Divorce stress (TW: Violence)
I filed for divorce a month ago due to domestic violence situations. On new years my brother came over and we were drinking with my wife. As the night ends I go up to put my child to sleep. My wife and brother were yelling load and I look over the balcony and my wife is grabbing my brothers arm (he just got a new tattoo) and she was making fun of him and he looked uncomfortable so I told her to stop being weird. She got upset and ran upstairs to confront me and said I need to stop being insecure and starts insulting me and I kept telling her to stop yelling and apologizing and telling her he just looked uncomfortable and he’s insecure about the tattoo. She tells me to go downstairs and that she would put our child to sleep. I go downstairs and then she follows me and starts berating me in front of my brother and continues to insult me. I keep trying to tell her to stop and we get into an argument. She tells us to leave and I say no that we can just stop arguing and then she dials 911 then immediately hangs up. I was afraid of how she’d try to manipulate the event so I start recording everything. She gets extremely angry about me recording and multiple times she lunged at me trying to get the phone out of my hands. She ended up choking me which I have on video, kept blocking the doorway preventing me from leaving. She ended up tackling me and chocking me again, scratched my face and then bit my arm to the point it drew blood. Me and my brother got an uber to my parents after this and when my mom saw the marks she told me I need to leave the relationship or my wife would kill me eventually. My mom called the police the following day and then my wife was arrested. I bailed her out the next day. We went to therapy and she was trying extremely hard in our relationship.
Then a month later she had her first trial for assault family violence and she was upset. When I got home from work she was already drinking. I had a few drinks with her. After our daughter went to sleep we had sex then we went upstairs and she wanted to have sex again and I refused. She became irrational and then grabbed a kitchen knife and threatened to kill herself. I tried talking her down but then my child woke up so I ran upstairs to check on her. My wife followed upstairs with the knife. I told her to stop and that our child shouldn’t see this and she said *** our child. I called 911 and she stabbed at the door and kept trying to force her way into the room. My child was traumatized. The police had to break down our front door and restrain her. She wasn’t complying with the officers on site and had to be taken off the property in a medical bed. I filed for divorce after this event.
A week ago we had sex after not seeing each other in a month and then I chose to end it. She then proceeded to have her attorney file a protective order against me. My attorney is saying she’s trying to do this to counter mine. And that this event has put us in a hard position for the protective order against her and the divorce/custody fight. I blame myself for the events that transpired in the past few months and thoughts like I wish I didn’t say anything on new years and I wish I would’ve gotten her the help she needed sooner. And what if we were to try again in our relationship. Prior to our meeting my wife kept begging me to stay in the relationship and calling us soul mates and that she loves me. I don’t know how to stop worrying about the outcome of everything and how I can stand strong for my child.
@redPlane776
Your wife sounds like my ex. She once broke a chair over my back while I was sleeping. She was frequently violent. Along with mental health problems, she was also an alcoholic. As bad as the situation was, in those days, it was virtually impossible to remove children from the mother's custody. For that reason, I stayed in the relationship until my kids could fend for themselves.
I would expect that drinking, acting irrationally, and knife wielding, would trigger intervention by child protective services. Has that happened yet?
In my relationship with my ex, there was love, but there was far more emotional addiction, codependency, insecurity and rage, often fueled by alcohol. I also knew very little about narcissism before living with her.
How can you stand strong for your child? By realizing their emotional well-being and possibly life depends on it.
It does sound like you made mistakes, such as allowing intimacy to create false hope, and perhaps others, but now, the important thing is to stop the ongoing damage. Your child needs consistent compassionate parenting, and to feel safe.
I'm pretty certain that in no universe do soulmates have the kind of issues the two of you have experienced.
I decided that the kindest thing for me to do was to follow through with the divorce, rather than torment my ex with false hope.
We went our separate ways. She found another alcoholic to marry, and they had an ongoing rocky and rowdy relationship for many years, until her husband passed away a few years ago. We ended up on good terms too. In fact, I was able to give her a hug before she passed away.
Three years after the divorce, I met someone, and have been in a relationship far better than anything I could've imagined, for 33 years.
The bottom line is, you are going through *** now, but there is life and opportunity beyond divorce.
You are the father your child needs. You can be trusted to make the right decisions.
