Shrink4Men

Helping men in abusive relationships since 2009

How Male Abuse Victims Differ: Protector-Provider Role

Understanding how male abuse victims differ from female abuse victims in terms of the roles they assume, like the protector-provider role, is essential to more effectively support men who experience intimate partner violence and narcissistic abuse. This article draws on my 15+ years of clinical experience helping abused men. For context, my career began with a Master’s program internship at a women’s domestic violence shelter. Since then, I’ve worked with diverse male and female client populations across various settings.

Since 2009, my primary focus has been on helping men who are:

  • In ongoing relationships with abusive women.
  • Divorcing or breaking-up with abusive women.
  • Struggling to co-parent with an ex who uses the communication and interactions necesssary in shared custody as a means to perpetuate abuse and coercive control post-divorce. (This goes beyond parental alienation).
  • Addressing issues related to being raised by an abusive mother.
  • Healing from all of the above.

Given my work history, I’ve observed both similarities and differences between female and male abuse victims. As such, I have unique perspectives to offer in this area.

How Male Abuse Victims Differ from Female Abuse Victims

Relationship roles

Both female and male abuse victims share certain personality traits. For example, individuals who are more likely to attract and be attracted to abusive partners can often be described using the following terms:

Abuse victims, regardless of gender, also tend to be what I call the 3-N’s (Palmatier, 2015): nice, naive and non-confrontational. Essentially, all these descriptors are forms of emotional caretaking. An emotional caretaker is someone who prioritizes the feelings, needs and desires of a highly selfish, emotionally manipulative abuser. Emotional caretakers consistently defer to the abuser’s demands, at the expense of their own needs and well-being. They acquiesce to maintain harmony and appease the other person, yet this dynamic rarely improves the relationship (Fjelstad, 2014). In fact, this dynamic ultimately leads to the end of the relationship because emotional caretakers eventually burn out and/or finally accept that the love and care they provide will never be reciprocated.

Male Abuse Victims’ Roles

Male abuse victims often differ from their female counterparts in terms of the roles they’re more likely to assume in an abusive relationship. These roles include:

These roles in particular pose significant challenges for men seeking to protect themselves from abusive women. In my experience, men tend to exhibit a stronger inclination to shield their female abusers from accountability and consequences than female victims do with their male abusers. While both female and male abuse victims enable their abusers, male victims are, in my opinion, more likely to sacrifice themselves for their abusive partners due to these gender-specific role differences.

To illustrate how male abuse victims differ due to the protector-provider role, let’s consider the different motivations exhibited by the enabling wife vs. the enabling husband in the following examples. The enabling wife lies for her abusive alcoholic husband, telling his boss he has the stomach flu when he’s actually too hungover to go to work. In contrast, the enabling husband takes on extra work and skips lunch due to his abusive wife’s compulsive shopping habits and refusal to contribute financially, which puts them in financial jeopardy.

The enabling wife’s motivation is primarily driven by a sense of responsibility and survival. She tells the stomach flu lie to ensure that they maintain financial stability, keep their home and have enough to eat. Her actions stem from a desire to protect their basic needs.

On the other hand, the enabling husband’s motivation is driven by a desire to mitigate potential financial ruin due to his wife’s compulsive shopping habits and refusal to get a job. He takes on extra work and sacrifices meals to cover expenses and manage their finances, even at the expense of his own well-being. His actions stem from a sense of obligation to provide for the family and address the consequences of his wife’s behavior, rather than prioritizing his own needs. The abused husband’s enabling behavior is motivated by sense of duty, obligation, self-sacrifice, resilience, societal expectations and/or personal beliefs about his role as a protector-provider.

The Protector-Provider Role

Generally, both female and male abuse victims fear that they’ll never find love again, that no one else will want them, and that they’ll never be with someone as attractive, successful, or good in bed (for those still being manipulated and controlled through sex). Female abuse victims fear they can’t survive without their abusers, both emotionally and financially. In contrast, male abuse victims fear their female abusers won’t be able to survive without them, both emotionally and financially. Of course, there are individual differences, but in my experience, these generalizations often prove true.

This is compounded in relationships with abusive women who masterfully play victim to manipulate, control and threaten their husbands and boyfriends. When contemplating ending an abusive relationship, many of my clients express things like:

  • “How will she take care of herself?“
  • “Who will support her?“
  • “She can’t hold down a job. What will happen to her if I leave?“
  • “What if she kills herself?” (My clients do not fear this out of grandiosity. They fear this because their abusive female partners have threatened to do so if they leave.)
  • “Who will protect the kids from her?“
  • “I don’t want her to get in trouble. I don’t want the kids to see their mother taken away by the police. The kids still love and need their mom.“
  • “What if she makes good on her threat to call the cops and accuse me of abuse if I leave? My life would be ruined.“

The protector-provider role also makes it more difficult for abused men to leave an abusive female partner, especially when children are involved. Abused women may feel a misplaced sense of loyalty, obligation, and responsibility due to a trauma bond, too. Nevertheless, whether right or wrong, abused men are still expected—and often urged by unhelpful therapists, ministers, and attorneys—to persist in the protector-provider role.

