The Fallacy of Abuser Accounting

There are good reasons to break off committed relationships even when you still like the other person. In a normal, non-abusive relationship, we have certain lines we won’t cross, or boundaries we will always hold, even if that means saying goodbye — and that’s a good thing. But how can you tell when it’s okay to compromise, and when you need to call it?

Back in college, I used to date a guy who had certain unfortunate habits: the inability to use a laundry basket; oversalting his food (thus making it impossible for me to steal off his plate at restaurants); listening to music in his car way too loud. He was a great guy with many redeeming qualities, so I accepted that our preferences in these areas didn’t quite line up.

But one thing that absolutely drove me crazy was when we would make plans, and he would simply let them fall through without warning or explanation. To this Metal girl, if you agree to plans with someone, keeping those plans — come hell or high water — is a matter of principle! 

I was young at the time, so what did I do to address this matter? After protesting the first couple of times (letting him know that I’d arranged my schedule around the commitment, asking why he didn’t simply give me a heads-up if his circumstances changed, etc.), I simply gave up and never mentioned it again. Certainly his redeeming qualities offset this one thing that makes me crazy, right?

Not necessarily, and when we’re in a relationship with an abuser, this can be a dangerous rationalization.

I think a lot of us engage in this type of rationalization in our relationships, whether romantic or otherwise: we offset debits with credits, constantly balancing the scales of pros and cons to make sure we end up net-positive in our minds. The problem is, abusers will exploit this false accounting to trick you into staying past the point where you should have broken up.

Now that I reflect back on my brief college romance — along with the million times I’ve dropped peas in scales trying to make sure to stay net-positive in my relationships since then — I can see where my logic went wrong: it’s because I never accounted for the difference between preferences and principles.

Preferences you can negotiate. For example, “I don’t love action movies, but I’ll watch John Wick 4 with you now if we can watch Magic Mike’s Last Dance next,” is a reasonable trade to make. But you cannot balance the scales when it comes to principles. “I’m a vegetarian and you love meat, but I’ll have steak for dinner with you tonight if we go to the vegan Buddhist restaurant tomorrow,” does not work.

When it comes to preferences and principles, we should be like bamboo: flexible when it comes to preferences, and unbreakable when it comes to principles.

When we’re looking to start a relationship, we often have a list of preferences, whether it’s “no smokers,” “no amateur astrologers,” or “no one under six feet tall” (*cough* not my deal breaker *cough*) that will keep us from even considering a relationship. But when it comes to real deal breakers based on principles, they’re usually so substantial that it seems too heavy to bring up early on when you’re still getting to know each other. We become emotionally invested before understanding our partner’s full set of principles, and when it becomes clear that our values do not align, it can be painful to let go of the connection, even if it’s the right thing to do.

Principles are Treated Differently in Abusive Relationships

This is where abusers perform two sleights of hand to manipulate their victims into abandoning their principles. First, they emphasize how painful it would be to end the relationship, when in reality their victim suffers much more in the long-term by staying. Second, when trying to balance the pros and cons of the relationship, they make their victim weigh preferences against principles, when principles should be non-negotiable. When victims should leave because they’re being forced to betray their principles, abusers shower them with things that satisfy their preferences as if that’s a fair trade.

For example, a woman once told me, “When I would thank my husband for doing something nice for me — like taking me to a restaurant I wanted to try — he would say, ‘Just remember this next time you’re mad at me.’” Bone-chilling, at least to those familiar with abuse. “This felt like a threat that he would eventually do something awful, something that would definitely cross red lines. He would use that “thank you” as a way to give himself a pass to inflict future abuse.” This was not a normal exchange of taking turns — them doing what she wants this time, then doing what he wants to next; this was him saying, “Now that I’ve done something nice for you, you have to take it when I do something to harm you and we’ll still be even.”

That’s what abusers do: overstep your boundaries in exchange for token gifts or gestures. We all know the trope of the abusive husband who buys his wife flowers and jewelry after assaulting her, showering her with expensive gifts and empty promises. And she stays. Maybe the first time, she believes he’s actually sorry. The next time it happens, perhaps she starts to rationalize staying by counting debits and credits. Then she stays not because the tokens or gestures are truly valuable to her, but because her Snake Brain, the ancient part of our brain that is good at helping us survive but bad at complex logical thinking, has activated. It has concluded that since she survived his abuse in the past, she will survive it when it happens again.

If you’ve never seen this happen in real life, it seems hard to believe that someone could be so malicious, so manipulative, and that abuse like this doesn’t just happen in Julia Roberts movies. But if it’s happened to you, you know this pattern all too well. Getting out of an abusive relationship can feel as impossible as escaping from prison, but the first step is to recognize the pattern of deception abusers deploy from their playbook (this is just one of them — we will talk about others in future blog posts).

The best case scenario, though, is to stay out of this situation in the first place. So when you find yourself negotiating with your partner, remember to ask yourself: “Am I bargaining over preferences, or am I being asked to break my principles? Because if we’re bargaining over my principles, that’s a deal breaker.”