It seems pretty clear that you are in an abusive relationship, so it’s not useful as a test case for “just” hitting. Again, the fact that you don’t seem to see that is really, really unfortunate, for you and your kid.
I really don’t know why you say this. I bet most couples stay together after the first police call. Maybe not if it was the first act of violence, but I don’t think most women call the police after the very first time, so obviously they have some degree of willingness to tolerate it. And as for the abuser leaving…you just really don’t know abusers.
Not that I would call the police in the OP’s position (and I didn’t when a guy once grabbed my arm hard enough to give me bruises, but I did break it off with him very soon after). I wouldn’t call unless I felt like I was in danger. I think I’m about to get an order of protection tomorrow for not violence, but threats, which I guess I could call the police about too, but there would really be no point.
Or because he chooses not to control himself. There are some very good points in the book I keep shilling about that.
Okay, well I’m glad to hear there haven’t been other times, but it seems like you would think it was a bigger deal the first time! Anyway, yeah, your situation does not sound good, but not as bad as Palo Verde’s.
I’m sorry, this is absolutely hilarious. Not in terms of your relationship, just in general.
Good. Life often is. 
I’ve nearly finishedthat bookand it is, indeed, a very good book. Very clarifying in distinguishing between patterns and incidents. the writer really knows what he is talking about.
I just wanted to chime back in and say I’d be offended you think my relationship must contain either physical abuse or emotional abuse, but I am too happy in my relationship to really be offended.
We never hit. We never call each other names. When we are angry we tell each other so. I’m not saying our relationship is perfect…but ours is very very good and grows better every year.
I have never addressed anyone as a fucking idiot. I’m still breathing. I use the f-word liberally but I never name-call.
Ah, is that what you wanted the thread to be about? (I didn’t get that impression at all from either the thread title or the OP.) Okay, I’ll play
I do think that physical violence is a dealbreaker in our society in a way that other things that happen in a relationship are not as much, for several reasons.
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Physical violence can escalate to have real immediate physical consequences. No one ever got brain damage or died from verbal abuse (well, at least, not directly. I’m not trying to minimize the consequences of verbal or emotional abuse, just making the case as to why people seem to consider it less of an immediate dealbreaker).
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I bet it is the case in most het relationships that a) either the man is stronger than the woman, or b) the woman is more socialized to not cause physical violence than the man. Therefore – although again I’m not discounting the cases of women abusing men – there’s an asymmetry in a man physically abusing a woman that gets people’s kneejerk reactions up. It’s also why I was much less alarmed by your situation than Palo Verde’s; if you’re “taking as good as you’re getting,” it doesn’t set off those buttons for me.
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(This may not be independent from 1 and 2, but it is a separate category in my brain.) You sometimes see people shouting or snapping or being verbally abusive in public. When was the last time you saw someone hitting someone else in public without getting dragged off to jail? It’s just not something that civilized adults do. (Probably, again, for reason 1, but still.) And you know what? You don’t get the “oh, it was the first time” excuse. You hit someone in public, even if you don’t end up in jail it is NOT OKAY (whereas people kind of understand that if you yell in public, maybe you’re just having a bad day).
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I think people get confused as to the difference between verbal/emotional abuse and people just yelling at each other and people being stuck in mutually dysfunctional dependencies. We’ve seen it in this very thread. It’s pretty clear when someone hits you, though.
My parents have a pretty dysfunctional relationship in a lot of ways, complete with constant fighting (much at raised volume), belittling, name-calling, and put-downs. (They don’t curse at each other – I’ve never heard them call each other “fucking idiots” – but I’ve certainly heard them call each other idiots quite a lot.) But they’ve never ever hit each other, and if they did, the other one would probably be out the door!
(I’d tell you about my relationship, but I have a feeling you wouldn’t believe me.)
What do you mean by “I have a feeling you wouldn’t believe me”? Do you mean that literally? That the OP and other readers were thinking you were lying?
Or do you mean because your R is so civilized and too good to be true? Or because it’s completely barbaric and we wouldn’t understand why you’re still in it?
I’d like to know about it and I promise to believe you.
A lot of times these threads just turn into one up man ship, we’ve never even given each other the stink eye etc.
Anyway Maastricht if you really want some unconventional advice, I’d ask you if your relationship is worth it. I mean how do YOU really feel about? Your first description said punched you hard enough to cry, then you dissembled probably out of embarrassment at the pile on to the point he patted you or something.
I mean really fuck all that noise about unhealthy relationships blah blah, is your relationship worth it to YOU? Does the good outweigh the bad, would you be in a better or worse place without him? You don’t need to answer here, just consider it yourself. There is no point in justifying it to people you’ll never meet on the other side of the world, you’re the only one that knows the truth anyway.
Four-year-old aside, I actually think your relationship sounds a lot healthier thans Palo Verdes. I’m not one of those one-hit-split people; one hit, after several years, out of character, is forgivable, so long as you are confidant it won’t happen again, was genuinely a one-off thing, and doesn’t leave you with a changed attitude towards your spouse. If you man was my man, I’d leave him for the petulant childish behavior as a whole, not the hit per se. However, he is not my man, he is yours, and if childishness is your thing, by all means stay and be happy (and I mean that - no sarcasm, honest).
