Your Abuser Quotes & Sayings

From her bed she could hear her mother and father arguing. After her father's death when she was eleven, she could hear her older brother, Bud, argue with their mother. From what she had learned about domestic battery in the last few years, she should have expected to end up with an abuser, even though her father never hit her or her mother, and the worst she ever got from Bud was a shove or slug in the arm. But man, could the men in her family yell. So loud, so mad, she wondered why the windows didn't crack. Demand, belittle, insult, accuse, sulk, punish with the meanest words. It was just a matter of degrees; abuse is abuse. The — Robyn Carr

When someone comes under abuse or attack a characteristic response is to blame yourself, especially if you are locked into a relationship of being attacked regularly, and making apologies for your abuser. It actually affects Christians living in Islamic circumstances more, and one Palestinian Christian spoke about that problem of needing to defend Islam in order to protect yourself. — Mark Durie

We are a society of excuses, shame and blame; we avoid accountability and often project our responsibility when involving domestic violence. — Asa Don Brown

One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment in relationships is that most abusive men simply don't seem like abusers. They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor, especially in the early period of a relationship. An abuser's friends may think the world of him. He may have a successful work life and have no problems with drugs or alcohol. He may simply not fit anyone's image of a cruel or intimidating person. So when a woman feels her relationship spinning out of control, it is unlikely to occur to her that her partner is an abuser. — Lundy Bancroft

Alcohol cannot create an abuser, and sobriety cannot cure one. The only way a man can overcome his abusiveness is by dealing with his abusiveness. And you are not "enabling" your partner to mistreat you; he is entirely responsible for his own actions. — Lundy Bancroft

A terrible sadness threatened to overwhelm me as I wondered how two people capable of such love for each other had eventually felt so little for the child they had produced between them. — Toni Maguire

While it is easy to blame the hand of the abuser, when that hand no longer is raised against you, why do you continue to feel the burn of its touch? — Deborah Brodie

I did not know that the first step in any domestic violence relationship is to seduce and charm the victim. I also did not know that the second step is to isolate the victim. The next step in the domestic violence pattern is to introduce the threat of violence and see how she reacts. We victims know something you [non-victims] usually don't. It's incredibly dangerous to leave an abuser, because the final step in the domestic violence pattern is to 'kill her'. Over 70% of domestic violence murders happens after the victim has ended the relationship. — Leslie Morgan Steiner

As a young man I started searching for my own identity by looking into family, friends and inside

Myself. My mother always taught us to live free even when confined, meaning "never let anyone break you down physically or mentally." Since my living environment was so heavily impacted with violence and illegal activity I found myself adapting to social norms that later in my adult life would negatively affect me. For example, certain physical reactions that were acceptable, as a child would give you a reputation on the street as tough guy, don't mess with him. The same mentality later in life, as a man would label you as a predator of some sort and a woman abuser. It was hard to understand the true value of a man and all his worth and everything he is capable of achieving, when you're surrounded by pimps, hustlers and con men that all may make more money than the men with trade jobs and have more of an appealing lifestyle for the short- term progress. — Rubin Scott

I think you're under no obligation whatsoever to forgive anything, to forget anything. You're not required to push away the years of abuse because the abuser now chooses to be sober and in his sobriety regrets his actions. And white may be small and unforgiving of me, I think people who do so at the snap of a dam finger are either liars or are in need of serious therapy. I assume you heard him out, so in my personal opinion, any debt you might owe for your existence is now paid in full. It may be fashionable to hold that terrible actions are indeed terrible, but that hte person inflicting them isn't responbile due to alcohol, drugs, DNA, or GD PMS. He damn well was responsible, and if you decided to loathe him for the rest of your life, I wouldn't blame you for it. How's that? (Cybil to Gage - she ROCKS) — Nora Roberts

In a verbally abusive relationship, the partner learns to tolerate abuse without realizing it and to lose self-esteem without realizing it. She is blamed by the abuser and becomes the scapegoat. The partner is then the victim. — Patricia Evans

