I've just done something very shameful :(

[PGTips83]

Hi wise mums. This evening my DH and I got into a huge fight (which started with me asking for help and then escalated into the "I do more than you" war) and at some point what he was saying filled me with such rage that I hit him. I've never been a violent person in any relationship or in any way whatsoever and I'm really shocked and ashamed. Well, the one other solo incident was when I was pregnant and we were arguing, I threw a book at him (we were sitting next to each other and it landed in his lap) and I was mortified that I could do anything like that (it was a small paperback, just to be clear, not a massive heavyweight! But still, that's not the point). We both later put it down to pregnancy hormones.

Our LO is now six months and I've just returned to work, but I don't think it's right for me to just excuse this away. I feel like I don't know who I am after this evening! I'm a small woman so I didn't actually hurt him, but I feel that's beside the point. He called me a monster and I definitely feel like I am right now He called me out on it, saying I was abusing him and lumped the book incident with this one, saying I'm violent towards him, as if it were a repetitive occurrence. I was horrified with myself.

The strange thing is I don't feel like I've got postnatal depression. Yes, I've had ups and downs, as we all have, but this evening was more like an all-out rage.

Has anyone else experienced this? Do I need help? I tried to console myself but I sound like some horrible abuser making excuses for their horrible behaviour. What's happened to me?!

I'm going to namechange in a minute after posting this

But the ugly truth of allowing a child to grow up in a home witnessing abuse

I have a 6 year old who thought my name was cunt for a while and stopped using mummy and using cunt to address me and didn't understand it was a swear word

Who has only recently stopped giving me daily bruises- ones much worse than his father. Still happening but getting less.

Who thinks that as long as you say sorry lots after the person you hurt is fine and a baby if they stay upset with you after and you can tease them for that

Who fights at school and can be a manipulative bully to other children

Who cries himself to sleep and begs me to tell daddy I'm sorry and promise to just do what he says so he comes back into his life

Who believes it is all my fault

Who believes the police might take him away because I'm not a good mummy

I love him with all my heart and am doing everything in my power to make sure now he doesn't grow up to be an abuser himself, and to repair our relationship

But this is the ugly truth for a child. Save yours by not justifying abuse for any reason.

The respect phone number can help you

I cannot believe how many people on here are saying that basically her husbands either pushed her buttons or he was abusing her without her knowing so she's justified in hitting him. It's absolute insanity!! Look at what you're saying. Change her for him and you'd be screaming from the rooftops for her to call the police. Literally 'mic drop' stop the world I wanna get off

uggaddict

@selfconfesseduggaddict the best of luck in everything you do. I hope you and your child continue to get the support you need for you to both heal from such a terrible start

It’s not important what he said!! Unless it’s - I’m going to fucking hurt you physically because I feel I have the right to.

It’s not true, just not true that anyone has the ability to just say something that warrants you hitting them. If the OP’s dp was properly abusive and his wasn’t just an argument and duties/housework/parenting perhaps I could be more accepting of these posts but I have a feeling that if the OP’s DP was abusive, it would have been mentioned.

Go to your gp and sEe what help is available for you. I don't in any way excuse what you did, but I do think that very often women are being emotionally abused and their recourse to physical violence is the only way they see to stop that. There are other ways to stop emotional abuse especially if you're catching it early enough - that will also depend upon what sort of person you're dealing with.o

But concentrate on sorting out your own shit. In doing that, you are taking responsibility for your own actions (which abusers don't do), and see what else comes up along the way.

I think you should start with anger management and also refer yourself for counselling or therapy to try and get to the route of what is happening here. There's a lot to work through and un-pick and we - strangers on the internet - can't possibly know how your relationship functions or what other issues there might be. At this point you probably don't either though - you'rebe feeling so shocked and confused.

