first time domestic violence advice wanted

[J4J]

Should he stay or leave? I am so confused. I am married to a usually loving husband and have 4 small children. 2 days ago he became unusually angry and punched me in the face - I was knocked unconscious. It happened in front of all the children. When I came round my 4 year old daughter was holding me and crying shouting wake up. When I looked at her her first words were 'oh mummy I thought you were dead'. This is out of character for my husband. He was initially in denial and told me to get off the floor and stop pretending. It was not until my dad phoned him at work the following day and told him I was in hospital getting x-rayed that I think he realised what he did. This is a first offence so the police after arresting him when he got back from work released him with a caution. Do I let him stay in the house now. Part of me still loves him very much and another part of me is completely shocked and upset. I am really hurting inside and want things just to be normal. Statistically it may happen again but I'm not sure it will as he is a good man who needs to manage his anger but yet he knocked me out....

"your children will grown to hate you and your husband"

That makes me a bit angry. It is a possibility, yes. But there are other possibilities. I grew up with violence between my parents and of course it has had lasting effects of a complicated and pervasive kind. But not hate; not abandonment; and not a repeat of the cycle, either for me or for my siblings.

I know it is frustrating to give advice that seems not to be heeded, but I think it is important not to project too much of one's own specific pain onto another situation, especially in terms that read to me at least as quite harsh and blaming. I don't think that is what's needed, on top of an already awful set of events.

catalie harsh words are needed because unless OP acts she is maintaining a situation where her children are being emotionally abused.
There are no excuses for that.
Regardless of her own feeling and thoughts OP has to put her children's physical and emotional safety first .

Sorry calatalie , I mis spelt .

calatalie I really respect your account , but professionally I know that adults who have witnessed domestic violence as children , do often feel a sense of abandonment even if it is subconscious .
It can often be difficult for the then adults to have trusting relationships because of this fear of abandonment .
This thread is very emotive , and because of people's own experiences it is very hard to choose the right words whilst remaining sensitive to everyone on the thread , including OP.
I think we all just need to acknowledge this and cut somebody a bit of slack if we feel hurt or angry by something they have said .

There are "excuses," if that's how you want to think of them: the whole psychology of indecision, lack of confidence and self-esteem, negative/catastrophic thinking about alternatives that can characterise the mindset of an abused woman. I'm not thinking just of the OP but of all the women in similar positions who might well be reading along no, or in the archives of MN in future.

And even if harsh words are helpful, it is useful to correct them if they are simply not true. And it is simply not true to speak of hatred and abandonment as this mother's destiny, or of a repeat cycle of abuse as her children's destiny.

The children may not grow to hate, but they will be damaged.

This article was linked to on here the other day, very thought provoking.

Sorry, I meant abandonment of the parent by the adult children, which was how I read vicar's post (perhaps wrongly).

Yes, abandonment felt by the child in a family where the father is hitting the mother is (from my experience) a very powerful feeling. I just took issue with a kind of sentencing of this mother to her children's hatred and abandonment. In my case it has been much more ambiguous than that. Of course there is a feeling of blaming my mother as well as my father (and I think that one of the greatest pains I have in relation to this past is a sense of guilt at blaming the victim). I try to negotiate this feeling of blaming my mother by sympathising with my child-self's inability to see all of the difficulties of the situation, but I don't think it is ever something I will resolve. What is painful is the continuing life of conflicting feelings, positive and negative -- and "hate" seemed to me to dissolve that conflict into something simpler and much harsher than the likely reaction of many adult children.

I'm really sorry you have been through all of that .
To me you are testament as to why OP should act .
Although I don't think she will be back anyway now.

Calatalie, I have no experience of DV, but I am starting to come to terms with other kinds of abuse in my childhood, and your posts are among the most sensitive and intelligent things I've read about being an adult after a damaging childhood. This may not be a thread where ambiguity is helpful, but what you say rings entirely true to me, and I haven't been able to articulate it to myself before. Thank you!

catalie

i have numerous threads on here in which i have talked about my experiences of DV/abuse/neglect as a child. I really cant be arsed to go into it all again, but i do not see my mother, and have not for 12 years, and no, i will not ever again.
I am not projecting - i am talking about my life and my experiences - others may have different experiences. I do not forgive and i cannot forget.
My mother abandoned me long long before i "abandoned" her. While you are on the subject of projecting perhaps you could just take a step back, i am talking of one of the consequences of allowing abuse in the home to continue - because that is what my mother did, allowed the continued abuse of me and my half sibling, and i feel i have every right to not have contact with her, she is damaging to me and my health.

I left home at 15. My education stopped at that point, and i was homeless. My step sibling was homeless for 3 years and a heroin addict by the age of 18. The fact is that cycles of abuse do continue and are more likely to do so in a dysfunctional home.