**Palo Verde **described a) one incident of putting the life of four children at risk, and b) one episode of punching and kicking for a good long while - a quite different kettle of fish from your one punch.
So, she should definitely get out, and get out now.
Hee, ThelmaLou, sorry, I didn’t mean you in general wouldn’t believe me. However, Maastricht said,
If that’s the case, she clearly isn’t going to believe that my husband and I have not only never hit each other nor called each other names, but we haven’t even ever yelled at each other. We’ve snapped at each other sarcastically occasionally when we’ve gotten frustrated, but I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the numbers of times that’s happened. We both get angry rather more often than that, but typically when we’re angry at each other we are more likely to take it out on an inanimate object or write a rant about it that no one ever sees rather than hit or yell at each other. We will also, when we’re angry at each other, go away and try to figure out why we’re angry and what the other person’s point of view is, and usually come to the conclusion that we were both being a little too inflexible.
I will be the first to admit that (due to both mr. hunter’s personality and my fear of becoming my mom) we are a little too conflict-avoidant and communication-avoidant than is ideal, and sometimes that does come back to bite us (for example, recently we resolved a problem that had been going on for an absurdly long time because we hadn’t ever discussed it properly before then). We’re working on that – interestingly, part of what is helping with that is having a child, because I’m working on some of these same communication skills with her.
But man, on the whole, I think our relationship is really awesome and fun, whereas Maastricht doesn’t really sound like she’s having a whole lot of fun. And it kind of makes me sad, because I think relationships should be fun!
ETA: ha, grude, I didn’t read your post properly before I posted.
Yeah - I’m just sad that someone could think that happy marriages are mythical.
We’re at 5 years married, 7 together, and we’ve had ONE screaming fight. Even then, we didn’t curse at each other or call names, we were just… really impassioned. He was driving, and he pulled over because he felt he was getting too upset to focus on the road, we fought for less than 15 minutes, we both cried and hugged and made up (problem left unresolved) and that was it.
We’ve had plenty of arguments since then, major and minor, but we rarely ever raise our voices, and I try really hard not to use sarcasm against him (it isn’t his style, but I was raised in a really snarky household) because he takes it badly and I don’t like to hurt him.
That’s the part that I’m seeing as so sad - not seeming to know or feel that you can have arguments and disagreements with someone, even fairly fundamental ones, without wanting to “score points” or hurt the other person. Even when I’m most mad, or frustrated, or aggravated by my husband, I still love him and would do anything to keep him from hurting. If I did something to cut him emotionally, or make him feel LESSER… that’s just terrible. I’m not trying to be super-mushy or anything, but that’s totally against everything that is important about being with someone (married or not).
It’s just a little bit boggling.
Well said, Lasciel.
28yrs, never been called or called my spouse a ‘fucking idiot’. (Sorry, not acceptable for adults, teenagers maybe!)
Think hard about why it’s acceptable for someone to put their hands on you in anger. Leg, head shot, shoving, all the same animal really.
Would it be acceptable for him to treat his child this way? I think not. So why exactly is it okay for his wife to get this treatment.
Except for speed limits.
By the way, the silent treatment is a shitty tactic.
There’s an easy refutation to it. When your husband/wife decides to give you the silent treatment, go with it. If it’s dinner time, just ask, “What do you want for dinner?” If he/she’s silent, just say, “Alright, I’ll take that as ‘nothing’.” If it isn’t dinner time, just go make a cake or something delicious and say, “You want some?” Again, if he/she’s silent, just say, “Alright, I’ll take that as a ‘no’.”
I am sure there are other refutations that don’t require cooking that I don’t know of.
Yeesh almighty. Your husband needs a good ass-kicking.
My point was that a heated argument where names are called of each other once a decade in an otherwise happy relationship doesn’t equal emotional or verbal abuse, a heated name calling argument weekly or daily is a whole nother’ kettle of fish.
I often find people here are too quick to advise get a divorce/split up/etc. I mean if you personally won’t take getting yelled at thats cool but it isn’t good advice.
I actually remember the “fucking idiot” incident and I’ll even type it out here, it was in early 2009 and my wife had recently lost her mother after a long terminal illness and was taking it out on me and I was not giving her enough room to grieve. We were arguing as usual and her nine year old niece came into the room and told me it was my fault. I was speechless and waiting for her to tell her niece to get lost, she didn’t and said her niece was right and anything I wanted to say I could say in front of her.
So I asked her niece to explain why after in the day time I was the butt of crap my wife would come to bed and ask me to suck her pussy?
My wife called me a fucking idiot, I told her she was the fucking idiot who needed a nine year old on her side and walked out.
The next day my wife apologized to me and said she had told her niece off and she would never again get in between us. I apologized for what I said.
We haven’t argued since then, and I’m certainly not going to go looking for a divorce attorney for a argument we had years ago during a stressful time.
That’s a horrible story.
I didn’t think it was heart warming, and I still cringe when I think about it. But I’m about as laid back and unargumentative as they come and so is my wife, shit is still going to happen in any long term relationship or marriage. To think otherwise sets up unrealistic expectations, it would be like expecting to have passionate sex twice daily for your entire marriage.
EDIT:If anyone is curious we got married VERY young, we were both in our early twenties.