This is an excellent question, Kelli, and I'm glad you asked it. I have to agree with you: I think that abusive behavior is *not* consciously masterminded by a lot of the people who exhibit it. But I do think there's a premeditated component. Otherwise, how to explain why most abusers don't begin with the most egregious insults / violence / theft / control tactics? They know that these will likely turn away a person who hasn't yet become emotionally invested in them — and thus they refrain. However, they find subtler ways to be abusive, because their goal is still to make the victim feel lesser. That's very telling.
For instance, the man whose conduct inspired this piece knew better early in our relationship than to insult me; he was aware that this would have turned me off to him — and also that my self-esteem was (initially) too strong to take insults to heart. So he started instead with the variety of gaslighting I describe here. Once he saw that I put a lot of stock in his opinions, *then* he started insulting me. In other words, he knew that if he started off by saying stuff like, "You're stupid / ugly / lazy," etc. ("big, concrete" doubts), I'd disregard him. Instead, he planted "small, amorphous" (highly subjective) doubts, like, "Your response was hurtful to me / You didn't give me enough attention at the party / If you were a better person, you would've done more to defend yourself while that man was assaulting you," and so on.
Even if much abusive behavior is unconscious, it's clear that abusive people have substantial measures of emotional self-control. They're capable of being very polite, charming, and gracious with their coworkers and friends. This tells us that it's not an indiscriminate, knee-jerk anger problem.
Anyway, I hope my response wasn't too rambly! I love your question, and I appreciate your reflections. My guess is that the degree to which these behaviors are premeditated probably varies from person to person. Still, clinging to a partner they routinely criticize and treat with coldness — rather than just letting that partner go free to find somebody who treats them better — is a choice.