I have anger issues, which manifested themselves in my case through intense rages leading to self-destructive behaviours and self-harming. I'm in Scotland and initially sought self-help online www.moodjuice.scot.nhs.uk/Anger.asp but subsequently I've had a lot of one-to-one counselling as well. I also had to make A LOT of lifestyle changes. You can refer yourself for counselling and therapy without going through your GP (I know this is a worry). Look up "psychological therapies" NHS. I would try and do something to get help today. There's a danger that if you leave it you'll start to put off getting help, make excuses, minimise what's happened.

OP - I have struggled with anger / rage and got help. Invest some time in some individual therapy for yourself, or ask your GP for recommendations. Or instead if you want a quick fix, then find an anger management course, something like the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) might be worth a look. Or local services in your area.
By the way, the MN wisdom is that you should never go to couples counselling under a situation where violence or abuse has occured, not even a single incident, but I disagree with this (I am a professional in the field, so I feel qualified to comment) - I think really it is far more nuanced and it depends on the situation. Your behaviour did not happen in a vacuum, of course it is a relationship issue. It doesn't sound like you are persistently abusing your partner (and all previous partners) in a pattern of coercive control. Are you? So if your H is willing, then you could consider couples counselling perhaps after the individual therapy, if you are still having problems.

Abuse is about power and control. When men physically abuse women, they do so from position of power and control.

When women are physically violent towards men, it is usually (and I know there are rare exceptions) in response to being controlled and emotionally abused

I am concerned about your DH using this to portray you as a monster - worried that is a red flag. Do you often feel provoked by what he says

^^Completely agree with this.

Abusers inspire fear, humiliation, powerlessness. OP, do you think you DH is scared of you? I don't feel he is based on what you said.

I genuinely hope that man has a good support system outside his absuive relationship. I hope he has friends, or family or both who support him and reassure him it’s not his fault that he’s being abused in his own home. I hope he finds the strength to leave, and I hope he meets someone who’ll treat him like he deserves to be treated, someone kind and someone who won’t hurt him, and I hope he drags his abusive co parent through every court he can to gain custody so the child is never subjected to the same abuse.

It’s not important what he said!!

Of course it is!! Everything hinges on what he said.

If he’d said something along the lines of: “I don’t know what to do. I want to help but I feel like everything I do is wrong and you’re always criticising me.” Then OP is obviously out of order and needs anger management at the very least.

But if her DH said something along the lines of: “I expect you to do all the housework and childcare. I’ll give you £50 a week for housekeeping, not a penny more. And if I want to stay up until 3am on the PlayStation and messaging women on Tinder, I will, and there’s fuck all you can do about it.” Well, that’s an entirely different narrative isn’t it?

How can you say it’s not important? It’s THE most important thing.

So the next time she says something he doesn’t like he can turn her upside down with a punch and we’ll all justify it with “well, she deserved it because she said xxx”

Let me tell you one thing, you’re victim blaming. How would you like your son being beaten in his own home where he should feel secure and safe?

So by your own admission, what he said is enough to provoke a violent reaction? Well in that case him hitting her back should be self defense and don’t even come at me with the bullshit “oh but she’s smaller”. It doesn’t even matter. If she wants to act like a big tough hard man with her swinging fists she needs to learn how to take the same

@Eliza9917 - I said absolutely nothing of the sort. I didn't say anything about what the ops husband should or shouldn't do. The message was, if you do nothing and repeat this behaviour, yes you are an abuser. If you seek help and change your behaviour, no you are not an abuser, you are someone who has made a horrible mistake.

Frankly your reply to my post not only spectacularly missed the point, it was unnecessarily aggressive.

OnWeekends I absolutely, fundamentally disagree.

There is NOTHING that someone can say within a relationship that justifies physical violence.

My partners ex would say things like “you’re a cunt that deserves everything that’s happened to you, no wonder your dad killed himself”

For context DP was badly abused by his foster/adoptive parents and his dad committed suicide when he was a baby. And these comments were the result of normal arguments that would quickly escalate on her part to stuff not going her way. Would it have been right for him to hit her? No.

The right thing to do, if your partner is a cunt, is to leave. It’s not the right or justifiable thing to do to actually escalate to participate and inflicting abuse. Arguments happen, horrible arguments but the way to address dysfunction like that is to leave or seek help. I literally can’t believe you have been on this thread the whole time defending these actions solely because the OP is a woman.

