I don't know how to explain this easily, but ...
When you are a basically good, sane person, you think that others around you can be handled the way
you can be handled. That if you communicate what you feel, the other person will "get it" and that they will change.
Women who live with abusive men are great examples of this. I have read a lot of material about abusive relationships, and the one thing that I clearly got from what I've read is that
you have to think of an abuser's mind as being hardwired totally differently than yours is.
They only feel power from making another powerless, unlike the way a sane person feels powerful. They deliberately gain the trust of another person for the sole purpose of betraying that trust. Their whole mental pattern is different than a "good person's". Their feelings of self worth come totally from dominating and manipulating another person.
Attempting to reason with a person who is "hardwired" to think like this is useless. They don't respond to what a sane person responds to.
You have to really "get" this. You cannot handle a person like this with reason. With communication. With counselling. With
anything.
I know someone where I work who has an abusive boyfriend. She has attempted for years to "change" him. She has talked with him and reasoned with him for hours on end. She has dragged him into relationship counselling many times. He was ordered to "Anger Management" classes after one incident by the courts.
This has been going on for years. Has it made one bit of difference?
Hell, no.
It's very hard when you realize that you have a person like this who influences your life - whether it be a boyfriend or husband, a boss, or a cult leader - to really understand that there is absolutely nothing you can do to change that person's behavior.
Nothing.
Like Lee said, there's a part of the person that is missing.
Why do certain people have that missing piece? Who knows?
It really doesn't matter why it is. It just matters
that it is, and that you recognize it when you see it.
I read something once that made a lot of sense to me.
"With some people, all you can do is just
get out of the way."