Did I overreact with my aggressive partner?

[briarrose81]

This is my first time of posting, so please excuse any mistakes! My partner has always been quite an angry person (never actually violent towards me) ? he gets frustrated if life doesn?t work out perfectly (and when does it) and takes out his frustration on me by saying some not very nice things ? including being accused of having an affair to the point where he asks me who I am texting. He gets quite aggressive, has thrown things (recently breaking our new kettle), has put a hole in a door and has thrown the cat across the room so she hit the door.
Today frustrations got to the point where he was struggling to put our DD car seat into the travel system and shook it a little as if to try and force it to lock. He didn?t shake it a lot, I am not accusing him of trying to hurt her but given his history I was concerned as he has been known to get frustrated with objects like that and then hurl them across the room. So, I said to him that I never wanted to see him behave like that with anything that involved our DD. He didn?t even want to listen, got angry and stormed off. He now won?t talk to me, saying that I am accusing him of trying to hurt our DD and won?t talk to me until I apologise. I have tried to explain that I simply don?t want him being aggressive around our DD but he is now threatening to leave by the end of the week and says he will leave me on my own and see how I cope then!
Did I overreact? Am I right to be worried about his aggression around our DD? Should I apologise?

I completely agree with Jux. Please please please ring womens aid and talk this through with someone. They will help you see your options.

Even if throwing cats, smashing doors and breaking kettles is as bad he gets (and it won't be, because it always escalates especially with a child in the house), imagine what a terrifying environment that is for a child to be in. In fact, a child who witnesses that even if they aren't hit, is being abused. It is not okay, not now and not when your child is older. Please get information now.

Why should you leave when he's the one who should live elsewhere, seek help to curb his aggression, and prove that he's not a risk to the safety of your dd, yourself, or any other living creatures you choose to have in your home before you give consideration to living with him again?

If he's as 'upset' as he claims to be, he'll reach this conclusion himself and act on it but, as this board can testify, violent twunts lack the decency gene and it's probable that you will need to enlist help to get him out of your home.

well done on posting here! when i first posted here i was overwhelmed by the ferocity of response, but the people that post on these threads are speaking from experience from inside and outside abusive relationships, and they know what they are talking about.

i didn't leave on my first mumsnet thread, or my second, but i did leave and i am so so so glad i did! you get 'locked in' to a way of being, a relationship pattern, and things slowly creep up and up... until you are living and normalising a life with a constant undercurrent of fear and self doubt and anticipating and smoothing... and you forget how lovely it is on the other side of it all.

so just wanted to say really, perhaps you've taken the first step towards making your life and your babies life a lot happier and freer... which can only be a good thing!

do come on again if like me it takes a while to work out whats happening and what to do... oh and this is REALLY important... if your H starts understanding that the status quo is changing, or you might really leave him, please be careful and safe. learnt through mums net this is a massively dangerous time and you need to take extra care.

Let him leave!

One big push to get him sorted out is required before totally giving up. It's not effective to try and sort it out yourselves, he needs counselling as there is a limit to how much of his issues you should have to take on board. Get the professionals in for support of his anger management, make this a requirement in order for your relationship to continue. If he won't play ball, you know where you stand and make it clear where he stands -ie out in the cold, with you and DD keeping the house. He should go, not you, if he won't get seen to.

One big push to get him sorted out is required before totally giving up

Completely disagree. An abuser won't "get sorted" by counselling or any other means. Counselling doesn't work for abusers. And you don't have to take ANY of his issues on.

Perhaps anger management will help. But this should be done anyway from you and your dd. He needs to go OP. Think forward to when he crosses that line to hurt your or your dd. Neither of you deserves that!

'Get the professionals in' Open? Much in the same way as you'd get the carpet cleaners in?

In these cases the 'professionals' don't make house calls and they are powerless to intervene unless the individual who is in need of help seeks their aid.

That said, I concur with your statement that 'one big push' will get him sorted out as it's patently obvious that this is what it will take to get the twunt's aggressive arse out of the OP's home.

