Fantasies of turning the tables on abusive DH

[Revengefantasiesrus]

My DH is sometimes physically abusive.

About twice a year or so (almost invariably alcohol related) he will lose his temper push me, pull my hair, scream in my face, pin me down, intimidate me an in the most extreme scenario has choked me (momentarily) ad held a knife at my eye level.

The rest of the time he is extremely affectionate, loving and kind. As they are.

This weekend he went out with the lads and got utterly wasted and rolled in at 5am. I don't mind this and occasionally do the same myself on a night out with the girls. What I did mind is I asked him to do 2 simple things - not to lose the bank card because it is the only way we had of paying for anything and to make sure he kept enough cash for the taxi because we didn't have any in the house.

Needless to say he came back without cash or card. Plus his shirt was ripped as he ha been fighting. I was not best pleased.

So the next morning at about lunchtime I woke him and gave him a bitchy and sarcastic piece of my mind. Whereat he shouted at me, grabbed me, pinned me on the bed and choked me. Then said it was my fault for pushing his buttons (hollow laugh).

Yes I know I should leave him but I won't be for a huge number of reasons I won't go into.

The point of this post is, has anyone else, having been in this position, had subsequent fantasies where they drug and tie up their partner and then when they wake up do exactly to them what they did to you?

He has apologized, begged forgiveness, says he will never touch me again blah blah blah. But lying in bed last night all I could think of was how much I wanted to see HIM lying there helpless while I scream in his face with a knife in my hand and choke him until he can't breathe and show him just how it feels to be helpless and afraid and completely powerless to make it stop. I want him to see hate and viciousness in my face and to feel visceral fear.

And I want to do it so much I almost feel like I could.

I have forgiven, made allowances, tried to love him and understand how his abusive childhood has damaged him, I have paid for his therapy and medication, I have moved on and put these things behind me so many times. Now, all of a sudden, I don't want to do that any more. I don't want to leave him, for me the good currently does actually outweigh the bad. But I do want to punish him and show him how it feels.

Is it just me?

That really is mawkish, sentimental bullshit

Actually it isn't. It's being a decent human being. My husband gave up his career and moved half way across the world to support me in my career leaving himself with no easy way back into the workplace. If the genders were reversed and I was a bloke saying I wanted to kick out my stay at home wife who had no job and no way of supporting herself because she had been bringing up our kids and supporting my career I'd be rightly slated - no matter how awfully I had been treated. I simply would not do that to him - Or anyone.

If I decide that leaving is the right thing then I will be doing it with decency not vindictiveness and can at least make sure he isn't in a worse position than before we married given that he gave up on his own career (and he was on the signal for another promotion when he resigned) to support my aspirations.

I know his family and his old friends and have had chapter and verse on his previous failed relationships. He is not bigamously married or really a Great Train Robber on the run or anything. I'm under no illusions as to his weaknesses and the ugly parts of his life and character I can assure you. But a little like the nursery rhyme "when he is good he is very very good and when he is bad he is horrid".

I am absolutely 100% positive that my husband has never laid a finger on our nanny or our children. And I'm sure she would tell me if he ever did. She is mid fifties and very experienced with her own children and grandchildren not an insecure young girl. I can imagine him smacking the dog on the nose but absolutely never the children. In fact I slapped my 2 year old on the leg for kicking and he went nuts. Is absolutely passionate about no physical punishment for children (obviously wives don't count in that). Asshole. Am angry again today.

Stop treating him like a child and enabling him to treat you like this. He is a grown man and needs to act like one without you organising his life.

He knows what he is doing to you, he knows he had the ability to do this to his own kids and that you will find yet another excuse to let him get away with it.

He had the opportunity of living a normal, happy family life with you and the kids. He chose to put this at risk by abusing you. His choice. You owe him nothing. Nothing. He had the chance and he chooses to ruin it.

You owe your children love and safety. Do not teach them to accept this for their lives. You can already see your husband is doing to you what was done to him, nobody showed him it was not right.

I left my husband (and I 'only' suffered emotional and financial abuse) with my two children, one of whom has cancer of the brain, because I knew it was not right and I will not bring up my children believing that us right. I have very little money but i know it was the right thing to do my husband had the chance if a happy family life but blew it - his choice and ge faces the consequences.

Stop finding excuses for your husbands behaviour and your inability to protect your children - they deserve more. Stop kidding yourself he won't kill you or hurt your children - is it seriously worth the risk? How will your children feel with their mum dead (or mentally disabled when he stops oxygen to your brain)? How will you feel if he hurts one of your kids and sits them in an ice cold bath to stop the bruises coming out?

Nobody wants to bring their children up alone but it is preferable to a damaged marriage and a damaged life for you and the kids.

