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

But your emotional needs aren't being met here. It's all about his emotional needs.

Honestly, it's really worrying. The excuses you're making for him and how small you're willing to make yourself and how much responsibility your taking on is not a good sign.

It's certainly a very unequal partnership at the very least. He seems to have a lot of power over you.

And yes, if he's hit you and broken your things that IS abusive. So evidently you can suddenly become abusive after 10 years. The fact that he and you are minimising it is irrelevant.

@Dreamingofthathouse either he had a blackout rage moment and is REALLY dangerous to himself and to you or he is lying so this all goes away.

What you should really reflect on is that he deliberately hit you. It wasn't an accident. He chose to lash out and hurt you because he knew he could.

I know you were verbally abusive. I know you said you instigated things and did not de-escalate BUT he is a grown up adult man and he manages to go through life working away where people annoy, anger and frustrate him without punching them.

He hit you because he knew he could. He doesn't punch his boss or his coworkers or even someone in a shop or on the road who anger him. He hit YOU.

In my view, there is no marriage to save. He absolutely has not taken accountability for what he did and now that line has been crossed and you have shown you won't 'punish' him by calling Police or leaving, he will cross it again and next time he could kill you.

Even if you were in his face screaming and shoving at him like a footballer to a referee, you did not deserve nor did he have the right to hit you.

You have taken all the blame and accountability onto yourself and it is you looking for ways to fix this while he ignores it. He doesn't remember hitting you? I don't believe that for one second and neither should you.

Don't let him sweep this under the rug and you must tell your therapist what he did. Down the line, you'll end up leaving and you'll regret that you covered this up and didn't set a paper trail.

When I recieved counselling from Women's Aid, the counseller told me that my ex following me around the house arguing while preventing me from walking away to cool down was incredibly abusive. I used to endure him screaming in my face calling me names, saying things that weren't true for hours with no escape until I snapped. And then I would lash out. Then he would be all smug that I pushed at him, that I was physically abusive. I was the domestic abuser, apparently.
It's a known form of domestic abuse.

The fact is that I'm a normal person who gets pissed off when accused of things I didn't do and I need to be able to park a discussion before it gets to tempers flaring and walk away to think it through coming back a few hours later, calmer, less defensive and with a few suggested solutions.

And the reason I know that I'm not a domestic abuser and that it was part of the reaction to the verbal abuse is that in all the nearly 20 years with DH, having been through unemployment, infertility, job insecurity, the baby years, bereavement, and near poverty, never, not once have we ever had an argument on that scale or even anywhere near. I'd say we've yelled maybe 3 or 4 times in the entirely of our relationship and when that happened we quickly stepped back from the issue until we are able to discuss it further.

So what you did was abusive.
What he did was abusive.
We can argue the semantics of who was 'worse' but it doesn't really matter.

Where you go from here, I do not know. But you both separately need to do a lot of work on yourselves before you can even start the work on what a healthy relationship looks like and maybe you are better apart. The kids don't deserve this home life.

So now you are tiptoeing around him and he is keeping a finger to the wind to see if he has got away with his eruption of rage and violence.

He 'can't remember' punching you.

You are doing the spadework for therapy but he has 'not really engaged a lot'.

Your confusion is understandable. But you need to get up to speed here fast.

You must give him time. As they say still waters run very deep.

You were both wrong.

He’s not been well and this has probably really affected him more than you know and really brought him down.

Perhaps he doesn’t know what to think …yet. Not surprisingly.

Women are generally far better at getting their thoughts into formation about emotional relationship issues.

He’ll get there, but he needs more time to assimilate it.

Don’t throw away a really good person because people on here are projecting about their own relationships.

Slow yourself right down it’s still very shocking for both of you, and then and only then, start to rebuild in the right positive direction.

You can BOTH learn from this.

Keep this in mind OP.

He hurt you but doesn't remember?

He sould be appalled but isn't?

DV can start at an point in a relationship.

10 years in means nothing.

You need to protect yourself and your children.