I now work as a police officer and i see DV situations at least once a shift. I of course do not speak to any one in RL about my own experiences, but i thought that i could on here, and possibly "make use" of my own experiences, because the fact is that at some point the OPs children may well blame her for allowing the violence to continue, especially against the children. I do. I blame my mother more than the sadistic little bastard she married tbh. I had no emotional investment in him, but i did in her, and she was supposed to protect me - its pretty much in the job description when you become mother to someone.

Yes the Op could well carry on as she does now, pretending that she is not in an abusive relationship and hoping for the best. It might all turn out ok in the end.
or it might not. I am simply telling her my reality. If thats the risk she wants to take then so be it. But over the course of her posts, she went from saying she did not live in a house of violence, to detailing how after her usually loving husband punched her in the face and knocked her unconscious, she awoke in the arms of her crying 4 yr old daughter who thought she was dead, she then went on to detail how her son tried to punch her husband (missing and hitting his own hand on the kitchen work top), then told of how when she tried to take the children from this non violent household, her husband had moved the car keys to prevent her from doing this before engaging in a literal tug of war over the children in which her 6 yr old son had his coat ripped.

Now, in this scenario, what is the most likely outcome, 20 years down the line?
im no expert, nor do i claim to be, but i see it day in, day out,

and i have lived it (albeit from a childs eye view)

I believe that rather than "projecting" i am in a position to give an insight into how this pans out in many instances.

Do not put up with any violence. Your kids deserve a safe and stable home, and you deserve respect. Even if he says he's sorry can you ever trust him again?

So very difficult.....I have had forst hand experience in another life long time ago! Is it really a one off??? Be honest with yourself??? Or are their other warning signs??? I don't mean physical. Does he manipulate what you say? The fact that he decided you were pretending is more worrying i think. They are very clever at making evrything seem your fault. Pleae be careful. From the sounds of your post i expect he's not the sort to think councelling is an option....and probably not the sort to sit down and talk to the children with you about how sorry he is and that he made an awful mistake. Ask yourself those 2 questions if the answer to both is no...get out and stay away. It won't get better it will get worse. I know how hard it is but it's such a massive alarm bell. I'm now in a very safe and loving relationship with DP and if I'd stayed with EH I would never have known how life really could be. Please take care xx

Your choice of words I have had first hand experience in another life long time ago is interesting angels.

I know that Vicar has been able to 'compartmentalise' her childhood and put it behind her, so to speak, and because she has been able to 'detach' from it in this way, her unhappy memories do not unduly afflict her or affect her present.

In fact, her memories have given her a degree of insight into, understanding of, and compassion for, the human condition that is rarely found in the police force and I have no doubt that her unique abilities are , and will continue to be,much appreciated by her superiors, her colleagues, and by the members of the general public that she encounters in the course of her duties.

If we are able to view our negative past experiences from the wrong end of the telescope and see them as being distant and far removed from us in the here and now or, as you have described them, being 'in an other life long ago', we can minimise their ability to hurt us in the here and now.

It seems we can assume that the OP will not be returning anytime soon but, in the hope that she may read her thread on occasion, I would suggest she insists that her husband takes out private medical insurance with pscyhiatric benefits for the whole family as a conditon of his return.

This won't stop him abusing his family but at least the OP will be able to nurse her broken bones and other injuries in the comfort of a private hospital, and she will be able to utilise the best psychiatric services to alleviate some of the emotional harm and trauma he has already caused, and will continue to cause, his unfortunate dc while their dm stands by and does nothing to stop their torment.

What price 'class', eh? I've encountered families living on sink estates in the UK, and in projects and slums in the US, that wouldn't dream of treating their dc in the manner that the OP and her husband appear to believe is acceptable.

I suspect that the OP has justified her failure to protect her dc on the grounds that 'they're only children' and, as we all know, children are resilient and a toy, a treat, or some such temporary distraction, always erases the harm that adults have done to them.

thank you izzy

I appreciate your kindness and your wisdom, you were a huge source of support to me during my recent struggles when the past temporarily reared its head.

I also believe that being able to compartmentalise bad experiences, to view them, as you say, from the other end of the telescope, is a healthy way to deal with them, its certainly the way i deal with them, (most of the time anyway) with what i hope is a healthy detachment, and a realisation that the past is, well, - in the past.

I also know that life isnt always black and white, and that it can take years for that 'lightbulb' moment to dawn for some people caught up in that cycle of abuse.

I sincerely hope the OP is still reading, and will find the strength to do whatever is necessary to protect herself and her children.