Also, another CLASSIC question that really helped me was - if you could step into a parallel reality where you'd split up last year, so the worst of the upset and acrimony is behind you not ahead of you, would you do it?

I have to say for me that is a no. It's not that I fear going through the process of splitting up. I've been through it before with a long term ex and I can do it again. I am quite practical and capable and as I said nothing much in my life would change except I'd be a thousand or so a month better off and my H wouldn't be there. It's not the practicalities which stop me. It's because I love my husband and I love being with him WHEN HE ISN'T ABUSING ME. If he never touched me again and I could be sure of that I'd happily stay with him for the rest of my life. Te problem is I can't be sure of that - in fact I KNOW it will happen again. It always does. Sooner or later. That's why it's so hard. If he was an asshole 10% of the time or even 5% it would be easier. But when it's 1% of the time but tht 1% is REALLY bad it's just hard.

I mean usually this kind of thing goes hand in hand with emotional abuse continued put downs, verbal abuse, escalating behavior. But I don't have any if that. Aside from when he lashes out like this he exhibits no abusive behavior at all towards me or the children. That's why I struggle with it so much.

Your husband is not just 'horrid' - he is a violent physical abuser and threatens your very life each time he has chosen to put his hands around your neck.

You can never be 100 per cent sure he won't hurt your children as I am certain when you married him you were 100 per cent sure he would not hurt you.

I haven't read the whole thread so please forgive if I have missed something crucial. I have had cause to read a lot about abused women and discovered that often the final trigger for the woman to leave is NOT that she is fearful for her own safety (like you, many women normalise and discount the abuse) but is instead when she realises that she is going to kill or hurt her abusive partner if he continues. Presumably this starts with fantasies of revenge such as you have had. Get out before you do anything stupid which results in a very long prison term and heart break. Your situation sounds very dangerous no matter how much you protest that your DH is wonderful 95% of the time: by the way, attacking you even ONCE is once too many. You owe your DH precisely nothing in the light of that. Do not feel guilty about kicking him out.

You can never be 100 per cent sure he won't hurt your children as I am certain when you married him you were 100 per cent sure he would not hurt you.

Sadly not so. He had already been abusive when I married him. But had made huge progress with therapy and medication. When he is in therapy he has never been abusive towards me. Maybe because he would be scared to have to repeat it to his therapist. I believed he had changed. We went for a long time between episodes of abuse once. A long long time. But it happened again eventually. It always does.

He ran out of his meds and went cold turkey for 3 days before he could get another prescription. In that time he lost his temper because r was driving like a maniac and I dared to criticize him. So he screeched back home totally lost it and held a knife to my eye. I was 8 months pregnant.

Before that it had been nearly 2 years since he had done anything of the kind.

I accepted that as long as he keeps taking his antidepressants he won't hurt me. Unless he mixes them with enough booze of course. Then all bets are off.

I'm crying again now.

All bets are off now sweetie. You have done your best for this man, you can hold your head up high that you did your best. But he needs to sort himself out now - you cannot do it for him.

There is no reason on this world that can possibly excuse a man who holds a knife to the eye of his wife, pregnant or not.

Whether you love him or not is irrelevant - you have children who are dependent on you to keep them safe. They need their mum to be strong for them and that means keeping them away from their father until he himself has sorted out his issues. They need you alive, mentally strong and physically able - and these are things your husband is threatening.

We have all made mistakes (me - 2 bad marriages) but accepting our mistakes and sorting them out make us the better person. In your case sorting out means getting this man away from you and your kids.

I wish you strength to do this.

"If the genders were reversed and I was a bloke saying I wanted to kick out my stay at home wife who had no job and no way of supporting herself because she had been bringing up our kids and supporting my career I'd be rightly slated - no matter how awfully I had been treated."

Horshit!

You think people on MN would defend a woman who threatened her husband with knives and strangled him?!

You think a man would be told he was responsible for his abuser just because she was a SAHM?

The "reverse the genders" is always a weak argument, but that is laughable.

You are not leaving him for you, because you want things to stay this way.

It's not for him, or your children, or your parents, or because you're such a wonderful person

Are you entirely blind to how self-indulgent you are about this?

It's quite plain that you enjoy this argument and telling so many people that you will stay because you are so wonderful you will continue to take the pain.

I don't recall ever saying I would stay. Or go. Or that I am wonderful. What I said was I will make my own decisions and won't be bullied by strangers on the Internet into immediately jumping into Leaving the Bastard or kicking him out with nothing regardless of how fucking rude you are to me.

And if I do decide to leave I won't be telling my parents or my children the reasons why. Because it would hurt them to know I was hurt. But sorry, that's me grandstanding my martyrdom isn't it.

i should be taking out an advert in the daily mail to publicist his assholishness and put my Feminist boots on to stomp all over him.

