Husband’s violent outburst - is it over?

[Dreamingofthathouse]

We’ve been married many years, until recently a fairly happy marriage though with time we have encountered many of the usual life challenges (two full time jobs with small children, including one with challenging behaviour, aging parents with health issues, some of our own health issues and of course the current economic situation). These have started to wear us down and we have very little time to properly address issues.

As a result tensions have mounted, and I should preface this by saying I am that annoying partner who always brings up issues and wants to discuss how to solve them, even on a Sunday evening when my husband would rather relax (and has made this very clear).

In truth I really pushed all his buttons tonight including saying several insulting things. I’m not proud of it and in retrospect I was selfish to not just let him relax ahead of a long and stressful week. But I know my behaviour also stems from not feeling heard. At any rate, he then (for the first time) had a big violent fit, threw some of my things out the window, slammed doors, broke a bunch of plates and punched me in the arm when I tried to stop him. I am sleeping in the living room tonight. I told him not to come close to me and he told me that I am a bully and have been so unpleasant I drove him out of his mind.

I’m really sad, I’m not proud of my behaviour, I’m a little shocked (but somehow not that shocked, oddly) but I’m also not seeing a way around what he has done and I’m not sure what to do with our small children who are in the mix.

IANBU: I can work on my behaviour and as this was a complete one off triggered by me we can reset and he won’t turn violent again

IABU: this is a new side to my husband I have discovered and after this there is no way back. Anyway if I’ve driven an otherwise peaceful man to madness there is no going back from here

Hmm it won't be a popular view but you sound hard to live with , the drip drip pressure , you clearly wound him up but his reaction was bad.

I am going to go back to real life now.

But before I go I will try to clear up some of the remaining confusion.

My behaviour HAS been verbally abusive - it has been bad, even if my posts don’t show the full extent. It’s about what you say, how, when and how often and the spin on it that can gradually eat away at a person’s mental health, even if this was absolutely NOT my intention. The narrative that I’m afraid to talk to him is in this case not correct - I have trouble letting go and NOT talking when I’m angry. i bring up issues too often, that’s part of the problem, sometimes if your life is full of problems you need to change how you deal with things instead of stamping out every inch of happiness and peace.

Those who say we bring out the worst in each other are sadly right. It wasn’t this way before but as I said in my original post, we have a lot more challenges in our lives today creating stress.

I am thinking we should try to reset with professional help (therapy). Curious to read some recommending that we should get individual therapy vs joint, maybe we should do both:

I am not going to use this as an opportunity to blame him etc - I’m not proud of what either of us have done and for now I’m not telling anyone in real life.

which is again why I have appreciated all the advice and views on here.
Maybe I will show this to my husband when the time is right - it might help him also to see the wide range of views that have been expressed.

I will get slammed for this but I do not think that the husband is going to continue along the path of abuser. I think OP pushed him to his limit and beyond and he did not attack her, he attacked her stuff and her assault was a unintentional consequence of him throwing her stuff out. We all have these insane moments and he has never shown this tendency before. If he had set out intentionally to hurt her then there would be no way back and the relationship should end immediately. It probably should end as communication has become so toxic and OP is feeling so unheard she invades and attacks him in his safe space and he had nowhere left to go. If the male/female roles were reversed in the above scenario would we be making the same predictions of escalating violence?

"it was an issue at school with one of our children. I strongly believe we need to move the child to a new school asap but my husband would prefer the problem to go away and thinks I’m exaggerating it, etc. This drives me up the wall and I said many nasty things, many of them untrue (like calling him selfish, unwilling to engage, lazy, saying I can’t respect or live with a partner who always gets in the way of solutions, etc)"

Selfish, unwilling to engage, lazy, I don't want to live with a partner who gets in the way of solutions.

I can't see what of that is "vile" or "abusive". Given that you have a child with a school problem and he's burying his head in the sand, I'd say you've just told him a few home truths. Just because someone doesn't want to hear what they've been told, doesn't automatically make it abuse.

I think back to when I'd split up with an abusive partner. I remember saying that I wasn't easy to live with, that I had a sharp tongue, that we rubbed each other up in the wrong way. That it was just as much my fault as his. That's how I'd been conditioned to think, that or that it was actually all my fault.

Many years and a LOT of therapy later, I came to understand that I was not in the wrong and I did nothing to deserve the treatment I received; my ex was the abusive one. The narrative of me being at fault was one that had been fed to me, a slow drip-feed over time, by him and I readily accepted it because the alternative was facing up to the man I loved, who I thought was so kind and wonderful (and who was though to be so by everyone around me) was a man whose issues meant he controlled and bullied as a way of dealing with them. It took a looooong time for me to even recognise it, let alone come to terms with it.

Honestly, I would get in touch with someone like Women's Aid and get some good - and most importantly individual - counselling. It will help you step back and see what's really going on here, one way or the other, but it is important that it is on your own, at least to start with, because abusers can be very good at misrepresenting situations, even to trained professionals.

I wish you good luck.

(@Dreamingofthathouse, I would also consider getting this thread moved from AIBU to Relationships.)

This.

Sorry OP but your husband isn't the good guy you say he is.

The things you said to him do not constitute vile verbal abuse.

How can I do this?

Please don't show this thread to DH. It will give him more ammunition against you. Agree this thread would be better in relationships. You're still blaming yourself for him punching you and hiding his violence. Have therapy by yourself

If you report your post (there's an exclamation mark under the posts with 'Report') you can use that as a way to ask MN to move it.

