Courtesy Photo Steven Stosny

Steven Stosny, a Prince George’s County therapist who has written several books on domestic violence, has extensive theories as to why men brutalize the women they love.

First, it’s important to recognize that there are two basic types of abusers — those who form emotional bonds with their victims and those who do not. The ones who don’t, those who Stosny considers sociopathic or psychopathic, make up about 5 percent to 15 percent of abuse cases, he said.

In the other 85 percent to 95 percent of cases, the men actually do fall in love, but are unable to have compassion, said Stosny, who has a doctorate in clinical social work from the University of Maryland at Baltimore. The problem is that for these men, the love is an internal, selfish experience, and is used solely to make them feel good.

In all relationships, partners have different backgrounds and each must be sympathetic to the other’s wants and needs — their emotional sensibilities, Stosny said. Essentially, the partners must be compassionate to each other.

But in abusive relationships, Stosny said, the attacker often has never developed a sense of compassion at a young age and views the victim as simply a source of emotion rather than a person who has her own needs.

“Abusers get hung up in ... that the power to make you feel good also holds the power to make you feel bad,” he said.

Stosny has treated more than 6,000 clients in his abuser counseling program and said 88 percent of them had childhoods with no compassion — they may have grown up in households where they were abused, or were punished or chastised when they cried.

About 40 percent of abused children become abusers later in life, Stosny said.

The abuse often begins because the lack of compassion, coupled with the recognition that the victim provides both happiness and sadness, means that abusers actually begin to feel like victims, Stosny said.

“The vulnerability of all men is a dread of failure — as a provider, a protector, a lover, a parent,” he said.

When an intimate partner expresses what would normally be a simple emotional need — such as a request for her husband to spend more time with the children, or to take her out for dinner once in awhile, the abuser feels attacked, Stosny said.

That feeling of inadequacy motivates him to do something to feel worthwhile. For the men who never developed a sense of compassion, power takes over as a substitute — albeit a weak one — for a feeling of worth, Stosny said.

“What they really want is to feel valuable, and they don’t know how to do that,” he said. “They feel so much like failures (and they think) that shame is a punishment created by their partners, rather than a motivation to be more compassionate.”

As to the question many people ask about why victims don’t leave, the bond formed between abuser and victim can be a strong one for a number of reasons, Stosny said.

Most abusive relationships are based on intermittent reinforcement of emotions. That type of reinforcement is the most powerful kind, he said. The tension that victims feel before an attack makes the periods of closeness and reconciliation afterward feel all the more wonderful.

“It creates an elastic effect,” Stosny said. “They go back and forth and long for those feelings of connection.”

Also, there is a certain element of the Stockholm Syndrome, in which victims show loyalty to their abusers. Stosny said human beings are programmed to bond with people we go through trauma with — it’s a long-standing instinct that helps human beings pull together to fight off common enemies.

Finally, women often feel that their love can work miracles for other people, Stosny said.

“Almost all emotions are habitual,” he said. “People will respond to similar situations in similar ways over and over again.”