And if that was the case wouldn't I have told people in real life about how wonderful I am an how much pain I can take? You really are a bitch of the first water to come on here and start slagging me off aren't you? Hot nothing better to do with your time than kick people who are already down an vulnerable and trying to find some outlet for their emotions and pain? Shame on you.

People are frightened for you and your children. We are a step removed from your situation and are therefore able to look at it more clearly without your emotions.

I think people are just trying to shock you into realising how dire your situation is as you have normalised some of his behaviour and are taking it on yourself to sort him out.

I did not tell people in rl about my husbands abuse because I was ashamed - ashamed of his behaviour and ashamed I had got myself into this situation. my sons illness bought it into focus what was right and not right, that my shame (deserved or not) had no place in the relationship. For you and your kids the consequences of not sorting this are horrendous.
Fwiw the things I tell my family and friends now they are pleased and proud of me for getting out of the situation.

I have also found that in protecting my children by not telling them why I had left has left them confused. Telling them the reasons )age appropriate and not done to turn them against df) has made them appreciate me for my strength of character.

You are naturally defensive of your reasons to have stayed with your husband despite his abuse, you are trying to reconcile your beliefs against what everybody else is saying to you. It is very hard to make these steps but you have started by talking on here, started a process that hopefully will allow yourself to get out of this situation. You are right in that any separation does not have to be done with vindictiveness but neither do you have to save your husband before saving yourself and your children.

Some posters have expressed their concern for me and my children and I appreciate that. Some posters have taken this as an opportunity to basically character assassinate me and accuse me of actively enjoying the situation I find myself in being self indulgent, martyred and even supremely arrogant. Frankly I'd rather take my chances with my husband than put up with the abuse I've received from mumsnet thanks. I will go back to just keeping my mouth shut and dealing with it. The help and isn't worth the abuse which actually has made me feel worse than I did before I began this thread. I won't be back.

I am so sorry that you feel this way. We want to help you find a way out if this situation. All of us want you to believe in yourself and to know that you do not deserve this abuse. We want you to know that there are ways out of this situation.

If you feel it more helpful to have a private talk with any of us I am sure that we would do what we can to help you.

If you decide not to engage with any poster on here please keep reading other threads where you will see the same advice is given to any woman facing abuse.

If you're still reading OP, hope you're ok. I think posters can be unrealistic in their expectations of how quickly you can change your life. As I see it now your perspective is altered slightly. That' a massive big deal in my opinion. You say you love your husband 90% of the time. The next time he abuses you though, and you say yourself it WILL happen, you will be seeing things from a different perspective than you were before because the reason this thread has upset you is not because of the posts,but because the rationalisations you had constructed are probably faltering a bit.

Sorry that you feel worse after reading this thread, but at the risk of sounding really 'got that t-shirt' I think it's a phase in the process. Obviously you are not going to pack a bag or file for a divorce 72 hours after first putting it out there, in a thread, that you're not comfortable with x, y or z.

I accepted that as long as he keeps taking his antidepressants he won't hurt me. Unless he mixes them with enough booze of course. Then all bets are off.

Yes. And l left him, because he did mix them. And I wouldn't put up with it.

And he was a SAHD, due to his anxiety, and we had just moved countries.
He's now back and to his family.

The main priority is your safety, and of the children too.

You cannot possibly be 100% sure he won't ever hurt the children.

Nobody will slate you for dumping him. And the idiots who do, all you can ask is if they would put up with his aggressive behaviour. And ignore them.

And as minmooch, I did tell DS the reason for daddy not living with us anymore.

In simple terms and allowing him to love his dad anyway.

@ strawberry why on earth have you outed her like that? That was unnecessary. She's not trolling. She's venting. If you identified her as the same OP it's because the details add up. I think it's awful that you've linked to that thread. OP is not jumping through the hoop quickly enough for the viewers, sorry posters, so you will out her?? I am going to ask mn to remove that post. She is entitled to name change. She's entitled to look for perspective on different flaws in the relationship. The fact that she's done this twice in 3 months proves her head is not in the sand.

Give her a break.

I don't think strawberry was trying to "out" the OP, or intending to cast any aspersions by linking.

I read it that she was trying to help.

It might not even be the same person anyway, we have no way of knowing.

Probably a good idea to ask to remove the link. Either the OP doesn't want it made (which is up to her) or it's a different person's problem.

Nope that's me. I've been PMing the OP.

That seems to have been a quantum leap on your part, strawberry.

Apart from 2 small dc and a dh on medication for anxiety, I can't see a connection unless of course that OP deducted 2 years from her age.

Have reported that post, Strawb. Better done by pm, next time, eh?