Beating back the anger: help for abusive men

Seeing the signs

To friends and loved ones looking on, abuse may seem unbelievable. "But there are often indicators of physically abusive behavior," says Dr. Elayne Savage, a psychotherapist in Berkeley, California, and author of the book Breathing Room: Creating Space to Be a Couple.

Potential signs of abuse include the following:

• Constant criticism of a partner
• Overprotectiveness and jealousy
• Threats to hurt the partner, children, or pets
• Isolating the partner from friends and others
• Losing temper
• Destruction of personal property
• Intimidation
• Publicly humiliating or embarrassing the partner
• Comments about forced sexual intercourse

For Savage, such indicators reflect the abuser's inability to handle his own mounting emotions.

"In any relationship, there's going to be tension and anxieties that build up, caused by work, children, lots of things," she says. "For some of us, we pick little fights, slam doors to break the anxiety. But when the tension builds in relationships prone to violence, abuse breaks the tension."

No true profile of abusers

Murray Straus, professor of sociology and co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, says that the typical abuser may not look anything like what we expect.

"Many people assume that abusers are ‘drunken bums,'" he says. In fact, Straus's research shows that only one-fourth of those who abuse alcohol and drugs also abuse their partners. Nevertheless, substance abuse is a risk factor for domestic violence, along with a belief that the husband should run things, low education, and stress.

Straus reports that abuse "occurs on all socio-economic levels, but it rises greatly as you move down the economic scale." A 1997 survey by The Taylor Institute revealed that the majority of welfare recipients have experienced domestic abuse.

Communication and control

In 1998, focus groups of African-Americans highlighted the role that lack of communication can play in domestic violence.

"Several men expressed their limited ability to verbally engage and debate with their partners," wrote lead researcher J. Williams Oliver. "These men felt overwhelmed by their partner's verbal skills." As a result, these men turned to violence "as the only recourse available to ‘get control of the situation.'"

Help for abusive men

Susan Cayouette, EdD, co-director of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Emerge, the longest-running batterer-invention program in the United States, recommends a long-term treatment program in which batterers "look at the underlying causes for the violence."

Typical anger-management programs, which may last for five to eight sessions, are not long enough. "My belief is that you need nine months to a year to teach people what abuse is and what alternatives are available," says Dr. Cayouette. "It takes that long to change your behavior."

It's also not something that anyone else—even good friends and loved ones—can do for an abusive man. Gene McConnell, a former abuser who is now president and founder of Authentic Relationships, International, doesn't believe that anyone could have stepped in and told him anything that would have helped him to change.

"I knew that what I was doing was wrong," he says. "I knew it was harmful. I knew there was a better way; I just didn't know what that was. I had to hit bottom."

Breaking the cycle of violence

For McConnell, like many batterers, "hitting bottom" meant being arrested. Unfortunately, it often takes that kind of dramatic event to turn a batterer around.

For Cliff Martin, the turning point was the realization that his marriage was headed for divorce and that others' marriages would be ruined as well. He reached out for help and found several trusted friends willing to step in and point him toward effective counseling. Meanwhile, other friends met one-on-one with his wife, Kari. Together, the couple found the support they needed to break the cycle of violence before it was too late.

* Names have been changed.