He will tell you he doesn't like to batter, but feels helpless to do anything else, doesn't know another way to handle his feelings, and wishes he could change his behavior.
Battering is more about gaining and maintaining power and control in a relationship than about wanting to cause violence. Batterers state they know no other way, that it is how they learned to cope as children. In addition to issues of power and control, factors like anxiety, low self-esteem, powerlessness, and fear of abandonment by the victim are often reasons for the use of power and control by an abuser, but it presents itself in rage toward intimate significant others.
An abuser will use all of the weapons in his arsenal to maintain control of a relationship, like intimidation, isolation, emotional abuse, an attitude of privilege, threats and coercion, sexual abuse, even their children.
A good number of batterers are passive in most areas of their everyday life, and it is this passivity that can contributes to their explosive rages.
Displaced aggression is a perfect example of how passivity lends to rage: If the batterer is reprimanded by a superior at work, he doesn't stand up for himself or address the conflict at the workplace. He is passive and stuffs down his anger until it spills over at home with his partner or at a more appropriate time.
Maintaining a sense of control in the home is crucial to him because he's buried the perceived aggression and rage at the workplace.
Teaching men to be more assertive in their lives is often a key component in anger management and domestic violence counseling.
Since the majority of batterers lack self-esteem, battering is often propelled by jealousy that stems from deep insecurity. Batterers, over a lifetime, have developed deep and powerful patterns of denial and rationalization, and helping the batterer to identify and alter this way of thinking is what is at the crux of intervention with those who batterer.