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....

I am so sorry OP. You must be reeling. But he hit you so hard you were unconscious. He could have killed you. I really don't think you can risk giving him another chance. Imagine your DD grew up and her partner did this to her. You'd want to kill him, right? So show her it's completely unacceptable. You can do this.

Yes, you CAN do it. It's fucking hard. But you CAN get out

Oh Posie

are they on holiday or do they live there? If they are returning at some point could you speak to your father and tell him you heard it all.
I assume that you have spoken to your mother about leaving and she has refused.

One more voice saying get him out of the house

I was going to say....but didn't want to scare you op. What exactly happened with the police. As if they knew children were in the house, they have to inform SS. So considering the seriousness of it all. He will probably be made to go anyway.

(I won't bore you all with my woes, but they live in China, they were on holiday, he's having an affair with a 36yr old Chinese woman and my mother still wants to stay with him)

To clarifiy the Social services thing. Yes the police MUST inform social services of any incident where children are present.

What happens now will depend on your local authority. Sadly some are incredibly lax and do nothing on a first incident other than send a letter saying "we have heard there was an incident, you have a responsibility to keep your child safe blah blah, please call us if you want help"

more often you will get a visit fro a social worker who will inform you that "allowing" your child to witness violence in the home is a come form of abuse and as such they can become involved. This can lead to Child in need meetings and prolonged refusal to separate from a violent partner has indeed lead to children being removed.

I am not saying this to scare OP, more to show her that it IS a serious issue, not only for her own safety but for the emotional wellbeing of her children.

If he was a good man who just needed to control his anger he would have been absolutely mortified immediately.. The fact he was the complete opposite says everything :(.

You must be beside yourself Posie.

His reaction - that you were overreacting - tells you all you need to know. You have to leave him. Your poor children, witnessing that.

Posie, I'm so sorry you had to go through that. How awful.

YY with regards to his reaction.

It is quite an advanced abuse reaction tbh. In the initial phases of abuse they are normally super apologetic and full of (false) remorse.
it is usually not until they have been abusive for a long time and know that they can get away with it before they start to forget to apologise.

Well, yes. But you get desensitised don't you...

Anyway OP I don't know any victims of a one off incident of DV, unless they split from the abuser. I do know far too many women who found their line of acceptance get further and further away, some it takes hospital, some it takes death.

With my mum it took him beating her so hard she lost her baby.

Cunt, I'm glad he's dead now.

Valar thank you for clarifying - I thought it was important that someone pointed out to the OP that SS may already be involved so allowing her H to stay in the house may not be a good idea (not that it is anyway). You're right, it's not about scaring the OP but about making sure that she's aware that SS may well be in touch, which goes to show how serious this is.

Posie :(

OP, if there has never been any abuse before, if he has never raised his voice, looked at you in a way that frightened you, made threats or implied that it would be a bad idea to disobey or disagree with him, and you never felt that things would be better if you could only be a Better Wife... if your marriage really has been a loving, equal partnership right up until that punch was thrown -

Then this man needs to see his GP urgently, because something is very wrong; he is either suffering from some form of psychosis or he's got a brain tumour.

ANd he needs to be out of the house and living apart from you even if he has developed a serious mental or physical health problem that is not his fault. It still means that you and DC are in danger from him.

I know I used this as a sort of soft way of getting stbx out of the house.

"I don't have a choice about this. You have to move out. We / I will have the children taken away from us/me if you do not leave. We do not want SS crawling all over us " Bla bla

He goes, you get all the help and support you can. SS will get involved and you need to show that you are doing everything to keep DCs safe.
If this was a one-off and totally out of the blue, he phones Respect, talks to GP, gets some serious help asap. But whatever he does you are under no obligation to feel sad, guilty or be pressured into giving him a second chance.

What happens next depends on how you feel and how others judge his actions and what he does to address knocking his P out in front of his DD.
Lean on others, talk to others, and talk on here.

Very good post from SGB. He needs to leave immediately, even if it is not a permanent thing.

Yes Ladyblahblah..I did that too, by telling him that all the agencies said it was too dangerous for him to stay, kind of took the heat off me.

And telling him the truth, that if he moves back in here, there is a chance that the children will be taken into care.

These are facts.

Towards the end the changes came in and Dv was better managed.
We had a call from SS after neighbour had yet again called the police because they could hear him beating me.
I was given "the talk" threatened with what was then the child protection register.

He hid upstairs the entire time.

When they left he beat me up because i had told them i wouldn't let him back. He told me to say he had moved in with his mother.

He continued to beat me for a further 2 years, only now he knew to keep it down. He would hold duvets over my head whilst raping me so that i made no sound. Not that i did anyway. I learned long ago that the more i struggled the more i would be hurt. If i just let it happen it was over sooner.

I sometimes wish that the "first time" was a punch that knocked me out. It would have been obvious and i could have dealt with it there and then. Instead i was submitted to years of ever eroding boundaries of acceptance. shouting, pushing, grabbing etc. always increasing in aggression.

by the end he was holding knives to my throat.

You have been given a rare opportunity to see his behaviour clearly from the start. Please do take it OP.

Thank you to all of those sharing their awful stories today. xxxx

Valar

Oh lovey.

no don't be sad. Rejoice the fact that finally i left and we are now very happy without him.

I'm so glad Valar

Evening J4J, my H was very verbally abusive and difficult but had never hit me. Then one day he did, punched me several times in the head causing black eyes etc.

He too was cautioned as it was a first offence.

What Solidgoldbrass rang true as less than three months later it was discovered he was riddled with cancer, lungs, liver and probably his brain. Liver problems can have an efeect on personality as can brain tumours.

I don't wish to frighten you but I echo that he should see a doctor promtly. I didn't even think that my H should see a doctor as he was always verbally abusive so this was just an escallation. In your relationship this does not seem to be the case.