Argh, please op, think about what you wrote. He consistently doesn't engage on key issues. Then, when you lost your temper he used that as an excuse to be violent to you... to shut you up. Now he is both gaslighting you AND has successfully ensured you are nervous to bring things up again.

I am appalled at the people on this thread telling you, in effect, to be kind to him because he hit you.

He has not become suddenly abusive after 10 years. He has ramped up the abuse that he has been slowly building up over 10 years.

I bet there are a million other little things he has done to control you that you aren't even aware of. Ways to ensure you carry the domestic load. Perhaps things he does you dont like but you have learnt to be silent on. Possibly financial control or even control of who you see or spend time with.

@OhBling says what I was going to type out. Stop thinking "I made him do it".

This, times a thousand.

I don't think people are reading the thread properly. She's certain she made him do it but then when she describes what she actually said, it's sounds like frustration at being stonewalled resulting in her snapping and losing her temper.

You shouldn't have to never ever lose your temper to not have someone get violent with you. You don't need to be perfect to not get hit.

If she's so abusive, why is she the one walking on eggshells now and doing all the hard graft and defending him? Abusers don't do that. They do pretend it didn't happen and continue making you feel as nervous as possible for their own benefit though.

A lot of us say we'd leave if anyone ever did X or Y but by the time you're so enmeshed in another person's twisted logic, you find that even violence isn't a boundary for you.

I don't think OP is ready to accept this yet though and I don't want to tell her what to think and how to feel because it sounds like she's had plenty of that already in this marriage.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Sorry if some of you feel frustrated I’m not listening, I really am reading and reflecting on each post. That said some of you are missing what I said about partner being calm, great, supportive, and our life together being good until recent challenges increased our stress levels a lot.

He has never told me what to think or do, I’ve had a fun career with lots of opportunities including travel away from the UK, control my finances and the family pot because he thinks I’m better at budgeting. He does an equal share of the parenting and domestic load. He enjoys cleaning the kitchen 😂. Never wants to know exactly who I’m out with or if I’m with male friends. So lots of good things there, and definitely not a controlling abuser, though I absolutely don’t condone his behaviour last week!

I have told him that if he ever raises a finger again (against me or the children) I will leave - and nothing will stop me from doing that, so please be reassured I’m not on a slippery slope!

but still, I’m struggling with his inability to solve issues, or at least, to solve them quickly and decisively, and it feels like this situation is no exception. So everything drags. We go through life with everything a little less good than what it could be, and he is ok with that. We could talk, he could ask me how I’m feeling (instead of just trying to hold my hand 🙄) but instead we are just doing all the logistics of being parents and pretending it’s another cheerful week.

some of you have said I need to either accept him as he is or leave. So I guess it’s down to that.

but when weighing it up, I think I will try to focus on what he has been for 10+ years (rather than just one incident that in all likelihood won’t happen again)

I'm only reading your updates OP and from them I can gather the majority are in the LTB boat. I'm not! I would absolutely (going by your description of the rest of your relationship, over 10 plus years) stay and work through this. I see this as an explosion of frustration, by your own admission, contributed to (in part) your words. I have never seen a situation where a person is being abused physically where there is not also controlling behaviour, emotional abuse, nastiness, isolation etc etc. Of course, it cannot happen again. And I also believe he should NOT try to minimize what he did. Yes, you can own up to vicious words. But he needs to take ownership of what he did, and stress that it will NEVER happen again. Not that I think it should be talked about forever either.... Discuss it fully, move on. That's what I would do

I stayed with a husband who "didn't remember" assaulting me when I was pregnant. Sixteen years later I have just left with the children after another assault. He doesn't "remember" this one either.

Totally agree. I think he also has some serious thinking to do about your abuse of him

But verbal abuse and bullying is ok?

I have told him that if he ever raises a finger again (against me or the children) I will leave - and nothing will stop me from doing that, so please be reassured I’m not on a slippery slope!

so, in the moment, when you said those exact words, what was his response? What was his body language, how did he react? Did it continue to be zero engagement, blank look and did he continue not to take you seriously?

I'm not necessarily in the LTB camp in this one, however there is nothing worse in a relationship than not being listened to and not have needs and wants taken into consideration or being minimised as "oh god, she's off on one again" attitude.