The best way to teach a child abuser to stop abusing is not counseling. It is not therapy. It is a mouth full of broken teeth and arms that, when the bones heal, cannot produce the force necessary to hit or burn another child. — Ryan Sayles

By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil of the abuser into herself and thereby preserves her primary attachments to her parents. Because the inner sense of badness preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality structure. — Judith Lewis Herman

The more you face the truth, the angrier you will probably become. You have a right to be angry about being sexually abused. You have a right to be angry with the perpetrator, regardless of who it was, how long ago the sexual abuse occurred, or how much he/she has changed. — Beverly Engel

It is essential that children who are directly or indirectly affected by domestic violence receive psychological care. — Asa Don Brown

When I talk to Future Therapists of America, I tell them that what often drives people into treatment is the constant tension between what the organism naturally wants for pleasure and what they've been taught to think about those desires... They just feel guilty about what they think. And this is why I'm so careful about not misusing sexuality. Because I know how to manipulate a body and have infinite patience until it has a good time... If I were an evil person, I would find vulnerable people who are desperate for that kind of experience and give it to them. That would form an intense attachment. I would come across like a savior. And then I could mess with them...So I don't doubt for a moment that her abuser was able to get her body to respond even though she didn't want to be there. — Nina Hartley

I have come to know a God who has a soft spot for rebels, who recruits people like the adulterer David, the whiner Jeremiah, the traitor Peter, and the human-rights abuser Saul of Tarsus. I have come to know a God whose Son made prodigals the heroes of his stories and the trophies of his ministry. — Philip Yancey

Perhaps you expected to feel great as soon as you escaped your abuser, and maybe you did feel a great sense of relief for a while. However, as time has passed, you may be dismayed by the extent of your emotional pain. — Caroline Abbott

Beyond telling and getting away however there are an awful lot of myths out there about how to move on or get justice. People may tell you to report the crime or confront you abuser- or even to forgive him. I don't necessarily advocate any of these things. I think counseling of some kind can be enormously useful, but the bottom line is that the main way to heal is to find people who will support you, to talk about what happened, and to ground yourself in the reality that the abuse was not your fault, that you have nothing to be ashamed of, and that you deserve great love and happiness in your life. — Patti Feuereisen

As long as your abuser has you scared, you will stay in the cycle of abuse. Thinking of solutions helps you to escape. — Roseanne Barr

I have never seen a client make a serious effort to confront his abusiveness unless somebody required him to do the work. The abuser who truly enters counseling voluntarily, with no one holding anything over his head, quits within a few sessions, unless he finds a counselor he can manipulate. — Lundy Bancroft

Be aware of children who may be living in a domestically violent home. — Asa Don Brown

Maybe you never considered yourself a bully, a batterer or an abuser before, but maybe you are - to yourself. — Bryant McGill

The abuser's desire to abuse is not created by the child - it is there before the child appears — Carolyn Ainscough

When I was married to an abuser, he'd tell me he wouldn't have to get so angry if only I'd be less demanding, more supportive, more understanding. I hid the truth from everyone, especially myself. — Luanne Rice

Forgiveness is created by the restitution of the abuser; of the wrongdoer. It is not something to be squeeeeeezed out of the victim in a further act of conscience-corrupting abuse. — Stefan Molyneux

If you have survived an abuser, and you tried to make things right ... If you forgave, and you struggled, and even if the expression of your grief and your anger tumbled out at times in too much rage and too many words ... If you spent years hanging on to the concepts of faith, hope, and love, even after you knew in your heart that those intangibles, upon which life is formed and sustained, would fail in the end ... And especially, if you stood between your children - or anyone - and him, and took the physical, emotional, and spiritual pummeling in their stead, then you are a hero. — Jenna Brooks

I again invoke my favorite analogy for eating disorders: abusive lovers. And what do you do when someone is in an abusive relationship? You don't allow visitation rights, weekly dates. You don't put them in the vicinity of or let the abuser flirt with them. You keep them the fuck away. — Kelsey Osgood

