Boyfriend just snapped, not sure how to handle it

[Babynothing]

Hi all
I'm new on the board and looking forward to talking to you all.

Basically I need some advice about an incident that happened on Saturday night.
Me and my boyfriend have been together for 4 years and living together for 2. There is a bit if an age gap (well I'm 32 and he is 25 so more than a bit really I suppose)
I really love him, think he is gorgeous, he makes me laugh like crazy etc. Things have been strained in the last year or so though as we bought a house (well he did, I'm not on the mortgage) and we don't have a lot of spare cash.

Trouble is he goes out with his friends usually every other weekend and is offically the worst drunk I've EVER met. Gets agressive, paranoid, is impossible to handle as he falls over in house, wakes up in middle of night and sleepwalks around drunk etc, it's really scary. He also can get really verbally abusive towards me, calls me awful names and so on.

Anyway long story short we both went out seperately on Saturday night but ended up in the same bar in town. We were both drunk and ended up arguing. I was probably being unreasonable but he goes out twice as much as me and I just wanted to enjoy a man free night drinking and dancing. We went home seperately and when we were both in house I decided to try and 'be nice' as my friend had come home with us. He kept making little comments about me though including 'I think I'm something special but I'm not'. After my friend left I was sitting on the couch and he got right up in my face saying nasty things and I;m ashamed to say I slapped him! It wasen't a hard slap but I still know it was wrong of me. Well he literally just went mental, grabbed hold of me and dragged me off the couch and threw me down on the floor in front of fireplace screaming abuse. I was utterly terrified (My ex boyfriend used to push me around, throw me on the floor and overpower me etc so it brought up some really scary memories). So i just crouched on the floor sobbing, he then came over, grabbed me again still screaming at me and pulled me back across the room and flung me back on the couch. He then tried to grab me again but I started screaming and lashing out so he backed off. Instead he resorted to throwing cushions at me and telling me he hated me whilst I curled up crying (I was UTTERLY hysterical). He then started mimicking my crying and basically mocking me, then he just left the room, went to bed and I slept on the couch.

In the morning he went out and didn't come back all day, we literally haven't spoken apart from to say the most essential things. I don't even know how to approch it or what to say. Reading what I've typed he sounds like a bloody pig but he isin't in lots of ways, he just has issues and I certainly didn't help by slapping him.
I'm just scared that now he has grabbed me once he will do it again, my ex didn't lay a finger on me for the first 2 years but once he started it was like a switch just flipped and he did it frequently afterwards.

God sorry that was long, thanks is advance to anyone who survives reading until the end of it and is kind enough to reply.

She's probably at work, Peter - all her posts so far have been at night.

Run for the hills and be thankfull you did not have children with this nutter and go out there and find someone who does NOT drink. Drunks never change and why should you fear every weekend?

I was like you once, very much so, except I didn't leave, I got by living on the good bits, because they were quite good and I let it be enough.

That was the single biggest mistake of my life. Your older self will be so angry with you if you don't end it right now. All of these women are right, it will only get worse.

Your mother sounds like a sensible woman, listen to her and accept her help.

I hope so, BB, and that this thread hasn't scared her away (back to him)

Sorry but slapping a man who is screaming in your face does not make you 'as bad as each other'. That is the message he is trying to give you, and it's bollocks! Do not accept the blame for his actions, if you hadn't have slapped him he would find another reason for attacking you. My ex convinced me that I was the one with anger issues as when he verbally attacked me I sometimes had a go back. I also cried, refused to respond etc etc, it made no difference, it would still always end up being my fault. He chose to treat you so badly, because he thinks he can. You can try to be perfect but it will never be enough. Not all men are dicks and those that are are attracted to women with low self esteem because they are essentially predators. I thoroughly recommend the book 'why does he do that' by Lundy Bancroft. It will help you to spot the warning signs and to understand why he behaves like this. It is NOTHING to do with what you do or don't do, and everything to do with him. You deserve better than this 'man', start to love and respect yourself and get the hell out of there before it gets any worse, if you stay it WILL get worse so leav now. I wish you the best of luck.

how about seeing as you were both drunk, you both agree to giving up the drink for a while and see if things improve

if you want to save the relationship that is

Please listen to everyone on here - not one voice is telling you to stay - they are all saying get out.

What exactly has this man got to offer you? You walk on eggshells around him
"when we were both in house I decided to try and 'be nice' as my friend had come home with us."

You make plans to avoid him when he is likely to be violent
"if anything happens where I think things might get inflamed (i.e he goes out with friends for the night which I am fully anticipating he will do at the weekend as it is his birthday) I will go to my parents house or stay with a friend"

Why would you want to continue to live your life like this???

