When does the damage of a father's violent behaviour outweigh the good he brings to the kids world?

[Wherearethewaves]

My husband has a long history of mental ill health, I've always accepted him how he is and given him 100% support whilst holding firm boundaries and somehow we find our way through. But he's started to cross the boundaries. We have 2 kids and when well he's a great dad- the kids adore him. When he's not well he's intolerant, angry and sometimes violent (not directed at us, but in our presence). I know it's abusive, I know the effect it has on the kids and I, but how do you know when tearing the family apart is the lesser of 2 evils?

Never.

My father was a violent and angry man with issues with trauma/mental health (due to his time in the army).

My mother allowed him to take his anger out on me verbally and then it escalated into assault. She still did nothing. This affected me badly obviously and I had no relationship with them as an adult.

Children should not be witnessing violent outburst full stop and should be around someone who can't control their anger.

Well done Rainbow, in breaking the cycle for DD.

OP, it can be done. I hope you will give your DC the gift of a safe and happy home to grow up in, away from a frightening man.

@Rainbow03

To learn more check out the drama triangle. We should all be taught about this...

https://lindagraham-mft.net/triangle-victim-rescuer-persecutor-get/

Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to write, both those with your views and those sharing your experience. I regret not leaving earlier but I guess it's only the future we can change, not the past...

To answer a few questions- he's had some EMDR, covid stopped the sessions and he's not gone back to it, although has carried on seeing psychologist, he's taken a couple of different antidepressants over the years, in both cases he stopped taking them of his own doing, not medical advice.

He normally does apologise afterwards, and then is nice a pie for a while- putting full effort into going over his normal/average contributions- doing the food shopping/making meals etc. But it's a repetitive cycle of crisis, apologise, this is what I want things to be like, crisis, apologise and round we go.

It is much easier to identify an abusive relationship from the outside than the inside. You just confirmed, to me anyway, you're in an abusive relationship with your last paragraph.

Women's Aid may be able to help you exit. Please get the support that you're entitled to and is available 🙏

@Wherearethewaves its really sad and I have a lot of empathy for your husband and indeed my ex. They did not do this to themselves and suffered terribly I’m sure as a child. But this is the really REALLY hard part and it feels so selfish to do but your needs and your children’s needs are not below his. What’s done is done, we’ve had children with mentally damaged (horrible word really)men. I personally feel at fault in my case not really understanding the impact this really would have on our family. But this fault and this empathy can’t lead you to stay. It’s so SO hard to do but leaving and staying is the only way. It’s a massive rollercoaster but my daughter’s anxiety has massively reduced and so has mine. I’m now able to look at this with a much clearer head but it has taken years.

I’m currently sat here in my car waiting to go to a Women’s Aid support group. I have been in the place you are in for a while and am now getting the support I need to enable me to leave.

My situation has involved his issues around mental health which then developed into Alcoholism. All the way along over the years I’ve put it down to one or the other saying once he stops drinking/gets the mental health support he will go back to how he was. Finally he got the support to stop drinking well I’m now 12 months on and the behaviour hasn’t improved dramatically as I hoped it would and I’m now moving towards doing what’s best for the children and me. It has taken me a while to come to this realisation as like you I had periods of good that lessened the effect of the bad (cycle of abuse).

I wanted to say thank you to everyone who had posted with information and advice as it’s really spurred me on this morning knowing that I’m doing the right thing for my children.

I hope you get all the support you and your children need to have a happier life free of his abusive behaviour x

@Wherearethewaves its the cycle that does the damage to children. Even in the good times, you dont really relax, you know its all forced and false because you know that a good time means only one thing and that is that a bad time is next. It means even as an adult I find it really hard/impossible to enjoy the good times because they are always tinged with that dread that there MUST be a bad time next because thats the cycle.

Unfortunately never.

You are currently wiring your children’s brains that they should put up with an abusive partner. They will have an abusive relationship in the future and stay as they think that is what everyone does as they model it on home behaviour.

It's good you have decided to leave. It may be that he can still be in the children's lives and that he can still be a positive thing in their lives if it's managed ok.

Family life can be difficult for people who don't have any of the challenges that your partner has so he might work better as a Saturday trip to Macdonalds type of Dad rather than a full time one. It depends on what's best for the kids.

Do you have other support about?

My DP grew up in a home where his father was violent and angry (not all the time!) and his mum didn't remove him from the situation. He is now no-contact with his dad and very low contact with his mum. He is 47 and hasn't forgiven her for not removing him from that terrifying and unsafe situation.

Your kids will do better without him around!

