Top 70 Lundy Bancroft Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control.”

— Lundy Bancroft

2. “If you are aware of chronic or severe mistreatment and do not speak out against it, your silence communicates implicitly that you see nothing unacceptable taking place. Abusers interpret silence as approval, or at least as forgiveness. To abused women, meanwhile, the silence means that no one will help – just what her partner wants her to believe. Anyone who chooses to quietly look the other way therefore unwittingly becomes the abuser’s ally.”

— Lundy Bancroft

3. “Imagine the privileges an abusive man may acquire: getting his own way most of the time, having his partner bend over backward to keep him happy so he won’t explode, getting to behave as he pleases, and then on top of it all, he gets praise for what a good person he is, and everyone is trying to help him feel better about himself!”

— Lundy Bancroft

4. “Abusive men are masters of excuse making. In this respect they are like substance abusers, who believe that everyone and everything except them is responsible for their actions.”

— Lundy Bancroft

5. “Genuine love means respecting the humanity of the other person, wanting what is best for him or her, and supporting the other person’s self-esteem and independence. This kind of love is incompatible with abuse and coercion.”

— Lundy Bancroft

6. “One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him.”

— Lundy Bancroft

7. “Encourage the women in your life – your friends, sisters, mothers, daughters – to insist on dignity and respect, to have faith in themselves, to be proud. Expect boys and men to be respectful, kind, and responsible, and don’t settle for less.”

— Lundy Bancroft

8. “One-on-one approaches to overcoming abuse work well only when the wider community pulls together to create an environment in which the victims are supported and the abusers held accountable.”

— Lundy Bancroft

9. “An abuser tries to keep everybody focused on how he feels, so that they won’t focus on how he thinks, perhaps because on some level he is aware that if you grasp the true nature of his problem, you will begin to escape his domination.”

— Lundy Bancroft

10. “This “gentle man” style of abuser tends to be highly self-centered and demanding of emotional catering. He may not be the man who has a fit because dinner is late but rather erupts because of some way his partner failed to sacrifice her own needs or interests to keep him content. He plays up how fragile he is to divert attention from the swath of destruction he leaves behind him.”

— Lundy Bancroft

11. “Abused women aren’t “codependent.” It is abusers, not their partners, who create abusive relationships.”

— Lundy Bancroft

12. “Abuse is the product of a mentality that excuses and condones bullying and exploitation, that promotes superiority and disrespect, and that casts responsibility on to the oppressed.”

— Lundy Bancroft

13. “If the man is abusive, of course he is going to deny it, partly to protect himself and partly because his perceptions are distorted. If he were ready to accept responsibility for his actions in relationships, he wouldn’t be abusive.”

— Lundy Bancroft

14. “Abuse counselors say of the abusive client: “When he looks at himself in the morning and sees his dirty face, he sets about washing the mirror.” In other words, he becomes upset and accusatory when his partner exhibits the predictable effects of chronic mistreatment, and then he adds insult to injury by ridiculing her for feeling hurt by him. He even uses her emotional injuries as excuses to mistreat her further.”

— Lundy Bancroft

15. “Oppressive systems stay in existence because the people in power enjoy the luxury of their position and become unwilling to give up the privileges they win through taking advantage of other people and keeping them down. In short, the abusive mentality is the mentality of oppression.”

— Lundy Bancroft

16. “I have never seen a client make a serious effort to confront his abusiveness unless somebody required him to do the work. The abuser who truly enters counseling voluntarily, with no one holding anything over his head, quits within a few sessions, unless he finds a counselor he can manipulate.”

— Lundy Bancroft

17. “Besides knowing all about the world, Mr. Right is also an expert on your life and how you should live it. He has the answers to your conflicts at work, how you should spend your time, and how you should raise your children. He is especially knowledgeable about your faults, and he likes to inventory what is wrong with you, as if tearing you down were the way to improve you.”

— Lundy Bancroft

18. “The abuser creates confusion because he has to. He can’t control and intimidate you, he can’t recruit people around him to take his side, he can’t keep escaping the consequences of his actions, unless he can throw everyone off the track.”

— Lundy Bancroft

19. “Resistance never disappears; it waits in the shadows, sometimes for many years, and then eventually sprouts again. You may have gone through dark times when you felt, “I just can’t fight this anymore, I give up,” yet you rebound after a while to try again to recover your rights. And one day you will succeed.”

— Lundy Bancroft

20. “It is important to note that research has shown that men who have abusive mothers do not tend to develop especially negative attitudes toward females, but men who have abusive fathers do; the disrespect that abusive men show their female partners and their daughters is often absorbed by their sons.”

— Lundy Bancroft

21. “Disrespect also can take the form of idealizing you and putting you on a pedestal as a perfect woman or goddess, perhaps treating you like a piece of fine china. The man who worships you in this way is not seeing you; he is seeing his fantasy, and when you fail to live up to that image he may turn nasty. So there may not be much difference between the man who talks down to you and the one who elevates you; both are displaying a failure to respect you as a real human being and bode ill.”

— Lundy Bancroft

22. “An abusive man who is adept in the language of feelings can make his partner feel crazy by turning each argument into a therapy session in which he puts her reactions under a microscope and assigns himself the role of “helping” her. He may, for example, “explain” to her the emotional issues she needs to work through, or analyze her reasons for “mistakenly” believing that he is mistreating her.”

