I hit a man once. I was desperately ashamed at what I had done. Frightened about the loss of control and worried about who I was turning into. I knew it was wrong and I apologised profusely, several times.
Later, I thought about what had happened before I had hit him, and during the confrontation. The cruelty, the goading, being pointlessly and relentlessly argumentative, refusing to stop going on at me when I asked him to, refusing to leave, haranguing me for having the temerity to cry and beg him just to go, and most of all his impassive and complete self-control at the point where I lost mine, his cold superiority when I apologised.
None of that made what I did any less wrong. It is my responsibility to control myself and live up to the right values.
It did bring home to me that this was a relationship with a nasty man that was always going to have an anger-fuelled and abusive dynamic. He was manipulative, uncaring and exploitative and I had to get away from him. I also had the capacity to become angry, unstable, reactive and abusive. If I stayed with him, that is what would happen to me. We would be two abusers locked in a downward spiral.
I went no contact with him 3 weeks later and I have never regretted it.
Control yourself, always. But also ask yourself how on earth you got to the point where your husband thought it was okay to goad you physically for so long and ignore your requests to him to stop, and why you found no other way (leaving the table?) to reassert a boundary.