I think my marriage may have ended

[isthisthend]

NC but regular, suspect H reads MN and knows my username. Keeping details scant.

Last night H snapped. He totally lost control after I admittedly but unintentionally provoked an already tricky situation. He burst into to our LO bedroom whilst I was trying & failing to resettle after yet another wake up. He was furious that I had chosen that time to bring up a question whilst LO was howling. The answer is that since LO was born I have done every bedtime, nightwaking & morning. We need to sleep train but for reasons that would out me, he really has to be off work.

H pushed me out of the way to get to LO, I don't know why, perhaps instinctively I fought back standing my ground. LO will only settle with a bf, H has never done a bedtime, I had no reason to think there was a valid reason for H to try and do the settling.

H grabbed my arm and yanked me out of his path to get to LO. Today I have extensive bruising & fingermarks as a result. He agreed to leave me to settle LO and his parting shot was it is over and has been for a while.

We've not spoken since. He's at work. He hasn't seen LO today.

I am devastated. I cannot believe we both behaved like that in front of our LO who was clearly terrified.

His behaviour was so out of character. I don't know if it's over. I don't know if I can ever feel the same way about him now. We have a beautiful LO, lovely home, good jobs, a happy marriage or so I thought. How do we recover from this? Can we?

Its all gone, hasn't it?

Yes, this is dv.

Do you think I was beaten up? I wasn't. I was less bruised than the OP.
It took two instances, actually milder, for me to ring the police and one threat for me to leave the house with my child.

No, it is NOT DV. It was an incident which could have happened under extremely sleep deprivation and stress. Anyone with a child can know how bad it can get.

So, someone snaps - that does not make them an abuser.

Domestic violence is any event of violence. It doesn't have to be more than once. And there is no reason for violence, particularly of the type that leaves bad bruises.
You did not cause it.
You cannot control it. Only he can.

Stop apologising for violence.

It was DV no question whether the OP the decides to accept it and move on is another thing but it is DV no matter what she decides to do

Wow, there are a lot of people personally investing in denying DV. "It's not DV, he just yanked her out of the way. She was standing in the way!"

Thankfully the law has come a lot further than it used to be.

It was dv, lots of us on here have personal experience and recognize what it is.
The fact that he is blanking op is another sign of abuse.
Some good advice on this thread, but also some appalling victim blaming.

Of course this is bloody DV!

He assaulted her!

Jesus wept.

As the mother of five kids I have to agree with Mrsruffolo and Josh. Having a first baby is such a shock to the system for both women and men. If he has never hurt you in any way before then he deserves, your marriage deserves, and your child deserves, a second chance. No way am I condoning violence towards you. He may not have realised what damage he has caused. The only way forward is talking. Not in an accusatory way but keeping to the 'I' word. Good luck and keep on posting.

I also agree with Mrsruffolo, Josh and Holeinmyheart. It is amazing how chronic sleep deprivation can affect people and it sounded like you have both been ill also. I would take photos of the bruising, in case there was a repeat of the violence, but I wouldn't be assuming my marriage had ended if it was 'happy' prior to the incident.

Some strategies I would consider first - a calm, honest talk is needed, without distraction from LO (could your family mind her?). It may help to email him first with things that you feel need to be discussed, rather than make him feel as if he has been 'ambushed' which will put him on the defensive immediately. Marriage counselling may be an option, a trial separation may be another. You also need to find a way to get more sleep - again, can family help?

In answer to your questions, I would say, no, I don't think it has 'all gone' and yes, you can recover from it, if your marriage is otherwise strong. You can both put the incident behind you, and time will help the memory to fade. But you must both want to heal the wounds and recognise that it may not be easy.

Good luck - I hope it all works out.

Yeah, wouldn't want to accuse him of anything. Or put him on the defensive.

You can pretty it up all you like, but victim-blaming is victim-blaming. Shame on you.

Sorry but SHE is the one with the chronic sleep deprivation excuse as she has done all the night wakings and early mornings.

He has no such excuse.

Can't believe the people excusing his behaviour here.

I could understand an "aberration" if he had shown any contrition at all since. But he hasn't. Not at all.

And the suggestions are for the OP to already walk on eggshells around him, just in case he thinks he's "ambushed" or put on the spot. God forbid.

OP my DH slapped me across the face last year, while I was holding our daughter. She was ten months, it was the middle of the night, we were sleep deprived, stressed out, raving lunatics.

Our marriage remains a mess (another ten months later) and everything that is wrong between us contributed to the assault. In that sense, it was important. But I would not describe it as domestic violence, it was utterly out of character. I have no fear of DH, there has been no second incident, despite stress levels rocketing even higher.

He isn't very good verbally, and I am. I can understand why he lashed out.

All of that to say, while the future of my marriage is still not clear, the assault that night is not a deciding factor for me. Interestingly it also does not seem important to him, he has been enormously less apologetic than I thought that he would be, and I have had to confront why I felt he should be so apologetic. I think the short answer is he didn't see it as DV either, or even as gendered, he saw it as an appalling incident between two people in which I was also behaving indefensibly (verbal abuse), and for which we both need to take responsibility.

I am very sorry your husband assaulted you. I am also sorry that you've convinced yourself that it was justified because of your actions or words. I'm especially sorry that you've gone out of your way to log in to an internet forum and tell another victim of DV: "I've minimised it--you can too!"

Just because you excused the violence in your OH it doesn't mean other people should.

