Quotes About Abuse

A woman can feel that she is losing her mind—or develop actual psychiatric symptoms—if the obvious realities of her life, including abuse, are denied repeatedly by her partner.

Oppressive systems stay in existence because the people in power enjoy the luxury of their position and become unwilling to give up the privileges they win through taking advantage of other people and keeping them down. In short, the abusive mentality is the mentality of oppression.

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.

Abusive men are masters of excuse making. In this respect they are like substance abusers, who believe that everyone and everything except them is responsible for their actions.

Abusiveness can be thought of as a recipe that involves a consistent set of ingredients: control, entitlement, disrespect, excuses, and justifications (including victim blaming)—elements that are always present, often accompanied by physical intimidation or violence.

The vast majority of women who say that they are being abused are telling the truth. I know this to be true because the abusers let their guard down with me, belying their denial.

When we hear these kinds of excuses from a drunk, we assume they are exactly that—excuses. We don't consider an active alcoholic a reliable source of insight. So why should we let an angry and controlling man be the authority on partner abuse?

And you are not "enabling" your partner to mistreat you; he is entirely responsible for his own actions.

Abuse is not caused by bad relationship dynamics.

you cannot make things better by changing your own behavior or by attempting to manage your partner better. Abuse is a problem that lies entirely within the abuser.

Abusiveness is not a product of a man's emotional injuries or of deficits in his skills. In reality, abuse springs from a man's early cultural training, his key male role models, and his peer influences.

In reality, to remain neutral is to collude with the abusive man, whether or not that is your goal. 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.

Abuse is not his goal, but control is, and he finds himself using abuse to gain the control he feels he has a right to.

Some people feel threatened by the concept that abuse is a solvable problem, because if it is, there's no excuse for not solving it.

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.

As a product of Anglo-Saxon-Protestant culture, I am familiar with its centuries-old tradition of hiding its abuse of women under pretty packaging.

the disrespect that abusive men so often direct toward women in general tends to be born of their cultural values and conditioning rather than personal experiences of being victimized by women.

Abusers drive wedges between people, by accident or by design.

The abusive man has another reason to exaggerate and ridicule his partner's statements (and mine): He wants to avoid having to think seriously about what she is saying and struggle to digest it.

abuse is the opposite of love. The more a man abuses you, the more he is demonstrating that he cares only about himself. He may feel a powerful desire to receive your love and caretaking, but he only wants to give love when it's convenient.

ALCOHOL HAS NO BIOLOGICAL CONNECTION TO ABUSE OR VIOLENCE Alcohol does not directly make people belligerent, aggressive, or violent. There is evidence that certain chemicals can cause violent behavior — anabolic steroids, for example, or crack cocaine — but alcohol is not among them. In the human body, alcohol is actually a depressant, a substance that rarely causes aggression. Marijuana similarly has no biological action connected to abusiveness.

The U.S. Surgeon General has declared that attacks by male partners are the number one cause of injury to women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four.

When an abusive man feels the powerful stirring inside that other people call love, he is probably largely feeling: The desire to have you devote your life to keeping him happy with no outside interference The desire to have sexual access The desire to impress others by having you be his partner The desire to possess and control you

It is important to note that research has shown that men who have abusive mothers do not tend to develop especially negative attitudes toward females, but men who have abusive fathers do; the disrespect that abusive men show their female partners and their daughters is often absorbed by their sons.