Confused, but Very Afraid

You should be afraid. This time he busted your eye, next time he may bust your skull. You are in a five alarm fire and you need to get help right away. I am alarmed that you want to stick by him and you need to find out why that is. I can bet that you were abused as a child, which would explain why you have chosen to be with another abuser.

It also explains why you want to stick by him. All abused kids think that they deserve the abuse and they also think that if they were only better kids their parents would stop abusing them and finally love them. This explains why you want to stick by him. It's as if you were trying to fix what went wrong with your parent. If you stick by him and take his garbage, you hope that he will one day change and love you.

Taking his abuse won't change him. Your sticking by him actually rewards him for abusing you and encourages him to do it more. I'm not here to pass judgment or call you names. The first thing you need to do is to enter a therapy group for abused women and work on finding out why you want to stay with someone who is mistreating you.

At the same time, insist that he come with you to couples therapy. In couples therapy, you are going to be working on two things. First, we need to resolve his impulse disorder. This consists of teaching him how to realize when he's furious before he has a chance to go into action. To do this he is going to need to identify the sensations he gets just before he goes out of control. Does his head feel like it's going to burst? Does his stomach knot up? When he feels this sensation, he needs to stand still and tell you to get away from him or he needs to walk away himself.

Right now he doesn't have a short fuse, he has no fuse. He feels enraged with you and acts out in one split second. Recognizing the sensations that arise just before he loses it and then choosing not to act is the way to develop a longer fuse. He also needs to learn to speak to you rather than express his rage through behavior. A man who behaves so abusively, was surely abused himself. He therefore has no model in his mind for what other ways are available for handling his anger.

In therapy he needs to be shown how to describe what you said or did and how he feels about it. You are also going to need to find out what you are doing to aggravate him and then change your ways. Don't misundersand me. I am not condoning the way he is handling his anger, which is totally unacceptable. What I am saying is that you will need to own your part of the equation. Surely you are doing things that provoke him and this needs to stop. At the same time he needs to learn the proper way of telling you what you are doing that he doesn't like.

You can't do this work on your own. So begin group therapy for yourself and couples therapy right away. If he refuses to go to couples therapy, you go to group therapy on your own. Above all else, keep in mind that if he isn't willing to get help, then you are signing on for being a human punching bag for the rest of your life.

Write to me after you have started group and let me know how you are doing.