He’s your ideal man and your worst nightmare. 

Men who abuse women tend to go through a subtle but ultimately dramatic transformation that leaves their partner desperately searching for the person he was at the start of their relationship and blaming herself for losing him along the way.

“They are extremely clever people,” says Don Hennessy, relationship counsellor and former director of the [Irish] National Domestic Violence Intervention Agency.

He means cleverness at its most cruel. Abusers, Hennessey says, are conmen and brainwashers who employ tactics no different from paedophiles. Those are strong words but Hennessy believes in straight-talking. …

Hennessy says abusers will go out of their way to find a woman they can take advantage of, and believes they operate the same way as paedophiles, grooming their victim.

They start from the day they meet the prospective partner. What they are really looking for is somebody who…