But what if it is the other way round?

[sufferingtoo]

Namechanged as my DP knows my username. Long time lurker, occasional poster and definitely don't live under a bridge!

Finally got up the courage to post whilst reading a current thread about anger management and did not want to hijack it.

My current situation is almost exactly the same as the OP in that thread. When my DP gets annoyed or something is not going their way they get consumed with rage - there is no violence - just rage and then an extended period of sniping and comments to belittle me.

Our DC is only 4 and I am worried how this will affect him in the future.

The real sting in the tail is that I am DH and the problem is with DW.

For instance we had a very minor disagreement on Sat night that should have resulted in a 5 min husband/wife row at most.

For me it resulted in the standard intensely angry tirade of abuse about how rubbish I am, how she had wasted her life with me, etc. She literally looked like she is going to explode with anger. Sunday was complete scilence except for continued snide comments, Monday not much better and we almost had a civil conversation last night. I did asked "how am I meant to live like this" and got told "don't! just leave!".

Going on past form she will be nice as pie by this evening or tomorrow morning and it will be like it never happened.

Don't get me wrong - I have my failings (as we all do) but I don't think I deserve this.

The advice on here about taking the DC's and getting a better life is all well and good when aimed at the female partner but what can the father do? My plan seems to be to suck it up, protect my DC from it and get us both through this, while trying to get her to realise what she is doing and hopefully improve the situation.

Before you ask - it does seem she was treated much like this as a child - talks about how her parents always put her down etc.

Any advice on how to manage the situation would be gratefully appreciated.

[SanityClause]

It is absolutely possible for an abuser to stop being abusive.

People with a dysfunctional childhood may go on to become abusive in their adult lives. (I said may!) They may then go on to realise that they are playing out their own childhood abuse in their own families. They may get help, and stop the cycle of abuse.

They have to want to do it for themselves, though.

[kentishgirl]

Hi OP,

All I can share is some personal experience. My exhusband would fly into the most appalling rages. Literally frothing at the mouth. He used to terrify people who witnessed it. He never got violent so I wasn't afraid, but it's impossible to deal with.

We talked about it and he tried some DIY anger management stuff (go for walk, go away and mangle up a metal coat hanger, just get out of my face basically). He accepted it was unreasonable and trusted me, so if I said 'you are overreacting, go and calm down', he would.

He was later diagnosed with bi-polar (not a surprise to me), which may have been a contributing factor to this. But he's also just hot-tempered and there was a lot he learned from his mother's equally hot temper. She never dealt with it as an issue and everyone tiptoed round her all her life (apart from ex, who used to have blazing rows with her instead).

Your wife needs to accept this is not ok behaviour. It is destructive to your relationship, it's abusive to you and your children. She needs to seek some help with it. It's not something you can fix yourself.

[drudgewithagrudge]

I grew up in a household with a mother who was very unhappy with the way her life had turned out and took out all her frustration and anger on my father.

She didn't raise her voice but came out with long monologues about how useless he was and what a miserable life she had. He never said a word in reply and I came to regard him as a weak spineless creature who I despised.

Sometimes I was on the receiving end of her wrath and he never stuck up for me which made me despise him even more.

When I married I began repeating my mother's behaviour with my husband with inevitable results. I had two disastrous marriages because I always picked someone I knew would not fight back. I have now been married 20 years and it could have gone the same way as my husband is a very quiet man who doesn't make a fuss.

I have managed to break this cycle of behaviour and we are happy together.

I feel sorry for my mother being like she was and sorry for my father not being able to stand up to her. If these things aren't sorted out they go on from one generation to another.

[Meerka]

silly questoin and sorry if I missed an answer to it already.

Have you tried actually sitting down and calmly talking about these rows and their viciousness? Saying how each of you feels and how the rows make you both feel? On your side pointing out that they are unliveable-with?

If this can be done calmly, you've taken the first step.

If it can't be done then she needs to work out some way of handling them better because none of you, children included, can handle them.

Does she actually, when she's calm, want to split up? Or is it only when she's angry? Is it possible that that's the only time she can say it? Not sayin'that's the case, just asking, you know.


One problem that hasn't been mentioned yet is that IF things should get to the point that you believe you have to leave, it would mean leaving your darling son there most likely becuase she is the primary caregiver :( You'd need to take legal advice but from the little I know your situation regarding him would not be good. This is one of the areas where, when there's verbal or physical violence, the woman has a dangerously unfair advantage (the husband of a close female relative who was violent physically, verbally and emotionally took legal advice and was told that if he left, their children would almost certainly go to her because she could be very convincingly 'normal'. No one who didn't live with her would believe what she was like).