My dad's like this and my parents are still together. It caused me some problems that looking back I can piece together as being because of his attitude and general way of being, but I love him loads. I'm not sure what would've been better (split up or together) but I think it depends on what you mean by violent. Is he smashing things up and screaming and shouting often? That would be really scary and just so you know it WILL shape your kids personality in some way. People are complex but I'm quite level headed and think about thinks in a round about both sides of the fence way, if I wasn't like that I might not seen the good in my dad and cut my dad off and blamed my mum for always sticking up for him and being too afraid to stand up to him. It's difficult I understand, but regardless of the responses here it depends on how he actually acts, how bad it is, deep down if you truly think it would be beneficial for them to get away from him you should give him an ultimatum and try to help fix his problems first. Give him 6 months or tell him you'll have to leave because it will damage the children and they deserve better. That's more than my mum ever done and I still love her to bits - might trigger him to fix up and sort himself out.

This made me think and I wanted to share my take on this. i had an ex who I absolutely adored - he was a super intelligent and interesting man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to get 2 degrees, had written 6 books in 6 years, he would do anything for anyone, sensitive etc. But.

He lived through DV from birth to age 14 when his dad was removed after trying to kill his mother, he received beatings with belts and planks of wood and fists for as long as he could remember, his dad broke his fingers and ribs which healed crooked. His earliest memory was being 4 and getting between his mum and dad to try and stop a beating. Ex was drinking and taking class A drugs to escape from the age of 13 and remained an alcoholic until the age of 35 when he was near death from alcohol poisoning. He was in juvenile detention. He was a reckless driver. He had at least one cluster B personality disorder and narc traits. He was incredibly manipulative, which I think he learned from his dad who used to manipulate himself out of speeding tickets and business fines. He had no career despite having 2 degrees as he couldn’t hold down a job for longer than a few months, and he always defaulted to casual labour jobs as he had zero self confidence and was very resentful of anyone who hadn’t grown up hard like him. He had an eating disorder his entire life. He had zero threat perception or fear so he had a few life changing accidents that led to mild physical disabilities and a brain injury. He moved every 6 months for about 20 years and didn’t own any assets. He desperately wanted children but could never dare have them as he was worried he would be like his father. There were incidents from his past that were so traumatic that even a couple of years I was with him, he couldn’t talk about to me. Our relationship was a rollercoaster of him getting angry, upset, withdrawing, begging me not to leave, being cold, love bombing. I knew he loved me but he said himself he had never been able to have a normal relationship. Years of DV from his father defined his entire life. He had no coping skills, self esteem, ability to give or receive love or trust. Unfortunately almost like a trauma bond he was very close with his father and won’t hear a word against him most of the time. It’s like cognitive dissonance. He even moved out to live with his father as soon as he was old enough to decide for himself. And yes, the abuse continued, and he became violent himself for a period. (Never towards women afaik but he was in a lot of fights including with his father)

Now, last time I saw him in his 40s, he is chronically depressed, single and still childless, still a drifter. He could have been anything he wanted, without that traumatic past. I truly believe that. He was a great example of someone whose life was ruined before it even started. Not to say you can’t improve on these things in therapy as an adult perhaps, but he could never stay in therapy either because it was too hard for him to discuss his paddy. Sorry for the ramble, but since knowing him I understand how devastating DV can be for an entire life. Please don’t expose your children any more. I am just coming out of an (emotionally) abusive rs myself so I know it’s easier said than done but the scars are real.

Never

The damage of the violent father, but the good he brings to his children's world?
My memories of him (the damage):
Standing outside our bedroom door, quietly demanding to know "you'll tell her what tomorrow?" and my little sister begging me to tell him it had been me speaking, or our toys, and not her (we were about 6 and 8) -then coming in with blows to the kidneys, stinking of alcohol, as we cowered under the bedspreads, curled up to protect ourselves
"Ye horrible thing, you are-you stupid hound" -menacing eye contact, contempt, getting ready to thrash me with his belt
For variety, he sometimes thoughtfully considered bamboo canes from the garden, before choosing a few to thrash me with
Had to eat our meals (same meal for each day of the week-never changed) AS HE DEEMED FIT-ONLY MADE THE MISTAKE ONCE OF MAKING MY PINK MEAT (SPAM) into pretend sandwiches with a layer of ketchup in between
He forced me to eat all the mash first, then the meat, then the peas
We used to have things like a bottle of Sarsons vinegar on the table with raw onion rings and a pile of white bread to bulk out the food-I used to hold the bottle so the reflection of the coal fire made the bubbles look like a dark brown sea, and imagine myself sailing away froM him, whilst hearing him roaring at the table "there's going to be some changes in this house"
Hiding my tears reading then re-reading the same sentence a hundred times whilst simultaneously always knowing exactly where he was and what he was looking at
Creeping out into the freezing and pitch black hall to hide behind a shopping trolley on wheels to be invisible
Ditto re sitting quietly with a cardboard box on my head so i couldn't be seen
Cramming me and my sister into the tiny gap behind the "useful chair"-a dirty armchair piled up with clothes-and the wall, and peering out to check he wasn't coming for us-looking at an atlas and dreaming of escaping
My sister deliberately making her hot water bottle leak so that she could creep into my bed
The punishments if someone had used any hot water on his once a week bath night

