No.

Though, granted, it took two different therapists to convince me to cut said abuser out of my life and that was before I admitted to any kind of abuse from him (he's also a raging alcoholic among other things).

The last voicemail I got from him years ago now had some kind of blanket apology for "whatever horrible thing it is you think I've done" so I mean, I get the whole lack of genuine feeling thing.

I'm not sure that you will ever find satisfactory answers to those questions. Perhaps others on this board will have better insight to this but my gut feeling is that abusers don't think about it as deeply as we do after the fact.

I kind of think of it like a bully shoving a kid down and the kid wondering why me out of everyone and the bully shrugging and being like, 'you were the first one in my way'. Not exactly satisfactory, but as much as he's willing to put into thinking about it. Am I making sense?

Anyway, best of luck to you.