Gosh I wish my own situation was that simple. You have no ties with him, what is there to think about?? Unfortunately I was married and had a baby before my husband showed his true colours. If I was in your position I would run for the hills at the first sign of something like this.

ok, no excuses for not updating this thread now

unless Op works 24 hour shifts

OP, come on

come back and tell us you have left your physically violent relationship

Sadly Peter I don't think that that is what the OP is going to tell us

perhaps not, MaD

shall we just be here for the next time then ?

I think that might be best

I think that became clear when she posted about what she would do next time he went out drinking. It was obvious then that she had no intention of kicking him to the kerb.
:(

So

OP you have had 5 pages of replies, all saying the same thing, because it is quite clear you are not ready to leave this man and everyone is desperately warning you because it's obvious you're not getting the message, not even near. Maybe this is why you haven't come back because you probably think we don't understand how wonderful he is, what a good thing you have together when he isn't drunk, how much you love him.

My guess is that most of us do understand OP. Maybe you will understand more a few years down the line - and then you'll be grateful for your mam's advice and the advice on this thread, which will help you when you are ready to leave. I dread to think what will happen to you in the meantime (if you survive - the last one may not have killed you but this one might ). Maybe then you will be ready to work on what it is in you that thinks your love and patience will heal abusers/addicts. re want to look after him - he already knows that you have made yourself a sacrificial lamb to pay the price for all his 'issues', which is why he violently threw you about, didn't apologise (though had ample opportunity to the following day) then blamed you and got you believing it was your fault . YOu also call his behaviour ridiculous, which is a grossly inadequate word to describe what happened.

Freedom Programme - one near you OP.

Wow, how incredible that you don't intend to leave. Aside from his drunken, abusive behaviour, you don't seem to like him very much. I'm trying to imagine the scenario in which a BF just happens to show up at the same pub while I'm on a girl's night out, and instead of saying, hey there, lover, what a surprise! I start being horrible to him because I'm just that unhappy to see his face in the same pub.

I'm not saying you were wrong to do that - you clearly have good reasons to be horrible to him!! - but your total lack of self awareness is startling.

You don't love him. You don't even want him around. He's physically abusive. You have no children/ no shared mortgage/ no divorce proceedings to face. WTF?

I hope to God she doesn't have children with him. She's endangering their lives as well as her own.

Are there a lot of people in your life who have fed you damaging myths, OP?
Such as: the love of a good woman will heal a fucked up man - bullshit. People have to 'heal' themselves. And no matter how much a person has suffered, they don't get the right to pass that suffering along to others.

Or: a man who is only violent sometimes can be lived with if you learn to improve and moderate your behaviour. Bullshit Men who are violent towards their partners do it because they like doing it. They get something out of it. Whether it's a matter of making him feel powerful to see you cry and shake with fear, or whether he just likes venting his anger at the world on someone he sees as his property to do what he likes with, he is choosing to hurt you, so no matter what you do, he will find an excuse to hurt you.

Or was it that a woman without a man in her life is a freak and a failure, so any man is better than singledom. THIS IS THE MOST BULLSHIT MYTH OF THE LOT. Being single is better than living with a man who is just lazy and selfish (ie not violent, but no prize either). Being single is a fuck of a lot better than living with a man who scares you, insults you, hurts your feelings and beats the shit out of you regularly.

He won't change.
You can't change him. Love, kindness, sex, doing exactly what he wants - that won't change him either. Nor will time.
He's abusive because that's who he is.
You could be the perfect woman, he would still find reasons to abuse you.
Get out now.

PA - I suspect she will come back and say that they've talked / he's sorry / he promises to never do it again / he's been so loving since that she knows he's sorry / it was her fault really..

Or not come back at all because the above is the case.

It's very very sad, but you simply cannot save people from themselves.

If she does come back, if/when it all goes pear-shaped, there'll be a whole lot of support and good advice on here as usual and scarcely a murmur of I told you so, because a lot of people who've been through it know exactly how hard it is to leave. The desperate shrieks of "Get out!" are at least in part people shrieking at their own younger selves who went through it and stuck with it until they couldn't lie to themselves any more, finally got out, and are now amazed to find that life is better outside than in. So they know how the script goes. They'd just like to save anyone else from having to go through the worst of it - the worst which is undoubtedly yet to come. It's really spooky how faithfully such a drunken asshole follows the standard script.

(Disclaimer: XH was not violent, indeed when drunk he got very silly and giggly. Instead he got emotionally abusive when depressed. So I haven't been through exactly the same, but I've still bought the myths and made the excuses.)