Salvation appeared to come from the unlikeliest of sources: an old high school boyfriend, Matt. She’d dated Matt off and on in her junior and senior years. When she left for college out of state, Lisa had parted with Matt. Then, as if guided by the kind hand of divine providence, Matt reappeared and offered his assistance just when Lisa needed it most.
Matt moved Lisa into his cavernous home in the Pacific Northwest. There she could rest, recuperate, continue her physical therapy, and start to rebuild her shattered existence. In the intervening years since high school, Matt had become a millionaire several times over from the spoils of his deceased father’s trust fund.
“Just rest and get better,” he said. “I will take care of you.”
The next few months demonstrated the extraordinary perseverance that had always been Lisa’s calling card. She would walk again, and far sooner than any of her doctors’ most optimistic predictions. During this time, she and Matt rediscovered the feelings they had shared in high school, and more.
Then, to sum it up in a familiar phrase, the wheels started to come off.
This started when Lisa had almost completed her physical therapy after many months of tireless zeal. She no longer needed crutches and could get in and out of chairs and bed without Matt’s assistance. The pain had lessened considerably, and she no longer needed to take the powerful painkillers her doctors had prescribed to prevent her from writhing in agony all day and nightly when she went to bed. Her whip-smart brain wasn’t a cloudy haze of pharmaceuticals for the first time since the accident, and she could see clearly again.
Lisa couldn’t understand why Matt suddenly seemed so moody. From her perspective, it was senseless that her sudden independence made him more irritable. Who on earth wanted to be beholden to a sad invalid who contributed little more than an extra mouth to feed and a mountain of woe?
But Matt was more irritable since her recovery, unmistakably so. When she asked if she might begin using one of his several cars to get around, he rebuffed her, saying she’d not healed well enough to drive. When Lisa protested, Matt shouted her down, declaring the matter closed. It was the first time since high school that Lisa was reminded of Matt’s occasional flares of temper, and, in that moment, she was afraid of him.
It was only the first of many such moments over the next four months, moments that came with alarming frequency. Lisa was a spitfire with a terrific mind who demanded an equal partnership in their life together, a fair position that nonetheless was met with, in order: surliness, sullenness, self-righteous anger and, finally, seething rage. The last stage didn’t turn violent at first, but it wasn’t long before Matt was consistently breaking objects that had great sentimental meaning to Lisa.
Things came to a head during a visit by one of Lisa’s oldest friends, a girl she knew from high school. One night, while out drinking at a favorite local pub, Lisa and Matt launched into a drunken shouting match over Lisa’s “disrespect,” manifested in her not “paying attention” (there it is again) to him. When Lisa refused to coddle his selfishness and walked away, Matt did something that shocked everyone; he grabbed her by the back of the neck and slammed her head into the bar with such fury that Lisa was knocked out instantly. She awoke to find her girlfriend crying over her as four bouncers and patrons held down a bellowing and crazed Matt.
After spending several nights away, Matt came home a seemingly different man—humble, remorseful, begging forgiveness, and promising his behavior was an ugly aberration that would never happen again. Matt agreed to start couples counseling and to stop drinking. Lisa agreed not to press charges for the incident at the bar.
It was a decision she’d soon regret.
It took about a month for Matt’s earlier regret to dissipate and reveal itself for what it had been all along: the desire to avoid accountability for his monstrous actions. At his core, Matt didn’t think what he’d done was wrong. His sour sense of privilege assured him it wasn’t his fault. He held on to the abuser’s perverse-but-common defense: she made him do it.
Matt started drinking again, heavily. Out together with friends one evening, Lisa and Matt got into another argument that ended with Lisa tossing a drink in his face and storming out. As she walked in the front door of their home alone, Lisa foresaw what awaited her and locked herself in their bedroom. Matt returned within the hour, drunk and in a frenzy. He made quick work of the locked door, kicking it in with such force that the wood tore like tissue paper. When Lisa tried to run, he grabbed her by the hair and, picking up a metal vase on the bed stand, swung it into the back of her head with all the force his 225-pound frame could provide.
Lisa awoke in a hospital bed. In addition to cracking her skull, Matt had stomped on her fingers as she lay helpless, breaking two on each hand. Once again, Lisa had sustained injuries that should’ve proven fatal; and once again, Lisa survived. As soon as she was able to stand, Lisa boarded a plane to her parents’ home in rural Georgia and never saw Matt again.
Leaning on his wealth and family connections, Matt evaded any legal trouble. Occasionally, he calls and leaves messages on Lisa phone. No matter how often she changes her number, Matt always finds it somehow. Sometimes he tries to coax her back, promising he’s not the same man. When the messages go unanswered, Matt promises he’ll finish the job he started and kill her.
The law has advanced somewhat by making physical abusers answer for their crimes against women. The law is less successful at prosecuting the emotional abuser, the one who leaves scars that are internal but nevertheless real. This is an unfortunate but understandable problem. You cannot tangibly demonstrate what the emotional abuser takes from you: your will, your self-respect, your connections to your friends and family, your ability to trust and experience intimacy, and your freedom of self-expression. As horrifying as they are—and I’m by no means suggesting that experiences like Lisa’s are preferable—bruises and broken bones stand as expert testimony to the terror and grotesquery that a battered woman suffers. At least there is a chance for bringing these miserable cowards to account, for some modicum of justice.