Having one's mother or father or past abuser admit to their crimes or even apologize for them changes nothing
certainly not what they did. Rather, such an apology would give you the psychological permission to "move on" with your life.
But you do not need anybody's permisson to move on with your life.
It does not matter whether or not those responsible for harming you ever understand what they did, care about what they did, or apologize for it.
It does not matter.
All that matters is your ability to stop fondling the experience with your brain. Which you can do right now. — Augusten Burroughs

You don't deserve the anger you're turning on yourself. Your abuser's the one who does. — Cheryl Rainfield

I have sometimes said to a client: "If you are so in touch with your feelings from your abusive childhood, then you should know what abuse feels like. You should be able to remember how miserable it was to be cut down to nothing, to be put in fear, to be told that the abuse is your own fault. You should be less likely to abuse a woman, not more so, from having been through it." Once I make this point, he generally stops mentioning his terrible childhood; he only wants to draw attention to it if it's an excuse to stay the same, not if it's a reason to change. — Lundy Bancroft

The reality is, no matter what you were told, whatever happened to you as a child was not legally or morally your fault. Abused children are instilled with guilt regarding their "participation." It's an especially complex issue if the abuser is a family member. The child is told and believes that by his word his family will disintegrate, or harm may descend upon other loved ones. He fears he will lose more by telling than not. — Sarah E. Olson

Your husband's abuse of you feels "normal" to him. A goal of a abuser treatment program is to teach a healthier normal for the relationship. — Caroline Abbott

Don't be depressed if you feel like a victim of abuse. It is because the abuser knows that your action can get you out of that situation and without depending on anything, live a life within your expectation and beyond. — Denny A

The survivor movements were also challenging the notion of a dysfunctional family as the cause and culture of abuse, rather than being one of the many places where abuse nested. This notion, which in the 1990s and early 1980s was the dominant understanding of professionals characterised the sex abuser as a pathetic person who had been denied sex and warmth by his wife, who in turn denied warmth to her daughters. Out of this dysfunctional triad grew the far-too-cosy incest dyad. Simply diagnosed, relying on the signs: alcoholic father, cold distant mother, provocative daughter. Simply resolved, because everyone would want to stop, to return to the functioning family where mum and dad had sex and daughter concentrated on her exams. Professionals really believed for a while that sex offenders would want to stop what they were doing. They thought if abuse were decriminalised, abusers would seek help. The survivors knew different. P5 — Beatrix Campbell

We're an equal-opportunity abuser here. (Syd) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

An abuser can seem emotionally needy. You can get caught in a trap of catering to him, trying to fill a bottomless pit. But he's not so much needy as entitled, so no matter how much you give him, it will never be enough. He will just keep coming up with more demands because he believes his needs are your responsibility, until you feel drained down to nothing. — Lundy Bancroft

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. — Lundy Bancroft

No woman in any of my cases has ever left a man the first time he behaved abusively (not that doing so would be wrong). By the time she moves to end her relationship, she has usually lived with years of verbal abuse and control and has requested uncountable numbers of times that her partner stop cutting her down or frightening her. In most cases she has also requested that he stop drinking, or go to counseling, or talk to a clergyperson, or take some other step to get help. She has usually left him a few times, or at least started to leave, and then gotten back together with him. Don't any of these actions on her part count as demonstrating her commitment? Has she ever done enough, and gained the right to protect herself? In the abuser's mind, the answer is no. Once again, the abuser's double standards rule the day. — Lundy Bancroft

If an 'animal abuser' were killed in a research lab firebombing, I would unequivocally support that, too. — Gary Yourofsky

An abuser's psychological diagnosis isn't the problem. Their sense of entitlement is. — Caroline Abbott

An abuser doesn't change because he feels guilty or gets sober or finds God. He doesn't change after seeing the fear in his children's eyes or feeling them drift away from him. It doesn't suddenly dawn on him that his partner deserves better treatment. Because of his self-focus, combined with the many rewards he gets from controlling you, an abuser changes only when he has to, so the most important element in creating a context for change in an abuser is placing him in a situation where he has no other choice. Otherwise, it is highly unlikely that he will ever change his behavior. — Lundy Bancroft

despair of ever making it out of slavery and the slum. Psychologists often see the same resistance to escaping in women who are in abusive relationships. They may live in fear and pain, but they refuse to leave the abuser because they are more fearful of the unknown. — Nick Vujicic

