A Quote by Lundy Bancroft

One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment in relationships is that most abusive men simply don't seem like abusers. They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor, especially in the early period of a relationship. An abuser's friends may think the world of him. He may have a successful work life and have no problems with drugs or alcohol. He may simply not fit anyone's image of a cruel or intimidating person. So when a woman feels her relationship spinning out of control, it is unlikely to occur to her that her partner is an abuser.

Lundy Bancroft

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Abusers Abusive Alcohol Anyone Chronic Control Cruel Early Feels Fit Friends Good Good Qualities Her Him Humor Image Including Intimidating Kindness Life Like Many May Men Mistreatment Most No Problems Obstacles Occur Out Partner Period Person Problems Qualities Recognizing Relationship Relationships Seem Simply Spinning Spinning Out Of Control Successful Successful Work Think Times Unlikely Warmth Woman Work World

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Lundy Bancroft
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Objectification is a critical reason why an abuser tends to get worse over time. As his conscience adapts to one level of cruelty-he builds to the next. By depersonalizing his partner, the abuser protects himself from the natural human emotions of guilt and empathy, so that he can sleep at night with a clear conscience. He distances himself so far from her humanity that her feelings no longer count, or simply cease to exist.

Lundy Bancroft

There's simply no way you can tell a woman you work with that you disapprove of her relationship with her adult child, no matter how much you think it would be better for him to move out.

Mallory Ortberg

It is cruel and insensitive to interpret an affair as a symptom of sickness in the relationship, as it leaves the 'cheated-on' partner - who may already be feeling insecure - to wonder what is wrong with him Many people have sex outside their primary relationships for reasons that have nothing to do with any inadequacy in their partner or in the relationship.

Dossie Easton

The abuser knows where you work. Even if a woman goes underground at night, the abuser knows where to find her during the day.

Gordon Campbell

I think the relationship [in Aquarius] with her nephew shows that she's not nostalgic. She just wants to preserve what is important to her - her records, her books, even some furniture. She doesn't want to leave that house because it is her home. That is where her kids were born. After moving so much in my life, I was touched by Clara's need to stay in that apartment. I love her life, and that may be why I connected to her so strongly. We are the most alike when we are fighting for our rights.

Sonia Braga

It is not possible to be truly balanced in one's views of an abuser and an abused woman. As Dr. Judith Herman explains eloquently in her masterwork Trauma and Recovery, “neutrality” actually serves the interests of the perpetrator much more than those of the victim and so is not neutral. Although an abuser prefers to have you wholeheartedly on his side, he will settle contentedly for your decision to take a middle stance. To him, that means you see the couple's problems as partly her fault and partly his fault, which means it isn't abuse.

Lundy Bancroft

It's so easy to persecute an older, overweight, unwise, crude, ignorant woman who may very well be a good person at heart who has achieved a great deal in her life. So easy to vilify her and hate her and try to destroy her life. Woe to anyone today who is not slender, young, clever and politically correct.

Anne Rice

The sense of ownership is one reason why abuse tends to get worse as relationships get more serious. The more history and commitment that develop in the couple, the more the abuser comes to think of his partner as a prized object. Possessiveness is at the core of the abuser's mindset, the spring from which all the other streams spout; on some level he feels that he owns you and therefore has the right to treat you as he sees fit.

Lundy Bancroft

To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline.

George Eliot

The problem is simply this: no one can feel like CEO of his or her life in the presence of the people who toilet trained her and spanked him when he was naughty. We may have become Masters of the Universe, accustomed to giving life and taking it away, casually ordering people into battle or out of their jobs . . . and yet we may still dirty our diapers at the sound of our mommy's whimper or our daddy's growl.

Frank Pittman

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

My relationship with my daughter is gonna affect her relationship with men for the rest of her life... Sometimes I'm walking with my daughter. I'm pushing her in the stroller, and sometimes I just pick her up and stare at her, and I realize, my only job in life is to keep her off the pole.

Chris Rock

There's a particular kind of single woman whose relationship with her dog has a level of intensity and affection that may be both the cause and the result of her singleness. For a long time, I was that woman.

Meghan Daum

When women hear those words, an old, old memory is stirred and brought back to life. The memory is of our absolute, undeniable, and irrevocable kinship with the wild feminine, a relationship which may have become ghostly from neglect, buried by over-domestication, outlawed by the surrounding culture, or no longer understood anymore. We may have forgotten her names, we may not answer when she calls ours, but in our bones we know her, we yearn toward her, we know she belongs to us and we to her.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

May the friends of America rejoice! May her enemies be humbled and her censors silenced at the news of her noble exertions in continuance of those principles which have placed her so high in the annals of history and among the nations of the earth.

Marquis de Lafayette

To many, Courtney Love smells like rock hype. Reviewers may be excited about her, but the rock audience may be skeptical of the credentials of someone who is more famous for her interviews and her spouse than for her music.

Robert Hilburn

A Quote by Lundy Bancroft

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