I have trouble letting go and NOT talking when I’m angry. i bring up issues too often, that’s part of the problem, sometimes if your life is full of problems you need to change how you deal with things instead of stamping out every inch of happiness and peace.

Except that the whole reason you were so angry is that he refuses to engage with you on the issue of your DD"s schooling? So.... these two things are contradictory. The above sounds like a line he has fed you frankly. Is it something he often complains about/tells you is a problem?

I’d love to know your ex’s version of that.

If you genuinely think your spouse is lazy, selfish, unwilling to engage and generally defective- what the hell are you doing staying in a relationship with them? Staying with someone you despise because both of you have got comfortable with one person being “The Shit One” is a horror.

What did I just read? Would you tell a friend that she was wrong to be insisting on a conversation with her partner?

Would you believe that she MADE him have a temper tantrum and hit her? I suspect you'd be telling her to get away from the poor excuse for a human and get herself out of the situation for good.

He won't change he makes you responsible for his behaviour. There's no way back from that.

I’d love to know your ex’s version of that.

Wow. Do you say that to all people who've suffered abuse?

As it happens, I brought it up and he admitted it, saying that he knew he'd behaved like that but he didn't mean to. Does that help?

I think there is a lot of stuff where OP’s situation can be interpreted in two ways.

I do think it’s obvious the relationship is dreadful for anyone misfortunate enough to live in that house. Her words and actions demonstrate contempt- they are vile.

Even in regard to changing schools- her side is clear; and his isn’t.

What is clear to me, is that if he had written before this row- he would be told to leave her, a million times over.

OP- do you speak to your children with the same tone and harshness as for him?

No I don’t, it’s not usually necessary.

Where were the children when this occurred?

@Dreamingofthathouse You need to give your head a wobble if you reckon showing your husband who has threatened to fight you for custody a thread where you publicly and repeatedly admit to being abusive toward him! Think woman!

Then he could have gone out for a walk, went for a car drive or just did anything but what he did.

I do though, wish to know why you feel the need to escalate things the way you say you do. "Being heard" is not a reason to do low blows, insults and to denigrate the other person.

There is no reason he should ever have laid hands on you, but I almost get the idea that you were hoping he would.

I think you both need to get away from each other, permanently. Then you need to get some psychological help as to why you think "talking things through" needs to involve insults, put-downs, and aggressive posturing.

There's some very worrying responses on this thread. Yes, reactive abuse is a thing. But I think we're dealing with an unreliable narrator here (no offense to you, OP). No one deserves to be assaulted.

What you said is not verbally abusive. I think you've been convinced that voicing your opinions is unacceptable nagging, that you should accept that you need to shut up when he is fed up of a topic, that he should not ever be criticised, and that continuing to try and make your point and getting angry when he doesn't listen is verbal abuse.

It sounds like he's got you very well trained, to the point where you genuinely believe the reason he smashes your belongings and punches you is because you made him do it.

Please please ignore the PPs blaming you for making him do this to you. You've been assaulted, which is a criminal offence.

Given what he's said previously about trying to take custody away from you (another glaringly obvious red flag) I really think you should report this to the police. You may very well live to regret not having that evidence in the future. The family courts aren't run fairly and they simply won't believe you that this has happened without a crime reference number.

Please take care of yourself 🌺🌺

Threatening to take someone’s kids away is pretty vile tbh

I think his reaction after the event says it all really. Rather than apologising, taking responsibility and taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again, he has just blamed you. This is not a good sign.

It also sounds like he has done some work over the years to convince you that you are the problem. As for the whole thing about you having issues as a couple and you feeling you shouldn’t raise these while he is trying to relax? BS. All couples have issues that they need to discuss and in a healthy relationship people feel safe enough to discuss what is bothering them and have a partner who is willing to listen.

I suspect that he has shut you down when you have repeatedly tried to raise issues previously, until the situation became such that you couldn’t hold back on this occasion. Am I right? And we’re you really ‘verbally abusive’ or did you just tell him a few well deserved home truths?

Violence is never okay. But however you look at it you are not making each other happy and the whole thing sounds destructive.

For me, it's the punching you that has escalated this situation. Shouting, throwing things (not at each other), are not great; but not directed at an individual.
The punch makes it a different situation, and I would potentially be asking him to go somewhere else for at least a few days, so that you can both consider the situation, and if you are serious about it, seek some outside help/counselling. I suppose you could come through this, but it's a massive amount of work to get there...

I can think of some things. My father once punched my mother in the face and whilst I absolutely don't condone the violence, I heard what she said to him before he did it. He was wrong, but I can understand why he wanted to make it stop. She's a vile, abusive, repellent woman and I'm quite pleased that I've had sufficient control to never put a brick through her face, even while dissociating. (We are NC.)

People saying OP wasn't abusive towards him - she was. Nothing she said was that bad - it was.

If a woman came on here saying her DH told her all the time how lazy, selfish and neglectful she was to him and said they can’t respect them as a partner they'd be in uproar telling her its as bad as physical abuse and to leave. OP says she said all this in a way intended to hurt him, that she knowingly pushed all the buttons she knew how to press. These are all words designed to destroy a partners self esteem. It is abuse.

He may well be all those things. But OP should have addressed issues in a non-abusive manner. If that happens and they are unwilling to make changes then you need to decide to put up with it knowing that's what you're signing up for or leave, not get verbally abusive.

Does that mean I'm making excuses for his behaviour? No, he was just as wrong when he turned it violent. While OPs abuse may have driven him to it, he should also have left when the abuse started rather than returning it.

They bring out the worst in eachother. They're both very much guilty and what they did wrong was not seperating before it got this far.