Know your history to know yourself and to understand others' reactions to you. The workbooks help you become aware of your abusive history and find ways to get rid of the anger. If women are violent against their husband, they tend to have a history of violent acts against others. Abusive men often have a need to control their partner and tend to be unemployed or blue-collar, a high school drop out, low paid, from a violent or abusive family, between 18 and 30, cohabiting with a partner with a different religion, and occasionally uses drugs. Don't let these specific findings mislead you, however.
Abusers come from all economic and educational levels.
In fact, physical abuse may mean different things to women and men. There is some evidence that early in a relationship women do these things as often as men, maybe more so, but men eventually cause more physical damage than women. There is a great difference between an opened female hand slap to the cheek and a hard male fist crashing into the face, knocking out teeth, and breaking the jaw. The evidence is clear that once mild physical aggression of pushing and slapping has started, it frequently escalates into fist fights, choking, slamming against the wall, and maybe the use of knives and guns. Psychological or verbal aggression by either party must be considered an early warning sign that physical abuse is possible in the near future.