It’s so incredibly unhealthy, and there are children involved so I can’t het my head around you constantly defending the OP - and yes, if you are holding what this man said to the highest importance, then you absolutely are victim blaming.

You have been violent on two separate occasions and both times coming up with a lame excuse why you have done it.

You need help

@Stormwhale Wed 14-Nov-18 16:08:09
@Eliza9917 - I said absolutely nothing of the sort. I didn't say anything about what the ops husband should or shouldn't do. The message was, if you do nothing and repeat this behaviour, yes you are an abuser. If you seek help and change your behaviour, no you are not an abuser, you are someone who has made a horrible mistake.

Frankly your reply to my post not only spectacularly missed the point, it was unnecessarily aggressive.

Well you have advocated sticking around to possibly be hit again because you've touted the option for the abuser to go to the GP/anger management/whatever. If the Op's DP was to leave her she wouldn't have the chance to go to the GP.

Hitting/violence/etc should = zero tolerance.

If in a moment of rage my DP hit me, he himself would end the relationship, let alone give me the chance to.

SilverDoe google the Sally Challen case and have a read about the current campaign to have her conviction reviewed.

She killed her husband after decades of suffering his coercive control and psychological abuse. Her husband never laid a finger on her.

By your logic she deserves to serve life in prison and the years of psychological abuse she suffered shouldn’t mitigate her crime. That is victim blaming.

I do not accept that, when women are violent against men, it is the same as men being violent against women. To assert that it is is to ignore misogyny completely. The playing field is not level to begin with and never has been. In any relationship dynamic with men, women are on the back foot, whether it’s in terms of physical strength, financial strength or just in terms of a lesser sense of self worth thanks to years of entrenched misogyny and patriarchal bullshit.

@Eliza9917 - I'm not sure if you have confused my post with someone else's but I have said nothing to advocate staying with an abuser. I made absolutely no comment on what the ops dh should do. I said op should seek help and I can't for the life of me work out why that angers you. I have not said a single thing to excuse the behaviour, I have simply encouraged the op to seek help. It's really bizarre to me that you have zeroed in on my post.

Eliza9917 - no matter what the dh does I would urge the op to go to the gp! It has nothing to do with whether I think he should stay with her or not. Ok clearly has anger issues and needs help regardless of whether her marriage continues or not. You have read something into my post that is not there.

*op not ok.

When a woman hits a man worst case is he has a sore arm, possible bruise

Or ends up unconcious as my BIL did. Stop minimising and stop making stuff up to fit your narrative.

OnWeekends but with the woman in that case, she was still severely abused by him. You have to judge individual scenarios, you can’t take one (extreme) case of a woman lashing out rightly and apply it to every single situation where a woman is abusive to a man.

I didn’t disagree with you that women are on the back foot, that women are more vulnerable. I said that based on the OP, she has not described any definite signs whatsoever of abuse from her DP, and if he was abusive, I strongly sense that the OP would have alluded to this further.

What she has described is an emerging pattern of physical aggression on her part which is not acceptable. The responses that IMO are sensible have told her that she needs to avoid blaming her husband for her own reaction and seek help if she wants to remain in this relationship at all.

Lots of posters myself included agree that if she doesn’t seek help then she is leaving herself open to continuing this unacceptable behaviour, which will impact her DP, her child and herself. We can’t excuse her just because she is female and her partner is Male, even if he is a shitty partner. People do not deserve to be attacked by people who are supposed to love them.

I don’t think it’s necessary to compare violence of women towards men to thatnof men towards women.
I also do not think it’s necessary to decide if this is abuse/ a reactive episode/ if the triggers are valid as an excuse or not.
Whatever the reason why and the name we give it it is clear OP is struggling to control her emotions and in two instances this has led to her resorting to violence to express frustration.
OP, I think you need to explore that frustration more and find healthier ways to resolve it.
Relationships are not always healthy, what we do when we realise this is more important than what took us there.