Abuse Semantics

The Never Ending Debate Over Words with an Abuser

Word Wars

As a classroom teacher, therapist and a human being in the social world, I’ve spent years studying etymology. Words are the vehicle of communication and understanding. Words are capital in many forums and platforms in our society. Given that words mean different things to different people, understanding the way words are used by those around us is critical, especially when words can be weaponized by men who use “Targeted Partner Abuse©.”

Let’s Look Some of the Words and their Definitions

For fun – let’s look at some of the words to describe this experience.

• Splitting hairs: complaining; to make often peevish criticisms or objections about matters that are minor, unimportant, or irrelevant
• Picayune: criticisms of little value
• Pettifogging: dishonest or unethical in insignificant matters; meanly petty.
• Cavil: to raise trivial and frivolous objection
• Pedantic: overly concerned with minute details
• Bikeshedding: describes our tendency to spend too much time discussing trivial matters, and too little time discussing important matters
• Semantic argument: changing the meaning of a term to support a specific point

Who knew there were so many terms for the same thing.  Truth be told, it is just plain disagreeableness to attempt to counter someone for no good reason than being objectionable.

Pedantic and Hair Splitting

Abusive men might use this tactic for multiple reasons. Regardless, the purpose is to disguise or conceal their responsibility for the actions and harm of those actions. If they can abusively minimize or re-word the action, they may potentially talk you out of calling them and their behavior out and holding them accountable.

Probably the most common is in the attempts made to counter the victim’s claims that specific behaviors are abusive. When the “experts” in the field differ strongly over the definition, it stands to reason that there will be a plethora of definitions or viewpoints on the topic. This concern makes it all the easier for abusive men to discount and discard something that has long reached a critical point in society. Another example can be found in the attempts we make to describe the differences in emotional and psychological abuse. A quick google search states, “emotional abuse often relies more on verbal threats and insults while psychological abuse may encompass a wider range of behaviors such as manipulation, control, or intimidation.” We should be careful not to consider Dr. Google as the expert! What is more important, how do you describe the abusive behaviors you experience?

 “Strange that we all defend our wrongs with more vigor than we do our rights” (Kahlil Gibran)

The word debates of what abuse is or can be summed up in the quote in the section heading. Debates about abuse are defenses of wrongdoing, often spewed with malice and malevolence toward the victim (or a victim advocate) in a loud manner.

Gibran uses the word “strange” to express the conflict in this action, however, those of us who experience “Targeted Partner Abuse©” know full well this practice is all too common and painfully real. 

The degree to which abusive men go to cover, hide, conceal, mask, camouflage, obfuscate, distort, suppress, obscure… (the words are endless here) the truth about abuse is unlimited.

Concealing Abuse and Abusive Semantics

Concealing the truth about abuse in our day-to-day interactions can sound like the following. 

• The abuser attempts to compare his challenges dealing with the effects of (your) trauma to the difficulty you have managing the pain of his infidelity.
• The abuser attempts to equalize how hard it is to deal with your anger to how badly he destroyed your soul with his abuse.
• When the abuser calls you controlling or abusive when you quietly enact a boundary to get away from his abuse.
• When he counters your parenting, telling you it’s too controlling
• When he tells you that he’ll stop treating you “this way” when you stop doing the same thing to him.
• When he says to you to let him know when you are done being in trauma, so he knows it’s safe for him to get back to normal

Twisted Narratives, False Timelines, History Revision

For many of us, the twisting of the events, creating false timelines and rewriting the history of how events occurred will be all wrapped up in the conversations where the abuser is using the tactic of “Abuse Semantics©.”To hear the truth and to absorb the pain you express to them requires them to center themselves in the type of character attributes of more than perspective taking. An abuser needs to feel the pain he has inflicted to the degree of infliction – without feeling sorry for himself.

Abuse is Completely Correctable

All these abusive tactics are fully correctable. There is no reason that a man who truly wants to be in a relationship with you, cannot choose to do so in a loving way, sharing the life load, having healthy conversations, and removing all his narratives of power and control.

The bigger question is, does he truly want a loving relationship? Will he do the self-governing work of maintaining beliefs and values that are healthy and relational, or does he believe he has rights that override his wife’s? 

Abuse is about exploiting a privilege he does not have over what should be shared responsibility and a shared voice.

To those of you exercising this type of coercive control and abuse, please reach out. It is our mission at Center for Peace to help men release this hold they have for power over people, learn to love with their heart and live a life of peace and integrity.

If you are the wife of a man using “Targeted Partner Abuse©” and need help sorting it all out of developing better strategies for navigating the abuse, please join our support groups for wives.

Our world will be a better place when men do their part to stop this plague infecting the lives and families of men exercising “Targeted Partner Abuse©.”