Seems to me that quietly ringing the number Atilla gave for advice / support, and then trying to sit down and discuss the situation without heat with her are possible steps forward. And if it gets to the end of the road, seeing a solicitor with specific focus on how to handle the situation with the son.

Good luck, suffering

[rainbowsmiles]

Aperman, in the UK it is described as severe pmt rather than pmdd. It is real. It is not an excuse. And it is not a justification. And there is little understanding from other women because they experience a little irritability and think it is the same but it is not.

Mood, rages, anger are not always just emotional disorders.

[Twinklestein]

Menstrual psychosis and PNDD are controversial diagnoses, it's true. But then issues around menstruation in general are quite controversial. Women suffering from bad PMS or conditions such as endometriosis can find themselves treated quite badly by doctors.

A couple of pioneers of work on MP - John Studd, who was professor of obstetrics and gynaecology and Imperial College, and Ian Brockington, formerly professor of psychiatry Birmingham uni, believe it is commonly misdiagnosed as bipolar. Both have found that hormonal treatments produce results that psychoactive drugs do not.

[unlucky83]

OP - I will apologise for maybe judging you unfairly in the 'helpfulness' stakes... just I remember saying something very similar to DP once during a row - after biting my tongue more than once and telling myself he was actually trying to help and not being able to articulate exactly why (a seemingly small thing) had lit the blue touch paper...
Have you called her on the 'just go'? Does she really want you to leave? Have you talked about it? Would you leave if that was what she wanted - or would she have to go? If you did leave how would she feel?
Does she actually want the relationship to continue?
I think they are really important questions...

Isetan You know what leaps out at me when I read 'don't - just leave', is that OP's wife does not want to discuss it calmly and without vitriol and if OP doesn't like it he can go.
She said that during 'an almost civil conversation' to the question 'how am I meant to live like this'
So the OP's DW doesn't care what the Op feels/thinks....as far as she is concerned the relationship is over? - or that she thinks that it is ok to behave like that and he has to put up with it?
I do see what you mean...but I still think it could be taken two ways...

Agree speak to Mankind...

(rainbow we are working at the moment on the thinking washing too!)

[Bewilderedotcom]

The PMT debate is nothing but a red herring in trying to excuse this abusive woman's behaviour.

Would anyone here seriously believe that a normal reasonable woman would be completely oblivious to the fact that she regularly flies into 40 minute rages where she verbally enviscerates her partner, then snaps and snarls at him in front of her child for 4 days?

Anyone behaving like this does NOT suffer immediate and lasting amnesia. They CHOOSE to condone their behaviour so they can repeat it. A reasonable person, man or woman, would be mortified at their behaviour and seek to discuss and stop it. There is no indication this is happening or has happened, so please let's stop the PMT stupidity.

[JohnFarleysRuskin]

Agree bewildered. I am finding the excuse-making on this thread quite nauseating.

[badbaldingballerina123]

I'm not going with the pmt idea either . Im fairly confident she's not raging at other people.

Op if your still reading ,why on earth did you sit there and endure a forty minutes character assassination ? I'd have got up and left the room . And the following days snide remarks ? I'd have took the kids out for the day .

[capsium]

Bewildered maybe she is not normal and reasonable because there is something wrong with her. There are medical conditions which affect behaviour, thought processes, lucidity, which if treated, would allow a person to live a relatively normal, happy life.

Perhaps OP's wife is healthy but deeply unhappy, but for a good reason and reacting to this badly. It is impossible to tell.

The thing is you have to excuse people's dysfunctional behaviour at some point. Otherwise all you are left with is anger, the very thing you despise...

[sufferingtoo]

Thanks again for advice - it is helpful. Will respond to points etc tomorrow as I want to sleep on it and digest what has been said.

[capsium]

Of course the children should be sheltered from this. I would take them out too. Depending on the severity if the situation, I might leave with them too.

However demonising their mother is no good either. If she is ill she is ill, if she is just deeply unhappy, there may be a valid reason. It might be possible to correct either situation.

[JohnFarleysRuskin]

Good luck op. you don't have to excuse people's dysfunctional behaviour.

