98% of the time dh is my best friend and we are very happy together. However, he has a history of emotional abuse. Generally, wanting to control things, blaming me for anything and everything and punishing me for normal, everyday 'mistakes'. For a long time I had no idea that it was abuse but a few years ago I eventually worked it out when it came to a head and he grabbed me round the neck during an argument.
I gave him an ultimatum of sorting it or leaving. He took a little bit of time to accept the facts but then he attended a group for a year and things were a million times better.
There have been a few times when he has lapsed but not significantly so. But I have become increasingly worried recently, especially with his behaviour to the dc. He is harsh with dd even though she is a really good kid. Also not allowing me any influence over decisions that involve the children esp discipline related. In fact he often comes up with unreasonable draconian consequences for the dc and then accuses me of undermining him when I don't back him up. When I am not in the room i sometimes hear that ds is being naughty and then I go into the room and ds cries that dh has hurt him. dh doesn't exactly deny it but won't admit it either. If I say that I don't think that any one in our family should hurt anyone else, dh will accuse me of undermining him and get very angry.
I don't get any influence over what we do as a family like going out for the day or holidays. He does occasionally ask my opinion but I have learnt to prevaricate because he has already decided what he wants to do and if I don't give him the right answer he isn't happy.
So, I wrote these grievances down for him and he read them. As usual he tried to distract from the actual issue with a million 'reasons' for the behaviours but I just kept coming back to what I'd written and saying that the 'reasons' could never excuse abusive behaviour. The conversation went on for hours...
Anyway, the next day he went onto my kindle and saw that I was reading Lundy Bancroft's 'should I stay or should I go' and he got very upset. His main point was how did he think that he felt when he saw me reading that? I said it wasn't really relevant and that the only feelings we should be talking about were mine and the children's when he behaved in unreasonable ways. The conversation went on for a long time with him trying to emotionally manipulate me into feeling sorry for him (I have ended up doing that so many times in the past) However, I did tell him that I wasn't planning on leaving him (which I probably shouldn't have done). He asked me how I thought he must feel working so hard to be a good husband and father (and he does absolutely contribute fully to the childcare and housework) and then for me to tell him that he was a worthless piece of shit, I just calmly reminded him that I had not said that. At one point he got a really angry look on his face and just stared and stared. I told him he was scaring me and he stopped.
The next day he did say that he had understood my grievances and was simply going to change his behaviour. The worrying thing is that it took us two days to get to that point. i.e. his response to me calmly and reasonably bringing up the fact that he was engaging in EA again was to engage in two full days of worse EA before he got the message- not good.
As is so often the case, he is a wonderful husband and father for a lot of the time, but of course all that is rendered worthless whenever he breaks our trust. I feel awful for saying it but sometimes I even wonder if all the 'perfect husband and father' is actually an act so he can be admired and bask in the glow of approval from everyone around us. It somehow makes me 'less' by comparison too (or am I just paranoid?)
Basically, I have been super-humanly calm and collected about this and I wonder how I can be? Is it healthy? Does it make him think I am impervious? How big a problem is this? I know that something more 'substantial' needs to be done to formalise an agreement between us to protect me and the dc from EA subtly creeping back in again sooner or later but what?
Sorry this is so long but I've been scared to actually post in case he finds it but then why should I hide?