Hi
it's hard to go into this in too much depth but I am at the moment temporarily separated from my husband and seriously thinking about making it permanent. My two year old daughter and I are currently staying at my mother's place. Hardly ideal, I feel we have no home right now. The last straw was when my husband followed me around the house on the morning of my daughter's second birthday, screaming abuse, poking me in the face and calling me every offensive name you can think of. All of this, mind you, in front of our daughter. I was going to have a party for her but when he began threatening to abuse my family members when they showed up, I rang everyone up and cancelled, I was too upset to put on a brave face. I then got a few thingsin a bag and caught a taxi with my daughter to my mother's. Ugh. One of the worst days of my life.
Admitttedly the aggression was not all on my side: we had been quarrelling night before and I had opted to sleep in spare bed, which always REALLY pisses him off. Like so many women in this situation I am torn because while he is verbally abusive, VERY controlling and has been known to strike me on occasion, he is also (does this sound crazy?) a good hearted man. He loves o9ur daughter but how is she to know at her age that all this aggro is not her fault? I
should add that he had an atrocious childhood himself: his mother died of liver cancer when he was only ten and even before she died, his father was having an affair with a woman whom he married IMMEDIATELY after the death of my husband's mother. This womna even came to his mother's funeral. Bizarre. Anyway, his stepmother was abusive towards him, gave neither affection nor even money for the things he needed for school (he had to work crap jobs from the age of about 11). His father too, it seems, was abusive and critical and possibly had sexual pathologies (eg would insist on walking around the house naked all the time and would not put on pants even if his children wanted to have friends over.). Josh (my husband) and his older sister were more or less left to fend for themselves from the age of 11 and 13 respectively. Do their own cooking ,washing, get themselves to school etc.
I think one reason I fell in love with my husband was because he needed love so much. Now I find I cannot handle his behaviour. He is just so damaged. Although he has been a total asshole the prosepct of leaving him makes me feel terribly guilty. I hate to think of him alone and desolate, and taking someone's child off them is of course the cruellest thing yiou can do. But then again one must think of the child too.
Sorry this is so long but I have so much on my mind and no-one who will discuss it with me properly. I guess the big question is: is there ANY chance he could learn to control his rage and be a reasonable person, if he wanted to, had therapy and so forth? Does this ever happen? So often one hears that guys like this never change and the situation can only get worse.
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Relationships
do abusive men ever change? (VERY long)
36 replies
Caththerese1973 · 18/03/2005 06:42
OP posts:
kama ·
18/03/2005 08:10
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