Getting shouted at and abused by your partner is not acceptable.

[capsium]

John you misinterpret me. Excusing is not the same as enabling dysfunctional behaviour. You can excuse the behaviour without enabling it or perpetuating it.

[LadySybilVimes]

OP I was a child in this situation. My dad did what he could to cushion us, but by the time we were teenagers I would lie in bed listening to mum tearing strips off dad and hoping he would just come and get us and walk away. He would have been much happier. He still has to tiptoe around my mum who holds him in nothing but contempt, and both parents still try to moan about the other one to me.
As a parent myself now I have screamed with rage in my childs face when he was about 4. It was the wake up call I needed, and now, with my dh help I am so much more chilled and happy. I knew what I was doing was wrong and changed my behaviour. It wasn't easy, and I had to swallow my pride and apologise more than once.
Unless your dw can accept what she is doing is unacceptable then there is no way forward that doesn't result in her abusing you and later on your son when he starts to stand up to her. As a teenager my mum used to scream that she wished she had never had us, shout she was leaving and drive away in the car. Every time it hurt and I still have trouble accepting that people want to be with me.
Please for the sake of your son do something about this, be that standing up to the abuse or leaving - but please don't just accept it as the status quo.

[badbaldingballerina123]

Premenstrual psychosis ? Serious illness that causes her to be a bitch , but only to her husband in the privacy of her own home ? I've never heard anything like it . What bollocks.

She's a bully , she's abusive to him and she has no respect for him .l bet his sex life is shit too .

This is what would have happened in my house. The minute she started ranting I'd have got up and left the room . If she followed I'd have gone out. The following day with the shitty comments I'd have demanded an apology, if not I'd have took the kids out for the day .

As for why don't you leave , I'd make it absolutely clear that yes , I could leave and might well do so if things don't change . I don't think it would do her any harm to consider what life would be like as a single parent
parent.

[BitOutOfPractice]

I am also gob smacked by the amount of mealy mouthed apologists for what is clearly abusive behaviour here. There is NO WAY that a woman posting this would have been questioned and doubted like the OP has. Really quite embarrassed on MN's behalf tbh

OP I hope you can sort the wheat from the chaff here

I think the most telling posts are from those people whose mothers behaved in a similar way to their fathers, who chose not to respond and "take it". Read those. Your DC are already being affected by this. They will continue to be affected by it as long as it goes on.

Good luck to you OP. I hope you find a way through this

[Twinklestein]

If you read my post more carefully, you would see what I actually said was:

My mother used to go completely mad for a week every month. However she was furious the rest of the time, like the OP's wife, so hormones was only part of the story.

[Twinklestein]

^^That was to baldingballerina123

[badbaldingballerina123]

Twinkle , I wasn't commenting about your post personally .

[capsium]

I don't think it is being a 'mealy mouthed' apologist to mention the possibility that the OP's wife may be ill or deeply unhappy about something.

Only OP knows for sure the scale of her behaviour and again only from his perspective.

Some members of my family work in the mental health and probation services so do appreciate how serious some illnesses can be and how they can affect behaviour. Also how some situations can be turned around and how very difficult some situations can be for all concerned.

Not saying OP's wife is definitely ill but it is a possibility.

[livingzuid]

It's entirely possible for her behaviour to be caused by illness. There isn't enough info from op to understand exactly what is going on. Is she acknowledging that flying randomly off the handle isn't on, for example? Has she promised to seek help and then nothing?

Realising there is a problem and then dealing with it properly is part of any self management of illness and if she's diagnosed and she refuses treatment then that's very serious. But it could explain this behaviour. Illness is no excuse to be abusive but equally if no one knows what's going on then everyone is suffering and no one is getting the help and support they need.

Or she could just be a bully, not discounting that either. But there isn't enough to get a clearer picture of what's going on. Not for me anyway.

[joanofarchitrave]

I am very glad you are going to ring Mankind.

OP, I am astonished to see two posters suggesting that if you leave, you might 'have to' leave your child with your DP. I would suggest that you get legal advice before you do any such thing. Why on earth would a partner concerned about a person's ability to contol their anger do that??? I would suggest that you stay put with your child and ask HER to leave until she can prove that she's got some help and is not going to behave like this any more. And I would expect some pretty good proof.

I don't think your marriage necessarily has to end but I do think that living like this is not what you or your child should have to do.

[Twinklestein]

No worries balding