I wouldn't say that I normalized my behavior. In fact, I didn't really understand that what I was doing was wrong. I knew, on some level, that some people disliked it and thought it was immoral. To me, that didn't mean anything. How many people think smoking or pre-marital sex is immoral? I wasn't trying to rationalize or normalize what I was doing, because in my head it really was normal. I thought that if you complained about what I was doing, then clearly you were just too emotionally fragile and you were pushing it on me. I had to rationalize why what I was doing was bad, not why what I was doing was okay, in order to be less abusive.

At the time, I even thought that I was catching all of the worst stuff that I was doing before I did it. I felt like, hey, you should be thankful I'm not worse than this. Again, this wasn't me lying to myself or trying to dodge consequences. I actually, literally felt this way and was almost entirely incapable of seeing why I was wrong. I know that this total lack of empathy is hard to understand, but I wasn't arguing with myself when I said that my behavior was totally fine or even good. I was arguing with whoever was calling me out on my abusive behavior because I was literally incapable of seeing the problem with what I was doing. It wasn't even a defense mechanism, I just didn't have empathy and didn't know what healthy relationships were supposed to look like. Any attempts to get me to change my behavior seemed manipulative to me, or like emotional blackmail, since I was already pretty confident that I was morally clear.

Despite being incredibly charismatic, I was entirely out of touch with the emotions and boundaries of others. It was the Dunning-Kruger effect in high gear.

Nothing that I've done was okay. I can't make up for being awful to so many people. I also feel more inclined to be more abusive after learning that my behavior was bad, because in the court of public opinion I'm already the "bad guy" so why should I care about trying to behave any better? Nonetheless, I have committed to being better and learning to be less abusive in therapy. This is rare for abusers to do, though, because the aforementioned hurdles can be very difficult to break through.