I'd tell him he hasn't got until the end of the week. He must go. And now.

Absolutely agree, waltermitty.

There is a reason why counsellors won't see a couple when one of them is abusive. It is because the abusive one uses the counselling as a kind of info service, learning the responses required to exonerate them of wrong-doing, making the abused partner appear unreasonable, they manipulate it and use it against their already badly abused partner making them even more uncertain and unsure of what is rational and reasonable.

Or he will use things you say in counselling against you later, possibly as reasons to escalate violence later.

Or they will simply derail the entire process and it will be pointless going, but he will be able to say he's going so what are you complaining about.

Go to counselling on your own, certainly. But don't don't don't go to counselling with him.

"Taking on" his issues will simply make you feel more responsible for his anger so that you are even more likely to be thinking that if you had only behaved better, been more careful in what you said or did, hadn't refused sex when you were sick, had managed to stop the baby crying more quickly etc etc etc, then he wouldn't have got angry and beaten the shit out of you, the cat, the baby.

I am glad you are away from an anusive man, double

I've only read your first post.

He threw your CAT across the room?! And you stayed? Get him out NOW.

has thrown the cat across the room so she hit the door

What the FUCK! you're still with this man?? my god! I can't believe you can even type that. Let alone the baby being unsafe around him, this is the kind of the thing you should have called the RSPCA for. Or rehomed the cat for. If you chose to carry on living with him. This makes me so SICK.

Again: he threw a CAT. the cat hit the door. fucking hell. That's not "quite aggressive", it's brutal.

Sorry. Probably the most unhelpful post on here. But I was and still am truly disgusted.

Was the cat ok?

Sadly i know what it is to see a pet abused, my EXP abused my dogs after he stopped getting reactions from beating me, he knew it hurt me more to see him hurting them, he just didn't realise i loved them more than him, as he started on the dogs he started on the kids, too, that was 2 good reasons and he was out on his ear.

Someone said above, that its not a big step from harming an animal to harming a person, no, it isn't, most people arrested for murder or assault have some kind of history of animal abuse previously.

They like voiceless victims, who can't protect themselves.

I hope the cat ran away. It would be bad but still the best thing for her.
Two hours later and I'm still horrified. It is worse than some RSPCA ads.

Briarrose, are you OK? I know it's really frightening to even think of leaving an abusive man, but you do need to.

Have you spoken to Women's Aid? They will help you plan an exit safely, or they might be able to help you to get him out. Leaving your home is an awful thought, but it is not always forever. There are ways of getting him out and yourself safely back in. WA will talk to you about it. Please phone them.

Thanks anyfucker, yes I'm glad too, im sad I wasted so much of my life, but I wouldn't have seen it as wasting at the time. I hope the OP starts on the journey too as I am so so glad I got my reality and life back, & my own head & heart & the absence of a background hum of panic & fear.

Took alot of crying & posting in Relationships to disassociate self from him & realise that I could see him as an abuser. I remember the first time I used that word, was a big step, before then i winced everytime someone else used that term when talking about him...

He didn't look or feel like one to me, the word was too big & too scary to fit in my life (!), I thought he was marvellous but poor him xxx (fill in excuse after excuse & exception after exception as to why he was allowed to behave in that way)... I thought I'd be so lonely without him, do lost, but I felt happy & calm the day he finally moved out... It was a beautiful sense of peace & gentleness - but from inside the relationship I would never have believed it.

Ah I am doing what I know doesn't really work - trying to get people to learn by my experience so they don't have to take so long themselves!

People have to get there in their own time, double but I am absolutely sure that posts like your own that demonstrate there is hope for the future are very helpful and sit in the subconscious of sufferers still in this kind of situation x

If you're lucky he'll leave If he doesn't throw him out

Yes i agree throwing a cat is wrong and the concern would be would he go that one step further.

Can i ask has anything like this ever happened before? and has he always been aggressive?