What if your OH had hit your baby by accident?

And, btw, he hasn't hit you again YET.

There were 10 years between two incidents with my exH, and he knew it would be a deal breaker. But they did happen again.

The highest likelihood is that it will happen again, not that¨it won't.
Although I do understand why people give second chances (and I did), please realise that there are very few one only events, mostly they are first events. Or the abuse will take a different shape.

And there was a thread a while ago asking people about whether they had been hit once and never again.

Lweji, matilda, I have chosen to share my experience, and I don't do it lightly. Unlike you, I have spoken only to how I feel, and not to how I think the OP should feel.

What do you think sharing your experience accomplishes then, rootypig?

There's too much tolerance for violence within relationships. We, women, already find it too hard to leave a relationship where we have been victims of violence. We stay longer than we should, not less.
We definitely don't need more reasons to stick by and excuse the people who have attacked us.

Why is it that certain posters can't just stop at expressing their opinion and/or sharing their experience- they feel they have the right to comment repeatedly on any other post that doesn't agree with their viewpoint.

What you are saying is that no person can ever be physically aggressive toward their partner without that relationship ending. That simply isn't realistic. I don't think all instances of pushing, hitting, grabbing, slapping in relationships are abusive, though they all are technically classed as DV. Including those by women.

Look, I don't think it's unimportant. I tried to make that point but perhaps it hasn't come across. My mum lost her cool a couple of times when I was growing up and belted me, repeatedly (she didn't believe in smacking and was contrite afterward). She has a lot of anger. This is no doubt a huge part of why she hit me. But in fact the other forms her anger took have been more corrosive. We are NC, so don't accuse me of excusing dysfunction in relationships.

DH hit me and that's not ok. But it wasn't abusive. If it was part of a pattern of abuse in our relationship, then my verbal abuse of him (hello, mother) was much more significant. But really, we were both out of our minds with stress and lack of sleep. Out. of. our. minds.

I think sharing my experience is one perspective among many that OP can take what she wants from. Only she can say what is truly going on here, though thoughts from others will help her to analyse and shape her responses. Actually, it was probably the forcefulness of what I see as the knee jerk reactions from you and others that made me post. I had a thread on relationships at one of my very low points with DH, and a huge number of our problems were forcefully misdiagnosed. Being in the relationship, I knew myself, as OP seems to, that much of it was wide of the mark. Well meaning, but wide of the mark. Now I've had that experience, I know how a thread that is supposed to be for support is simply coopted and becomes some rolling stone, deaf to what the OP has to contribute.

I would support OP wholeheartedly if she said that this is DV. I would support the OP if she decided she wanted to leave her marriage. I am still considering leaving mine. I just won't tell her to do it.

Sorry, the example about my mum was in essence to say that the violence was a symptom of something else that was wrong, a deeper pattern that had to be analysed and addressed. It is the same with DH, we have real issues with supporting each other and communicating - these are intolerable at times of stress. This is the more important factor in my marriage (emphasis on the my).

I don't believe grabbing someone's arm, once, in the heat of an argument, is dv. And I think saying that it is dv is, in fact, what is really 'minimising' the reality of dv.
there is a huge difference between deliberate physical and psychological cruelty and a momentary loss of control. In the newborn phase I did worse than that to my dh when we were both at wits end. Should he have left me immediately? No. Am I a deranged abuser? No. If I was permanently unable to control myself and enjoyed deliberately harming him then that would have been totally different.
maybe the marriage is over and maybe op should leave him, but not, in my view, without having one single conversation about it all..

First, when pps excuse violence, then yes, they should be challenged. As I said, there is already too much tolerance for violence.
Secondly, while grabbing an arm is not great, it is not usually that serious. But IT IS if it leaves extensive bruising & fingermarks. That is very much over the top and an act of aggression.

I'm not even saying, and not many pps, that the OP should necessarily leave because of it. His reaction to it is very important.
As far as updates went, the husband had not apologised or taken responsibility over it. In fact, he acted just as much as the injured party, not speaking to the OP. That is very significant.

What we are saying is that when the victim starts excusing the act, and is the one reaching out to mend the relationship, it's a very bad sign.

And yes, there are degrees of DV. Some are worse than others, but they all start with small acts.
The only way to prevent the worst abuse is to leave when the acts are not considered that serious.

So if there was no bruising she should try to have a conversation and save mariiage, but if there's bruising she shouldn't? What if there were fingermarks but no bruising? What if he hadn't grabbed her, but just pushed past her and that made her step sideways and stub her toe? A stubbed toe can easily be broken.
Nobody on here thinks dv is ok or should be excused, but everything has a context and it's too simplistic to say everyone (male and female? ) should leave their partner over one nasty incident. Lweji, maybe you have the patience of a saint and you've never raised a finger to anyone, never shouted, never lost your temper. But most people are not likethat. I am a very placid pperson, a pacifist and a quaker, but I have shouted at dh, pushed him out of the way in anger,grabbed ds aand shoved him violently into the pushchair at the end of a dreadful day. I don't believe there isa single poster on this thread who has never done those things.
Op needs to clarify what happened with her partner and go from there. The lack of repentance on his part doesn't look promising, I agree, but I think THAT is the danger sign, not the grabbing.

Grabbing someone is an assault, grabbing someone to the extent that it results in injury is battery and a criminal offence. When that offence is against a romantic partner it is known as domestic violence. What the op's partner did is domestic violence, it is a legal fact.