Societal Double Standards

Shaming male abuse victims for abandoning the protector-provider role, while praising female abuse victims for rejecting their traditional relationship roles, highlights a significant double standard. Male abuse victims often experience a profound sense of shame if they feel they’ve failed in the protector-provider role. Boys are raised to protect women, girls and those perceived as weaker than themselves. While girls are taught to protect themselves from bad men. Here are some common tropes for comparison:

Consequently, most men are unprepared to protect themselves from dangerous, unstable women, unlike women who are taught to protect themselves from dangerous, unstable men. Abusive women often exploit this gender role conditioning.

Some psychologists and feminists argue that men being stuck in stereotypical gender roles is an example of “toxic masculinity.” Ironically, these are often the same people who shame men for not being more supportive and tolerant of female abusers, for instance, not standing by an emotionally dysregulating, abusive BPD wife. This also highlights the challenges faced by male abuse victims in navigating societal expectations regarding protector-provider roles.

Contradictory Messages

Male abuse victims receive contradictory messages, while female victims do not.

Society shames men and women who don’t keep their word, but there are notable exceptions for women. When a woman expresses fear or claims she’s been abused, she isn’t shamed for leaving a toxic relationship regardless of the vows she made. Instead, she receives sympathy, support, and validation for her decision. Female abuse victims are praised for courageously leaving an abusive husband, which also underscores the contrast in societal responses between male and female abuse victims.

In contrast, male abuse victims are shamed for “giving up,” labeled as “quitters,” and accused of “abandoning” their female abuser for having emotional problems. Men also face the misconception that leaving an abusive wife equates to abandoning their children. It doesn’t. This double standard places an additional burden on men to endure abusive relationships that doesn’t exist for most female abuse victims. This is yet another challenge male abuse victims face in maintaining the protector-provider role that female abuse victims do not.

Worse still, many of my clients recount experiences where previous therapists, instead of offering support, asked accusatory questions such as, “What did you do to make her so upset that she treated you like that?” This not only invalidates male abuse victims’ experiences, but also shifts blame onto them. And yet, the American Psychological Association claims that men seek therapy at a far lower rate than woman due to their “toxic masculinity’ and other shaming and blaming theories. Perhaps men collectively seek therapy services less than women due to the anti-male biases and sentiment perpetuated by the APA and many mental health practitioners.

Navigating Conflicting Messages: Challenges for Male Abuse Victims

On one hand, men are often lauded for staying with abusive, mentally ill women. They’re urged to persist in harmful relationships with sentiments like, “Real men keep their promises. Real men don’t walk out on their obligations.” These beliefs reinforce traditional gender roles that require men to be steadfast protectors and providers, regardless of the personal toll on their well-being. Again, these are the same traditional gender roles that feminists and many psychologists critique as examples of toxic masculinity.

Yet, when these same men summon the courage to leave a toxic marriage, they face severe repercussions. Courts overwhelmingly order men to pay alimony and a significant portion of marital assets to their abusers, even in cases where their wives refused to contribute financially. Additionally, women are still awarded primary custody in over 80% of family law disputes. Even when the court recognizes an abusive woman’s behavior, it rarely results in primary custody to the father. Instead, the “victory” for dad is 50/50 shared custody; and the “consequence” for the abusive ex-wife is 50/50 shared custody.

When men complain about how biased the courts are in favor of women and mothers, they’re frequently met with shaming comments like, “Well, you married her, buddy” or they’re called “deadbeats.” This further serves to blame shift the responsibility for the abusive relationship onto men, and minimizes their difficulties. Thus, men are both blamed for leaving and then punished through unfair asset distribution and loss of custody. As a result, male abuse victims are perversely forced to continue financially supporting their abusers even after the relationship has ended. This perpetuates the cycle of abuse and control for male abuse victims. This is the epitome of how the protector-provider role harms male abuse victims.

Conclusion

Male abuse victims differ from female abuse victims in numerous ways, with the protector-provider role being just one facet. The expectation for male abuse victims to fulfill the role of protector-provider of their abusers, is a perverse perpetuation of abuse after the relationship’s ended. Furthermore, it highlights the deep-rooted gender biases that persist in our society.

In a society that often focuses on identity grievances politics, we remain notably silent about the prevalent anti-male biases discussed here. When these biases are occasionally challenged, accusations of misogyny are frequently made. These unpopular but very real biases go unacknowledged because addressing them would negatively impact women who benefit from them. This is especially true for female abusers, who not only benefit from these biases but also intentionally and maliciously exploit them.

Understanding these differences is vital for developing better support systems tailored to the challenges faced by male abuse victims. By exploring these issues, we can work towards ending some of the biases and prejudices that abused men encounter in society, therapy, and the courts. Please check back for future articles that will discuss more differences and provide additional insights from my experiences helping male abuse victims..

Counseling, Consulting and Coaching with Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

I provide help for men in relationships with abusive women. Since 2009, I’ve specialized in helping abused men end toxic relationships, cope with the stress of ongoing abuse, high-conflict divorce, parallel parenting skills and heal from the subsequent trauma. I combine practical advice, emotional support and goal-oriented outcomes. If you’d like to work with me, please visit the Schedule a Session page or you can email me directly at [email protected]. or [email protected].

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