some common abuse tactics
In order to keep abusing people, an abuser needs everyone around them to think they’re not doing anything wrong. In order to do this, there are some pretty common patterns abusers follow.
It’s not always exactly like this, and some abusers skip some parts or do things that aren’t addressed here. This is also mostly geared toward non-family abuse, though some parts are applicable to family abuse. Anyway, here’s some stuff to watch out for.
First, the abuser dazzles their victim. They can do this in a number of ways: with extravagant gifts, charming flattery, intensity that feels like a compliment, or weirdly early declarations of love. This is the honeymoon period, where an abuser reels a victim in. Emotionally vulnerable or inexperienced people are the most susceptible to this; more experienced or secure people sometimes feel like something’s “off” but can’t always identify why. (Trust your instincts!)
This stage gets the victim to invest in the relationship, and, sometimes, gets the victim’s friends and family members thinking that the abuser’s a great person.
Second, the abuser slowly starts to break down their victim’s self-esteem and convinces the victim they deserve to be treated badly. It usually starts off with negging-style remarks or passive-aggressive comments. This sets the victim up as someone who deserves bad things to happen to them and the abuser as being really nice just for refraining from doing those bad things.
This sets up a version of reality where abuse is normal and the lack of it is a special kindness. This way, the victim feels grateful to the abuser for lapses in cruelty, and begins to believe that anyone else would probably treat them worse.
Third, they isolate their victims. This can happen in a lot of ways. The simplest is to monopolise the victims’ time and make the victim feel guilty for spending time with friends or family. Sometimes the abuser manipulates the victim into thinking that their friends and family hate them or treat them badly. It’s very common for the abuser to create an “us vs. them” mentality and try to get their victim to choose between the abuser and everyone else in the victim’s life.
Sometimes it’s more subtle: the abuser will act like a completely different person in public and in private, and make large parts of the relationship a secret from anyone who doesn’t think abuse is normal. The abuser may get the victim to keep the secret and keep up the pretence by making the victim feel guilty, ashamed or afraid.
This makes it so the victim has no support and no one telling them that the abuse is wrong or not their fault. (If someone tries, it’s common for the abuser to tell the victim that their friend is “trying to tear us apart” because of jealousy or other bad motives, reinforcing the us vs. them mentality.)
Fourth, they increase the intensity and frequency of the abuse gradually. What starts as a few mean remarks once in awhile turns into constant criticism and emotional manipulation.
If the abuser wants to be violent, it’s usually only after a long period of emotional abuse and isolation that they will start to physically hurt their victims. Any sexual abuse/violence usually happens after a period of emotional abuse, and can happen either before, after, or instead of physical abuse.
The abuser will often go hot-and-cold, and do really nice things out of the blue to keep the victim hooked. The abuser wants the victim to think that honeymoon period is the baseline and the abuse is the exception, to keep the victim invested in the relationship. The abuser will minimize the bad times as much as possible and treat them like they’re rare occurrences that were brought on by the victim’s extreme horribleness.
This whole time, they convince their victim that it’s not abuse. The victim feels like it’s their fault. They have no one else to talk to about it. Any time they call the abuser out, the abuser twists the victim’s words to make it seem like the victim is crazy, mistaken, or manipulative. The victim can become convinced that they deserve even worse than what the abuser does, that the abuser is being nicer to them than they deserve, and that anyone else would probably treat them worse and they’d deserve it.
If it looks like the victim will tell others what happened, the abuser destroys the victim’s credibility. Abusers do this by acting completely different in public and in private, by telling friends and family how emotionally unstable and out of touch with reality the victim is, by painting the victim as a malicious liar, or by claiming that the victim was actually abusing the abuser. This makes it so friends and family are reluctant to “choose sides”.
Since so much of the abuse happened behind closed doors, it’s easy for the abuser to muddy the water enough that the community says, “We can’t know what really happened.” And since the victim is the one who’s too upset to focus on maintaining ties, while the abuser is out actively campaigning for community support, the end result is often that the abuser remains welcome in the social group while the victim is forced out by community opinion or the need to remain safe.
The next time the abuser does this with someone else, the community is already invested in believing the abuser is not an abuser. To say that the abuser acted badly in the new case means that the community might have been wrong in the old case, which is an uncomfortable thought.
In addition, each new case where the entire community rallies behind the abuser normalises the idea that most accusations are lies and that the abuser is a sympathy-worthy victim who keeps being targeted by malicious false accusations. Even if someone privately disagrees, there’s a lot of social pressure to keep the abuser around. So it’s not uncommon for the community support of the abuser to actually become stronger each time there’s an accusation.
And that’s how abusers get away with it.