So where is the justice for the woman who suffers for years under the unending torrent of psychological and emotional cruelty? Unfortunately, the most we can usually hope for is prevention. We cannot get back all that the emotional abuser takes from us, but we can try to shut his kind out of our lives forever. In the next chapter, we will discuss how to identify him—and to keep him the hell away.
Chapter Eleven
Scorning the Sub-Male
The US Department of Justice compiled a survey of sixteen thousand Americans to discover just how pervasive abuse is. They asked men and women to report whether they had ever been the target of physical abuse by a spouse, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a living partner, or a date. Of the women, 22.1 percent said yes.[xxvi]
The numbers for emotional abuse are, obviously, more difficult to calculate. As we noted in the last chapter, determining a percentage of something that cannot be measured tangibly is nearly impossible. We can’t recover all the things an abuser takes, and we certainly can’t get back all the time he wastes in women’s lives that might otherwise be happy and productive.
If you think of life as a galaxy of time and space for your exploration, the abusers are the black holes. They don’t operate according to the same laws as the rest of your universe. They absorb anything that passes nearby into themselves. They let no light emerge. And, last but not least, they suck.
If that seems to be a glib turn of phrase, know that my intention is never to make light of abuse. I’d like to take the starch out of the abuser himself: that selfish, weak, pathetic, bullying coward pretending to be a man.
People often refer to the best or most dominant man in any group as the “alpha male” (alpha being the first letter in the Greek alphabet). His opposite is the lowest member of any social hierarchy, “the omega male” (named after the last letter in the Greek alphabet). Framed this way, the abuser isn’t even an “omega male.” He
meets not even the basic minimum requirements for manhood. He is “sub-male.” He deserves to be treated with scorn and contempt. To that end, let us take him apart, piece-by-piece, by laying bare who he is and what he does.
1) His charm is temporary.
A common misconception about the abuser (aka the “sub-male”) among those of you with limited experience of him is that he a lumbering Neanderthal with no innate charisma or ability to “relate” to women. On the contrary, he does a pretty good impression of both charm and the ability to “relate” to you. Yet, like a dog that learns to walk on its hind legs, the sub-male can’t keep it up for long, since what he does isn’t natural to him. It’s a trick he learned over time to get what he wants. His “treat” isn’t a dog biscuit, of course. The rewards for mimicking this behavior are, first, your trust and affection, and then later, his control over you.
The sub-male is also reminiscent of the “fun” drunks we’ve all known at one time or another. Remember those guys or girls you knew, the ones who always got intoxicated well before you and the rest of your friends? Initially, their inebriation was amusing. They did or said things they wouldn’t normally do or say, and it was entertaining, at least at first. They were what people normally termed “happy” drunks.
The problem emerged, as it always will, when they kept drinking. Slowly but surely, your happy, entertaining friends became morose, sour, obnoxious, and even belligerent. Alcohol revealed not just people who loved a good time, but people with a real problem whose temporary revelry only masked inner demons. They weren’t “fun” anymore. They seemed sad, a little desperate and, to be honest, more than a little pathetic.
The sub-male is just like the “fun” drunk, except that time reveals him, rather than alcohol. Observe his “charm” long enough and you’ll see that it’s not real. It’s a poorly stitched knockoff of the genuine article that falls apart when any pressure is put on it. This pressure manifests as soon as you deviate from what the sub-male wants, because he values control above all else. Try to take even a little of it for yourself and his “charm” falls apart at the seams.
2) His idea of “commitment” isn’t the same as yours.
In the same way that the sub-male “charm” isn’t real, his dedication to “commitment” isn’t either, at least not in any sense you understand. Healthy people (both male and female) view commitment in a relationship as a shared desire for mutual happiness, fulfillment, and love. This guy doesn’t believe in sharing anything except slavish attention to his own wishes.
His idea of “commitment” is similar to his idea of “respect”: complete and utter bullshit.
In her book, Lundy Bancroft lists several tell-tale signs that a man may be an abuser. One of the primary clues is an unnaturally quick move toward “commitment.” It is no secret that most men in this day and age are reluctant to commit. The Rutgers survey of single men confirms this. So it seems refreshing to meet a man who not only doesn’t run from commitment but practically insists upon it.
But Bancroft says to be wary if it happens really quickly. “Watch out if he jumps too soon into planning your future together without taking enough time to get to know you and grow close. It could easily mean that he’s trying to wrap you up tightly into a package that he can own.”[xxvii]
This doesn’t mean every person who wants to jump into a relationship with you is an abuser. However, this is good advice that boils down into two simple words: slow down.
There are few things in life which benefit from hastiness. Is your house on fire? Is your car being stolen? Is a hurricane or tornado approaching? Are you and/or a loved one facing an imminent bear attack? If so, then by all means make haste. Most things, especially potential new relationships, don’t profit from this kind of wild urgency. Life isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. So choose whom you run with carefully, because how well you choose has a direct effect on how well you’ll finish.
