I’ve continued to think about the abusers saying the abuse didn’t happen. I’ve reached some tentative conclusions.
You see, the narcissist can’t do something wrong. None of us are exactly fond of learning that we were the bad guy in a situation, but for a narcissist, it literally cannot be true. She (or he) is and must be endlessly perfect, or else everything falls apart. So, when she sees “I did that” juxtaposed with “That was wrong,” it’s not just unwelcome news ― it’s a paradox. The entire world has stopped making sense, and she must resolve the paradox before she can proceed.
That’s when the mental gymnastics begin.
For the paradox to be resolved and the narcissist to remain perfect, one of the two premises (“I did that” and “That was wrong”) must be false. If there is no hard evidence, as is usually the case for most domestic abuse, then simply blotting her actions out of her mind ― “What are you talking about? I’d never do that!” ― suffices to remove the action from the space-time continuum and restore the state of her never having done anything wrong, ever.
We can call it denial or delusion or whatever we like, but I think that’s the gist. “I have never, ever done anything wrong” is such a fundamental axiom that it must be defended at any cost. There are several things pointing me to this conclusion.
One is that the other popular defenses for abusers fall into a general category I call “Oh, that was just.” They were joking, or everyone does that sometimes, or the victim didn’t understand the incident, or it was really the victim’s fault. There may be an entire conga line of such defenses, one after the other. Whatever might have happened, it certainly wasn’t wrong. What a silly thing to say!
The abusers can admit the actions happened as long as they don’t also have to admit that the actions were abuse. They can also admit that the actions are abusive as long as they don’t also have to admit that they performed the actions. Knocking down either pillar is enough to let the narcissistic abuser resolve the seeming paradox of having done wrong, so that the world makes sense again.
The other reason I reached this conclusion is that several victims have reported their abusers freezing up when confronted with hard evidence. Some people have been able to force their abusers to face the abuse. This is an elaborate procedure requiring hard evidence, objective witnesses, and situational control so that the victim is completely safe and the abuser doesn’t simply walk away when glimpses of the truth start to become uncomfortable. It’s a difficult undertaking, but some have managed it.
Some of these people have reported that the abusers go though the usual defenses of claiming it didn’t happen and then trying a dozen different rationalizations to make it not be wrong. As the defenses fall one by one, the masks slip, and we begin to see the naked narcissistic rage underneath. If the victims remain calmly confrontational, the abusers then display a new behavior: they lock up. They freeze in place, staring blankly. The paradox has shut their circuitry down.
One such man said that his mother appeared to be suffering from BSOD ― the Blue Screen of Death, an old term for a computer which had frozen and displayed a field of pure blue on the monitor. Another victim eventually left the abuser lying on the floor, supine and speechless.
Don’t worry. They’ll be fine once they’ve slept.
Don’t get excited, either. With a little time to process, they’ll overflow with creative new excuses to explain that the victim overreacted and the abuser was actually perfectly great all along.