to feel he should have told me about this health condition before we married

If he had been through all those years of trying to get the right meds, seizures, accidents with head injury, stigma from social prejudice, so much gratitude for his parents monitoring him being his carer when not yet controlled seizures, taking him to all appointments, the safety he felt living right down the road from,

then OF COURSE, me coming skipping along talking about how wonderful the weather was, and how exciting the wide world was to travel and explore and my whole 'never set foot in a hospital' in my 25 years and assuming it was the same for him SO SO SUNNY persona MUST HAVE GRATED.

And that angers me too. If you had FUCKING told me what you had been through, we could have dated longer I could have grown more mature and BEEN A BETTER WIFE , if and when we did marry.

I am sorry the shouty letters werent directed at you @ScaredButUnavoidable

It is the other way round.

I could and would have left if not for the empathy and the protectiveness and love I still feel because I have got the two linked causally, wrongly or rightly so.

@InspectorDuckedCantBeFooked , any thoughts on the two incidents? It is a grey area for me as I was so foolish and horrible myself in my emotional intelligence that for many many years I did fully believe I deserved to be slapped, pushed, hit. After the fact. I believed him when he said someone who did not trust was a sick person

I did go through a phase of asking for a divorce about 10 years ago, a short lived one. I did not state this as the reason , ie his lie by omission, not the illness itself. But just said it was obvious i was not what he needed. He had chosen wrong and then gone about lying to get me.

He said I was leaving with no grounds to leave and he would never let me take his kids away from him

Our youngest is now 17. Do I still need to worry about a custody battle at this point if I left? I know he would battle for the sake of it if he could, as he will be furious I am trying to take back my agency and leaving ,instead of staying in my corner

But if you want to tell yourself that your husband was aggressive and violent because he had epilepsy and it was all his bad wiring that caused his behaviour as opposed to it being his own free-will and his choice to treat you like that, then you do that if it makes you feel more comfortable

@ScaredButUnavoidable , I did not say that. I said that studies show that in a very small percentage of people with certain types of epilepsy, AEDs can cause aggression. And the condition itself has a higher co-morbidity with psychological illnesses IN A VERY SMALL PERCENTAGE and that my instinct told me he could be in that small percentage from the fact that I know him for 20plus years !

What part of that is to make me feel more comfortable? Have you ever been hit? Its not comfortable.

You see based on those above two incidents, why it took me a very long time to first off all forgive myself (work in progress, actually still) for escalating instead of walking away in quiet dignity

But I do now believe nothing justifies physical violence

I am sorry if it was, I am only going with instinct that he is one of those 1% of people with a co-morbidity.

Some of the violent times for context -

Incident 1 -

I Questioned, like 3 months after the wedding (remember I was only 25 this is so embarrassing) 'what the eff is wrong with your parents? why the co dependency? why do you need to see them everyday? Are they using you making you stay nearby? What the eff is going on? why did you not marry them instead of me? YOU OWE it to me to be a better husband than this, you are a shit husband. You dont even come home to me , you go to them every evening first. He then slapped me and pushed me away, I fell. He walked away. I cant remember what making up looked like, I think the same evening (you cannot make this stuff up), my sister called and said my dad was admitted in hospital with what we thought was jaundice (turned out obstructive jaundice, Pancreatic cancer etc.). Therefore, I never dealt with the above incident appropriately and normalized it , but a stronger person than me would not have done that, I do see that.

Incident 2 -

He then decided only spending time with his parents every single evening (weekday and sundays) was too kind on me, and started eventually the next year, also hanging out with a female colleague after work. He got mentionitis, again just a year after our wedding and six months after my dad passed. He and she started hanging out together after work at the office cafeteria , for coffee. along with two other colleagues , who were dating each other (since married). One day , on a sunday or saturday, he said he was going to meet her for lunch with the other two colleagues aforementioned. He said he and them were going to buy her a dress (?!) as a birthday gift and present it to her at the lunch. None of these ppl worked in the same team or department, so not a work thing. I said if nothing romantic was going on then he would have no objection to me coming. He said I can't come and I should trust him, and it was sick how untrusting I was. I barred his way (Oh God) saying if he left , he may not find me still there when he came back - he pushed me out of the way so hard I fell and hit the table nearby and he did not even wait to see if I was okay and he left. I think I did pack my stuff ,but he talked me out of leaving when he got back saying the suspicious person I was , I needed help

Thanks @InspectorDuckedCantBeFooked , @Pinkdayss and @HelenHywater

My dad was one of those gentle souls and I never saw this dynamic of an abusive and/or angry man growing up...he did have a stroke in his 40s that he recovered from and went back to work within 2 months fully mobile and active as ever ....but I did see personality change I suppose, him dull and quiet during those few months, apathetic - my mother was fully supportive and his rock. I never witnessed any aggression from him toward her or us during this time, but he did seem far less eloquent with his words, no nuance etc.

I guess there is history of brain damage - personality affect and family needing to support through - my anger still remains more that he did not tell me beforehand and give me a chance to be supportive and let me find my way in the dark, rather than anger about the temper itself.

Going to do another post with the violence incidents for further context, as the responses on here have been so insightful and made me think on new pathways that I had not considered before - he still maintains that any man , even a saint would have been driven to violence with my shrew like behaviour in those incidents, though he also had bouts of crying and apologising and pleading

Thanks @bumblebee3122 , no I want him to apologise to me for not telling me before the wedding. I mean like I want him to stop feeling shame about the childhood diagnosis which he does, and I want him to feel shame for his lies, which he does not.

Thank you , this thread has been extremely clarifying

My anger is valid, I have been gaslit

Now what, is an answer I will need time to decide. I am not sure I want to stay

I am sorry to say I am an extremely shallow person, I might have backed out of the wedding even if he had told me the week before. I would not have had the maturity at that age.......

Not telling me was pathological right? It was not a small white lie?

He has minimised and gaslighted this point as recently as yesterday

I want him to own up to the lies and go to therapy @Beachforever , to come out of the shame and anger he felt growing up. Perhaps it should be directed at his parents then he would not feel it for me, but either ways therapy can support him come to terms with all that anger, rage , depression, moods he feels

I need therapy too to get over my anger at all my in laws not just him

If you ask me instinctively which my heart believes based on what I know

The wiring is wrong and that is not his fault, his anger moods, everything has something to do with the temporal lobe or frontal lobe neurons and their dysregulation of para sympathetic nervous system causes a very bad fight response to even the most minor disagreement.

But the decision to not tell me before the wedding or engagement , that shows his personality. And that was on him. He still won't apologise for it.

:-(