The picture you've painted is of a husband who wants a quiet life, minimal communication other than practicals but none of the deep stuff. You don't sound like you're on the same wave length. You want to confront things head on, talk, get things out there (hence when nothing happens, it makes you boil over and say, quite frankly, goady things to get a response). Meanwhile he is happy sticking his head in the sand until the storm passes.

the worrying thing about the triggering episode, your "big row", is the way he passively let you chase around trying to book a counsellor while he observes from the sidelines, as if it lets him off the hook and it's your ownership not a joint situation that needs to be sorted out.

the unfortunate thing is that you've given him an ultimatum about him never hitting you again. That's a Sword of Damocles over his head and even if he never ever does it again, he could feel resentful of you doing that, which isn't a good basis for the relationship.

are you both going to take up the marriage counselling or did that fall by the wayside?

A little update - we have spoken a lot over the last two weeks, and DH is keen to make things work and change the way we communicate so we can argue less and find more happiness together.
I did ask him why he was initially so aloof and his response was that he wanted to give me space and didn’t think it was appropriate to “love-bomb” me after what happened. I think that’s fair and probably a respectful way of acknowledging what happened.
I’ve started seeing a therapist - and DH will do the same, separately, at least in the beginning. We will seek guidance from the therapist on when / if / how to introduce joint therapy. I hope this will help me unlearn some of the bad behaviours and defence mechanisms I learned from growing up in a dysfunctional family in a neutral space before talking through things as a couple.
Overall I’m hopeful we can turn things around…

@stormwatcher I’m so sorry for what happened to you. I hope you and your children are now safe.

Your doing what a lot of women do who live with abusive partners, your making excuses.
You will spend the rest of your life walking on eggshells because he's shown you what will happen when you don't behave how he wants you to.
He won't be posting on some forum blaming himself like you are.
We all lead stressful lives, we all have stuff going on, but it's no excuse to act violently.A
I have zero respect and tolerance for men who have no self control and resort to smashing things up and lashing out when things don't go their way.
You say it's the first time, but how do you know it will be the last?

You both sound abusive and need to either split or have extensive therapy.

It’s unacceptable that you have clearly got form for being nasty and badgering someone repeatedly until they snap. You weren’t going to stop tonight until you got a reaction.

However, regardless of what you actually said, he should never have hit you. That was completely wrong of him and unfortunately there’s little coming back from that.

The whole thing sounds awful for the kids involved. It’s one thing the two of you tearing each other apart, but for your kids to have to witness this and the aftermath? It’s awful. It can’t continue.

This sounds like a positive update but I’d still be wary going into this.

It is going to take a lot of work and 100% dedication from both of you. Why has DH not started counselling yet?

It sounds like you’ve took responsibility for your actions and have a plan, but it comes across as if you’ve came up with a plan for the both of you, rather than him having a 50:50 input.

I’d just be concerned he won’t go to counselling, or he’ll bail out of it fairly soon after starting.

Don’t let yourself be the only one making sacrifices to make this work. It has to be equal or it won’t even get off the ground.

How will him going into counselling help if he doesn't even 'remember' he punched you? Sounds that he will just lie to the counsellor like he's lying to you.
The marriage is over. You are clutching at straws. Just a matter of how long before you accept it. Once his violence towards you is acceptable, how long before it will also be acceptable towards your children and also 'forgotten'.

It's not too, late to report to the Police. You need a paper trail. You may be entirely wrong that your children did not witness this. You really think they just slept through the shouting, the smashing of plates, the violence?

He won't remember the next time or the next either and you could be forced to allow your children to see an abuser as it will just be their word, your word against a gaslighting man.

Change the way you communicate ffs, he was violent towards you. I don't think that the responses in this thread blaming you for his violence are helpful at all. He is an adult responsible for his own behaviour. He sounds 100% abusive and manipulative. And now the solution seems to be you work on yourself. But he does what?? Continues to conveniently 'forget' his violence towards you. The only good thing is that you're having therapy by yourself.

Call the police. Physical violence is never acceptable. Don't make excuses for him.