The sub-male wants to hurry you into a relationship for a reason. In addition to wanting control, he knows as well as we do that time isn’t his ally. He knows that no woman in her right mind would want the real him. He can only accomplish his selfish goals by diverting your attention from reality as early and often as possible, which leads us neatly to our next point.
3) He’s the world’s worst magician.
The sub-male thrives in the same way as a magician—through constant misdirection. As convincing as Criss Angel or David Copperfield may be in a performance, they aren’t conjuring magic. Like all other magicians, most of what they do is simple bait-and-switch. They lead your attention in one direction, while they transform something in the other. The term for this kind of “magical” dexterity is “sleight-of-hand,” sleight meaning “deception.”
Sleight-of-hand is a type of “magic” generally employed at close quarters. Seen from a distance, it’s not difficult to notice that, when the magician feigns putting the quarter in one hand, he’s dropping it into his pocket with the other. Only up close can you be fooled into thinking he made it disappear.
The abuser operates in the same way. None of his “tricks” are innovative or even terribly complicated. Seen from a distance, everything he does is obvious. But seen from the tight proximity of a relationship, it’s not hard to be fooled. As we discussed, his “charm” is essentially all an elaborate “trick,” a con game he has performed so many times that he’s good enough to give it the illusion of reality. His screwed-up ideas about “respect,” “love,” and “commitment” operate in the same way. You enter with certain sensible, common ideas about the meaning of these words, but after receiving a steady stream of the sub-male’s lies, misdirection, emotional manipulation, and intimidation, his carefully constructed mistruths begin to look real.
4) He wants you to be isolated and dependent.
Maybe you’ve been fortunate to avoid the sub-male thus far in your dating life. If so, congratulations. You’re one of the lucky ones. Surely, however, you know a friend or family member who has dated one. I bet that, over the length of her relationship, you saw your friend less and less. Perhaps you and everyone else you know found the guy to be such an obnoxious creep that you avoided him like a nasty virus.
Though you’re pretty sure that being an asshole isn’t contagious, you didn’t want to risk catching it from him, either.
You shouldn’t feel guilty for growing apart from your friend or loved one because of her terrible boyfriend. If you hadn’t drifted away, the sub-male would’ve gladly pushed you. Isolation is one of his favorite and best-used tools. The last thing he wants while he’s systematically breaking down and then controlling his latest victim is a witness, especially one with the objectivity to see clearly everything that he’s doing.
Once the sub-male has his girl isolated, it’s a cinch to convince her that she can’t live without him. With no pesky friends or family around to interfere, he happily becomes her surrogate for these lost relationships, all the while telling her that he’s the one who actually cares about her.
“It’s your (mother/father/brother/sister/friend) who abandoned you”, says the sub-male. “I’m still here. I’m the one who really loves you.”
The lesson here is to beware the man who hates all your friends. Even if he’s not an abuser, he’s eventually going to force a stand-off, and no one should have to choose between the people she loves. People who truly love you welcome your friends and family (including those who secretly get on their nerves a little). They respect your feelings for these people and the roles they have played in making you who you are.
5) He doesn’t care about your orgasm.
This doesn’t mean the sub-male can’t get you off. On the contrary, for women who like an authority figure in public and/or the bedroom, this guy can be just what they need, albeit temporarily. I mean that your orgasm is incidental to him. Either he uses it as a tool to gain control over you, or he pays no attention to it whatsoever.
The sub-male may seem very attentive to your needs in th
e beginning, but his intentions are purely selfish. Few people are more narcissistic than the sub-male, so making you climax feeds his inflated sense of self-worth and adds to his deluded feelings of entitlement. While you’re marveling at what a caring and considerate lover he is, the sub-male is quietly filling a ledger of what you “owe” him, a list that also includes your orgasms.
His care in the bedroom is just another trick and, unfortunately for you, he’ll cease to bother performing it once he feels he has you under his thumb. From that point forward, the focus will overtly become what it has secretly always been—him and his pleasure. Not only will he cease to be attentive, but he’ll become more and more demanding. He may even use emotional and physical intimidation to force you into sex, or shame you when you aren’t in the mood.
6) He is an absolute hypocrite.
The sub-male really reveals his rotten core by constantly punishing you for the very behaviors that he unabashedly engages in. You don’t “respect” him around your friends? He mocks and belittles you in front of them, which in the end makes him look as petty as he actually is and causes you great embarrassment. He decides that you “flirted” with some random guy at a business function you attended together? He cheats on you and tells you that you “deserved it.” You don’t keep a clean enough house (the sub-male is often proudly chauvinistic) for him? He smashes a plate of food all over the kitchen floor, and you get the pleasure of cleaning it up—typically after he has walked through the mess.
Do you see a pattern here?
It comes down to this. There is only one set of rules for acceptable behavior in a good relationship. They’re mutually established and agreed upon, and both parties adhere to them equally. None of this “do as I say, not as I do” nonsense. If he doesn’t want to live by those rules, but expects you to follow them without exception, show him the door.
Your Ex-Boyfriend Will Hate This Page 7