Why Does Everyone Believe Them?

At the family meeting, he cried. He told my parents I had been cold for years and that he was frightened for the children. I sat there with my notes and my shaking hands and sounded like someone reading out a complaint. My own aunt put her arm around him. I know what happens in our house. Why does everyone believe him?

Gauri, I am sorry. Being disbelieved by your own family is a second injury on top of the first. It is also, I am afraid, one of the most predictable parts of this.

Emotion reads as truth

Bill Eddy and Randi Kreger, in their book Splitting, have a name for the kind of person your husband was in that room. They call him a persuasive blamer. Their observation is that strong emotion lends credibility. When we see someone in distress, we assume that somebody caused it.

They describe the usual reaction almost word for word as your aunt’s. How terrible. Nobody should go through this. Something must be done about the person responsible.

People who know both of you well can usually resist this, they say. People meeting the story for the first time often cannot. First impressions are powerful, and he got his in first.

Feelings that become facts

The authors use the phrase emotional facts for statements that come out of intense feeling, sound true and seem to demand urgent action. A fear becomes an event. “I am frightened for the children” slides into “the children are in danger”.

He may believe it. That is part of what makes it convincing. He is not acting.

Once you are the villain, everything fits

They cite a study by the psychologist Stephen Ceci. Children were told in advance that a certain man was clumsy and always breaking things. He then came into their room for two minutes, said hello, walked about and left. Asked later what he had done, many children described him throwing a toy and marking it with a crayon. None of it had happened.

Adults do this too, the authors say, professionals included. Eddy recalls a custody case in which a court counsellor’s report said a child had received twenty scratches. Neither parent had ever said twenty. The counsellor had formed a poor impression of the mother, and the number arrived to match it.

The other face

You described the charm with outsiders yourself. Eddy and Kreger write that many people with these patterns keep up a calm, reasonable public face while behaving very differently at home. Clients tell them they have never seen their partner so well behaved as in front of an audience.

Meanwhile you arrive frightened and disorganised, because you have been living with it. To a room that does not know better, he looks like the steady one.

Recruits

The authors call the people who take up his cause negative advocates: relatives, friends and sometimes professionals who adopt his account without the facts and argue it for him. The more of them there are, the more true it sounds.

They add something worth holding on to. Many of these advocates drop away once they learn more, or once the fight wears them out.

What works, slowly

You will be tempted to cry harder than he does. The authors advise against trying to out-emote him. Scattered emotion tends to count against the person showing it.

What they recommend is less satisfying and more effective. Be calm and organised. Offer specific incidents with dates, and not adjectives. Correct false statements quickly. And tell the people who matter early, before he does, without labelling him.

They also urge you to find a therapist of your own, so that your shaking hands have somewhere to go that is not the family meeting.

Their closing judgement is that evidence and credibility win in the long run. It will be a long run. That is the hard part to accept.