Who are you trying to protect in staying in communication with him?
Because there are ways to do it without putting yourself at risk.
When I read of people who hit their parents back, part of me wishes I'd done that - but another part of me thinks that at least I had control not to when she was deliberately stamping on my bare feet whilst wearing heavy shoes, informing me she was going to break my feet (her exact words) and other such events - reasoning at the time that if I lifted a hand, I would undoubtedly flatten her and quite possibly do serious damage due to her physical disabilities. I reasoned that the odds were her physical condition meant she'd be in more pain from hitting me than I would be from the punch or slap itself.
Trouble is that meant when I did finally go NC after a particularly dangerous attack - a centimetre higher and I could have lost my eye, thanks to the item she used as a weapon - other relations refused to believe it. And it was only after that I found out that her attentions had turned to one of my children several years previously - they hadn't told me because they thought 'you'd have killed her, Mum' - and she had done similar stuff to others.
So she got away with it. And is now a treasured, saintly, little old lady, apparently. Nah. She's the same underneath.
For those posters saying this is a fuss about nothing, all I can say is that even just the look in my mother's eyes when she was mid-being the 'lovely little old lady' when her eyes fell on me gave me the exact same sinking fear at 37 as it did at 8 and a half. She was going to make me pay for something once there weren't any witnesses around.
And would we really be saying to a woman 'get over yourself/you're such a Drama Llama' if her husband threatened to give her a swift backhander in the street?