X posts with izzy there,

the way the OP has posted about incidents involving the children, the way in which her DH mistreats them, chilled me to read, because the OP normalises this and still maintains that this is a non violent home, with a usually loving husband.

im afraid, to put it bluntly, that that is bollocks. Who knows what the psychological effects of living in that are, but i would hazard a guess that there will be some, and that at some point down the line, something will have to give. (assuming they all survive the continued emotional and physical abuse that is)

I would love to hope that the OP at least picked up the phone to Womens Aid, or intends to do so.

of course when i say who knows what the psychological effects are....i know of my own, but i think the effects of this type of abuse manifest themselves differently in different people. I know that even now, i have my own demons to battle with regard to the ongoing psychological effects...i found it hard to read this thread because for the OP there is a chance to intervene and do something now, and yet i sense that it wont happen, not yet, anyway.

Another DV statistic.

It's my pleasure Vicar.

The way in which you've overcome experiences that are extremely painful to read, let alone empathise with in terms of imagining them happening to us when we were your tender age, should serve as an inspiration to many.

Your triumph over adversity is a beacon of hope in the darkness of inhumanity and I can only hope that the light that shone for you dawns for others.

I've made previous reference to the fact that I suspect that there is considerably more that the OP has not revealed here.

FWIW I further suspect that her husband began to seriously get into physically and emotionally abusing the OP shortly after their marriage and well before the birth of the first dc.

Of course, he was at it before the marriage but she and her parents were so overwhelmed that, despite her visual impairment, she'd landed such a good catch - he attended all the right schools, don'cha know - that he merely seemed 'assertive' and 'forceful' rather than an aggressive bully.

Of course he doesn't belittle, push, slap, or manhandle her every day - but she knows he would if she didn't go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that she doesn't disagree with anything he says.

On this occasion she forgot that she has to follow his orders to the letter, hence his reaction. When you look at from his point of view, you can see that it was her fault because she stepped out of line, can't you?

Put it this way, you can if you're her.

For clarification, neither Vicar or myself are talking about suppressing the feelings that negative memories can invoke many months/years after the event.

We are talking about the ability, which is an ability that we all either instinctively act on or which can be learned, to distance ourselves from the past as we move through the present into the future.

It is, as Vicar has said, a healthy way of healing ourselves after traumatic experiences.

I said to my therapist last week, that I felt like Woody Allen, just how much therapy is it going to take to unravel the damage done in my childhood?

There wasn't a lot of violence, but there was some, it was the emotional and psychological abuse that has ruined my life and meant that every single relationship I have ever had, has been abusive. My sisters are both in abusive relationships, but don't understand that they are. They just know that they are deeply unhappy, and both of them have totally screwed up kids who have both had cause to seek psychological help before they were even teenagers.

For some reason, life has brought me to a point where I could see it for what it was, and that has cost me everything, marriage, family, career, the lot, gone.

But what I am left with are two beautiful children, who get happier and calmer, more respectful, and more productive on a daily basis.

If THAT is the net result of this life that has been, and continues to be a black hole of heartbreak and unimaginable pain, then it will have been worth the universe.

The point?

There is another way OP. It is possible to break the patterns, it is hard and it means re writing everything you have been brought up to believe is normal and worthwhile, but there IS another way.

And there is no better thing than happy, calm children, that is worth more than all the money, the status, class, the illusion of a happy marriage, all that is nothing if you just pass on misery and pain and anguish.

SingingPrincess - I could not admire or agree with you more. The one thing you cannot afford to 'lose' is your children's future happiness, their right to a safe and nurturing environment to grow. Well done you, times a thousand.

I am a good friend of the OP.

Her OH has not returned home as some of you feared. It isn't my place to get involved in a discussion on the situation here but I saw J4J last night and am going to see her again this evening and may stay the night if she wants me to.

She is doing as well as can be expected but she is devastated, confused and frightened obviously. I think it's unwise to focus too much on decisions J has appeared to make so far on this thread as it's fair to say she has been in a state of shock this week and really hasn't made any firm decisions as yet.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and suggestions here ladies.

Thank you waterlego. I can understand the devastation and shock. She needs a voice for herself and not our assumptions. I know we all wish her well. It is only that people care.

I can understand that ToothbrushThief, and I can see that so many posters here have themselves been damaged by DV; of course they are going to feel angry and scared on my friend's behalf.

However, I have been quite hurt by some of the more postings here. Those which imply she has been protecting him for years etc. Indeed, one of Izzy's recent posts makes a great deal of assumptions about my friend and her marriage, almost all of which are erroneous. (See above- 'of course..... of course....)

And this line made me feel quite sick: 'If treating their dc in the manner that the OP and her husband appear to believe is acceptable'

But you know nothing at all about how my friend treats her children. She is an absolutely superb mother and she always acts with their best interests at heart so I have no doubt she will do the same in this situation. She did not cause a situation in which her husband punched her in the face so please don't make her complicit in it.

If I sound defensive, it's because I am. She is in extreme shock and I think patience is needed here.