Having to go to my Oxford interviews with him pacing around outside (I didn't get in on tht attempt)
Carefully sliding the Daily Express off the table he had his feet on whilst he was sleeping and stinking of beer, only for his reading glasses to gently slide to the floor, before he propelled himself across the room to lift me up by the neck against a wall, flecking me with his mouth foam, and all my mum could do was call his name
Beating the dog when he staggered in pissed and tried to clip it, I hid in the ditch at the bottom of the garden trying to drown out the terror of the yelping and piercing cries
Doing the washing up and ineffectually trying to clean up whilst he and my brother were out drinking, and not being able to go to sleep-coming downstairs and trying, and failing, to wake my mum who was face down on the table surrounded by fag ash, so she could be in bed and asleep before they returned
Listening, waiting, straining, to hear his footsteps coming up the path, the fumbling of the front door key, and the tread on the 12 steps upstairs, praying and begging God that he would go into his room
having to use a potty, in our bedroom, until I was about 10
Sucking a dummy until I was 7, and the suffering when i stopped
The humiliation of thanking him for a present of cheap paper, and being mocked and rejected "you only want me when there's money, you horrible thing"
Diggging the vegetable patch with him and playing a little game where a tiny toy snoopy was lost/found in the soil-and the horror when I realised he was watching me-cue the false exclamation "you're the best dad in the world" to avoid another thrashing.
So when my brother who was 13 years older than me started his campaign of psychological torture and physical menace, the one person who should have protected me, my father-was a presence to be appeased and pleased in every imaginable way
To tell him I slept with steel scissors under my pillow?
To reveal my brother used to make me sit on the floor and chant softly that i was a mong when my mum and my sister were out and I was 8 and he was 21?
Or how he bit the face off my toy Noddy?
To confess that when my brother stuck his head up the chimney, howling abuse about he planned to kill our elderly neighbours i kept silent?
Or to explain that when my dad was out at the pub (once a night in the week and twice a day every weekend) how my brother came out of his pit, screaming to my mum there would be blood and snot all over the walls and he would stab her unless she gave him money for alcohol- and that my response one particularly grim saturday afternoon was to climb out of a window and walk around the village sobbing, but knowing I could never ask anyone for help?
Of course i couldn't tell him-apart from the cruelty he showed us, he was such a mysterious and powerful figure, that when he was out I used to search his pockets, convinced he was in the IRA, or a murderer
I let him walk me down the aisle
I failed to cut all contact when my mum dropped dead
I allowed him to visit when I was married with a young family, and never let him be alone with my children
I did the "right " thing by trying to forgive, pressured by my husband
I walked out in the early hours with my children after facing the fact that i had married a version of my father
The good they brings to their children's world?
Zero

Its taken me decades to allow myself to find a trauma therapist-I begin next week, and wonder if its even possible to find the courage to look for that little lost girl who escaped, despite all the odds, and to love her. and to see the suffering children that my mum, dad and brother once were, and to forgive them.
Don't let this happen to your children too.

From day one the damage has been done. My parents argued all the time, I used to think it was my dad who was the toxic one, but I think it was actually my mother who started it every time. The older I've got the more I realised my mother had a huge part in it. Whatever you do the damage is done.

Oh, this is hard for you.
Of course you love him; that is evident from the way you have suported him, and worked together to help manage his condition.
But this is different and your kids need to feel safe and unafraid. Not to say you cannot rebuild once he is better, but for now, you know what you need to do.
It will be shit, shit for you all, but it will be for the best

My DF was abusive and vile to my DSMum. It was a terrible thing to learn as normal. I married a man who was abusive. I left when the kids were 2&3. It took 9 years for him to loose parental responsibility.

They are both training to be lawyers. They seem to be ok. But leaving was the best thing to do because they grew up from the age of 8&9 with a good man. So they've seen a different version of relationships. And i am an absolute bore on the subject of abuse.