Learn to say to the abuser in a firm voice, "Stop it." Do not explain yourself, your needs, or what you mean. Simply call a halt to the abuse, and let that be your final word. — Caroline Abbott

It is not possible to be truly balanced in one's views of an abuser and an abused woman. As Dr. Judith Herman explains eloquently in her masterwork Trauma and Recovery, "neutrality" actually serves the interests of the perpetrator much more than those of the victim and so is not neutral. Although an abuser prefers to have you wholeheartedly on his side, he will settle contentedly for your decision to take a middle stance. To him, that means you see the couple's problems as partly her fault and partly his fault, which means it isn't abuse. — Lundy Bancroft

I just let the work speak for itself. An actor is not afraid to take risks; to put on different hats; to be a good guy, a bad guy, a victim, an abuser. There are all kinds of people in the world, and playing them is what acting is all about. — Kevin Bacon

Prosecutors often wince when they have to take a child abuser to trial, because usually the only witnesses they can use are children who are terrified at the prospect of testifying against their parents. — James Lee Burke

Sometimes the more educated an abuser, the more knots he knows how to tie in a woman's brain, the better he is at getting her to blame herself, and the slicker is his ability to persuade other people that she is crazy. The more socially powerful an abuser, the more powerful his abuse can be - and the more difficult it can be to escape. — Lundy Bancroft

Though both partners may wish for reconciliation, their unspoken goals are often sharply in conflict. The abuser usually wishes to reestablish his pattern of coercive control, while the victim wishes to resist it. — Judith Lewis Herman

It is seldom that domestic violence is an isolated episode; rather it is comprised of a number of episodes over an extended period of time. — Asa Don Brown

Vipassana proponents always stress that if you are insulted by someone and get angry, the result is not the abuser's fault. It is your fault because you choose to react. — Ashwin Sanghi

The sense of ownership is one reason why abuse tends to get worse as relationships get more serious. The more history and commitment that develop in the couple, the more the abuser comes to think of his partner as a prized object. Possessiveness is at the core of the abuser's mindset, the spring from which all the other streams spout; on some level he feels that he owns you and therefore has the right to treat you as he sees fit. — Lundy Bancroft

your abuser tried to map your life for you. But he does not own you, and you have the freedom and the power to overcome and transcend the (negative) associations. You deserve to be happy, to be free of any feelings of shame or guilt or fear. You have the right to a completely satisfying sexual life. You are a righteous young woman. If you can get in touch with the feelings and consciously change the awful associations, you can re-map your life. — Patti Feuereisen

so often victims end up unnecessarily prolonging their abuse because they buy into the notion that their abuser must be coming from a wounded place and that only patient love and tolerance (and lots of misguided therapy) will help them heal. — George K. Simon

A domestic violence advocate can help you discern your level of risk from your abuser and whether you should get a civil restraining order. — Caroline Abbott

Whatever your age, you are the right age to be coming out and telling your truth. Find someone to tell- and tell, tell, tell, until your lungs ache. Tell until you can't tell anymore. It won't take away what happened to you, but it will re-map your life and take away the power from the abuse and the abuser. You are strong and resilient. You are not alone. — Patti Feuereisen

For decades, many therapists have been attempting to help abusive men change by guiding them in identifying and expressing feelings. Alas, this well-meaning but misguided approach actually feeds the abuser's selfish focus on himself, which is an important force driving his abusiveness. — Lundy Bancroft

If you repeat your negative memories in your mind and feel self-pity, then YOU are both the abuser and the victim - not those who wronged you in the past. Your present and future will be happier if you take control of your thoughts. — Maddy Malhotra

You have to reach out to your inner-abuser and make peace. You can't live your life as your own worst enemy! — Bryant McGill

Throwing things near her but not exactly at her. I'm sure he told himself: I never hit her. I'm sure because of this technicality he never saw himself as an abuser. But he turned our family life into an endless road trip with bad directions and a rage-clenched driver, a vacation that never got a chance to be fun. Don't make me turn this car around. Please, really, turn it around. — Gillian Flynn

