Why do abusers usually say that the abuse never happened?
People unfamiliar with abuse often don’t realize that abusers usually deny the events. Most seem to assume that abusers deny the acts are abusive, but don’t deny the acts occurred. Targets often think this as well, and are surprised and baffled when they try to talk to the abusers and are greeted with a bland “I don’t remember that,” followed by a change of subject.
So why do they do this? If they really believe they never did anything wrong, why won’t they acknowledge the actions occurred?
Ages ago, I read an Issac Asimov story in which a character posited the existence of something called “higher truth.” The example was of a friend who always makes the same lame joke when arriving, and a third person asking the speaker if that was annoying. The speaker said that he should most truthfully reply no, because saying no served the “higher truth” of the man being his friend.
I turned this idea around for quite a while before eventually rejecting it. No, the truth is simply whatever is real, and saying that something else is somehow truer is a potentially dangerous philosophy. Say you like your friend anyway, or say he’s worth it, or just own the fact that you’d rather tell a small lie than badmouth a friend to an acquaintance. There is no reason to invent some secret, inner “real truth” hiding underneath those pesky, misleading facts.
Abusers, by and large, never figure this out. They know for certain that they are wonderful people. Since that’s an axiom, events indicating otherwise would be misleading. Other people learning of these events might be misled into thinking the abuser isn’t great, and that would be incorrect. The events may technically have happened, but acknowledging them would only lead others away from important truths, the most important of which is that the abuser is great.
“I don’t remember that” serves the higher truth that the abuser is wonderful.