Living with an Abuser

Insight into Abusers and Batterers

It is important to understand true insight into living with an abuser. It is believed that abusers and batterers have intense anger issues that cannot be controlled. But interestingly, most of them are able to confine their anger to the home front. Don't be deceived. Their co-workers, the friends they see socially, and their fellow church members, rarely even get a glimpse of their anger.

Their target is their spouses, their children, or even their aging parents. Batterers pick out who their victims will be.

Abuse against a victim is not a random assault. They know when it will happen, where it will happen, and they make sure that there are no witnesses, and that the victim isn’t going to get away.

Batterers usually attack their victims in areas of the body that will be hidden by clothing. Over time, as the violence continues, the abuse and injuries become more and more visible. There are broken bones, bandages to cover up the knifings, bruising or abnormal swelling on the face. The victim learns quickly to blame all of this on being accident prone. Abuse and battering is about the need for power and control.

It’s about domination over the victim, not the abuser’s problem with anger because life is so hard and stressful. While living with an abuser, batterers manage very well to control their anger so that only their victims see it.

There are six types of abuse: physical, emotional, economic, spiritual, psychological, and sexual. Abusers also use threats of these actions in order to control their victims. Please see Types of Domestic Violence and Abuse for a full understanding of what abuse is.

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