Any woman who stays with her abuser beyond the first incident is complicitous with him. — Camille Paglia

Marijuana is not addictive. People are the addicts and they will find a substance or a belief that will feed the addiction they need to make their day go away. Meaning one looks for a substance that allows them not to live with who and what they really are. To stop addiction we must treat the patient and stop blaming everyone and everything else but the abuser. — Steven Machat

I use my work as catharsis. That's often the best thing that we can do, is to allow ourselves to rage because it's so rare that we get to. We're told to forgive - I don't want to! I don't want to forgive my abuser! I don't care to and I don't like that assumption that forgiveness makes me a better person. It's not authentic to me, my feelings and what I need. But everyone has their own way. — Margaret Cho

An abuser isn't abusive 24/7. They usually demonstrate positive character traits most of the time. That's what makes the abuse so confusing when it happens, and what makes leaving so much more difficult. — Miya Yamanouchi

It's incredibly dangerous to leave an abuser, because the final step in the domestic violence pattern is: kill her. — Leslie Morgan Steiner

Although the typical abusive man works to maintain a positive public image, it is true that some women have abusive partners who are nasty or intimidating to everyone. How about that man? Do his problems result from mistreatment by his parents? The answer is both yes and no; it depends on which problem we're talking about. His hostility toward the human race may sprout from cruelty in his upbringing, but he abuses women because he has an abuse problem. The two problems are related but distinct. — Lundy Bancroft

Hi, my name is Kurt Cobain, I'm homosexual, I'm a pagan, I'm a drug abuser, and I like to fuck pot-bellied pigs! — Kurt Cobain

Feminism exists so that no woman ever has to face her abuser in isolation, alone. — Andrea Dworkin

The problem with depicting abusers as full-time monsters is that when a person is actually experiencing abuse in their own life, they'll think "oh but he's the sweetest guy most of the time so he can't be an abuser " or "but he's not ALWAYS horrible, he's usually amazing, so he's not an abuser", and they'll make the mistake of thinking they mustn't really be being abused when they actually are. — Miya Yamanouchi

[Abusers] blame the world - circumstances, other people - for their defeats, misfortune, misconduct, and failures. The abuser firmly believes that his life is swayed by currents and persons over which he has no influence whatsoever (he has an external locus of control).

But there are even subtler variants of this psychological defense mechanism. Not infrequently an abuser will say: "I made a mistake because I am stupid", implying that his deficiencies and inadequacy are things he cannot help having and cannot change. This is also an alloplastic defense because it abrogates responsibility.

Many abusers exclaim: "I misbehaved because I completely lost my temper." On the surface, this appears to be an autoplastic defense with the abuser assuming responsibility for his misconduct. But it could be interpreted as an alloplastic defense, depending on whether the abuser believes that he can control his temper. — Sam Vaknin

I'm not an abuser. It takes me a long time to assimilate each experience. And I never have lost my respect for it. I mean I really feel dread. It is one of the emotions I always feel as I approach it, because I have no faith that my sails won't be ripped this time. — Terence McKenna

Politicians are propaganda, the people with guns are the enforcers and the media is the enthusiastic lapdog who enables the entire behavior and acts as the verbal abuser against those who deviate from nodding their heads at the vast statues of evil that we inherited. — Stefan Molyneux

Have you killed a man, drowned a crocodile, hunted a wolf, or raped an abuser? Stop pretending you love someone. — M.F. Moonzajer

Domestic violence is any behavior involving physical, psychological, emotional, sexual or verbal abuse. It is any form of aggression intended to hurt, damage, or kill an intimate person. — Asa Don Brown

When put in a room with both parents, would almost always embrace the abuser. — Louise Penny

If you are aware of chronic or severe mistreatment and do not speak out against it, your silence communicates implicitly that you see nothing unacceptable taking place. Abusers interpret silence as approval, or at least as forgiveness. To abused women, meanwhile, the silence means that no one will help - just what her partner wants her to believe. Anyone who chooses to quietly look the other way therefore unwittingly becomes the abuser's ally. — Lundy Bancroft