignorant, nasty, cold, abusive, my hope in doing so was that he would see how shitty it made someone feel, it certainly backfired on me, I felt bad for acting, saying things that I normally would not do or say, then he used it against my saying I was just as bad. Moral of the story, stay true to who you are, if they abuse you to the point that you become them, or feel "what is good for the goose is good for the gander" get out, you will have twice as much work to do to get back to yourself.

Abuse is not about anger, but power and control. The other reason abusers abuse is because there is something wrong with the way they think.
Lundy Bancroft's book has become my bible for when I start getting weak or fall for my husbands BS. My local DV program gave it to me for free. Maybe there is one in your area that will too. You could maybe also get it at the library. It answers all the pertinent questions.
To get an abuser to answer these questions is fruitless. There is a near "nada" recovery rate, as said previously. They truly don't think anything is wrong with them.