— Lundy Bancroft

23. “Why does Wendell think that Aysha is the one who has been doing all the yelling and complaining? Because in his mind she’s supposed to be listening, not talking. If she expresses herself at all, that’s too much.”

— Lundy Bancroft

24. “Our society should not buy into the abusive man’s claim that holding him accountable is an act of cruelty.”

— Lundy Bancroft

25. “For decades, many therapists have been attempting to help abusive men change by guiding them in identifying and expressing feelings. Alas, this well-meaning but misguided approach actually feeds the abuser’s selfish focus on himself, which is an important force driving his abusiveness.”

— Lundy Bancroft

26. “Abusiveness is not a product of a man’s emotional injuries or of deficits in his skills. In reality, abuse springs from a man’s early cultural training, his key male role models, and his peer influences.”

— Lundy Bancroft

27. “Sometimes the more educated an abuser, the more knots he knows how to tie in a woman’s brain, the better he is at getting her to blame herself, and the slicker is his ability to persuade other people that she is crazy. The more socially powerful an abuser, the more powerful his abuse can be – and the more difficult it can be to escape.”

— Lundy Bancroft

28. “I can’t solve his problems, and it’s not my fault that he thinks I should.”

— Lundy Bancroft

29. “Abusers drive wedges between people, by accident or by design.”

— Lundy Bancroft

30. “Alcohol cannot create an abuser, and sobriety cannot cure one. The only way a man can overcome his abusiveness is by dealing with his abusiveness. And you are not “enabling” your partner to mistreat you; he is entirely responsible for his own actions.”

— Lundy Bancroft

31. “Abuse is not caused by bad relationship dynamics.”

— Lundy Bancroft

32. “When an abusive man feels the powerful stirring inside that other people call love, he is probably largely feeling: The desire to have you devote your life to keeping him happy with no outside interference The desire to have sexual access The desire to impress others by having you be his partner The desire to possess and control you.”

— Lundy Bancroft

33. “If you are aware of chronic or severe mistreatment and do not speak out against it, your silence communicates implicitly that you see nothing unacceptable taking place.”

— Lundy Bancroft

34. “Abuse of women by men is so rampant that, unless people can somehow make it women’s own fault, they are forced to take on a number of uncomfortable questions about men and about much of male thinking.”

— Lundy Bancroft

35. “Ray was not abusive because he was angry; he was angry because he was abusive.”

— Lundy Bancroft

36. “And you are not “enabling” your partner to mistreat you; he is entirely responsible for his own actions.”

— Lundy Bancroft

37. “The vast majority of women who say that they are being abused are telling the truth. I know this to be true because the abusers let their guard down with me, belying their denial.”

— Lundy Bancroft

38. “In reality, to remain neutral is to collude with the abusive man, whether or not that is your goal. If you are aware of chronic or severe mistreatment and do not speak out against it, your silence communicates implicitly that you see nothing unacceptable taking place.”

— Lundy Bancroft

39. “He often has difficulty conceiving of her as a human being. This tendency in abusers is known as objectification or depersonalization.”

— Lundy Bancroft

40. “Outside of my professional life, I have known many couples over the years who had passion and electricity between them and who treated each other well. But unfortunately there is wide acceptance in our society of the unhealthy notion that passion and aggression are interwoven and that cruel verbal exchanges and bomblike explosions are the price you pay for a relationship that is exciting, deep, and sexy. Popular romantic movies and soap operas sometimes reinforce this image.”

— Lundy Bancroft

41. “A woman can feel that she is losing her mind – or develop actual psychiatric symptoms – if the obvious realities of her life, including abuse, are denied repeatedly by her partner.”

— Lundy Bancroft

42. “For many abusive men, pornography has shaped their sexuality since they were teenagers or even younger. It has helped to form their view of what women are like and what they ought to be. When a graduate of what I call “The Pornography School of Sexuality” discovers, for example, that his partner does not find a slap in the face arousing, he thinks that’s evidence of something sexually wrong with her.”

— Lundy Bancroft

43. “Your problem is not that you lose control of yourself, it’s that you take control of your partner. In order to change, you don’t need to gain control over yourself, you need to let go of control of her.”

— Lundy Bancroft

44. “Abuse is not his goal, but control is, and he finds himself using abuse to gain the control he feels he has a right to.”

— Lundy Bancroft

45. “Some people feel threatened by the concept that abuse is a solvable problem, because if it is, there’s no excuse for not solving it.”

— Lundy Bancroft

46. “Entitlement is the abuser’s belief that he has a special status and that it provides him with exclusive rights and privileges that do not apply to his partner. The attitudes that drive abuse can largely be summarized by this one word.”

— Lundy Bancroft

47. “I wish I could somehow recover all those years I wasted waiting around for him to deal with his issues.” Save yourself that sadness if you can, by insisting on nothing less than complete respect.”

— Lundy Bancroft

48. “He doesn’t object to her sexualization, he just wants to be in control of it, and he wants it oriented towards his gratification. His demand that she not show off her body is not based on the viewpoint of a responsible parent but rather is more like the attitude of a jealous boyfriend.”

— Lundy Bancroft

49. “You do not respect someone whom you abuse, and you do not abuse someone whom you respect.”

— Lundy Bancroft

50. “Deference refers to the abuser’s entitlement to have his tastes and opinions treated as edicts.”

— Lundy Bancroft