Frustrated With Psychological Abuse And Alcohol Addiction

by Lisa
(Canada)

We've been together for 7 years and the first incident was about two years into our relationship. He either threatens or follows through with trashing our house when he gets angry.


The last incident was two weeks ago when he came home from working away for three weeks. All I heard when he was gone was how much he missed me. When he arrived (2 hours late), was covered in blood, I followed him to the bathroom questioning what had happened. He mumbled about fighting with his brother (who he commutes with). He wouldn't give me any details and he reeked of booze so I continued to question him.

With a few attempts at walking away and trying to kiss me with a mouth full of blood, and me persisting and starting to get angry that he wouldn't tell me what happened, he flew off the handle and started furiously rampaging through the house threatening to trash it. He stormed off to the bedroom while I went and hid the keys to all our vehicles.

When he came out he demanded I give him his truck keys. I refused and told him that I'd hid them so he got down in my face and screamed F*** You! He continued to threaten to trash the house, so I told him he had to leave or I would call the cops.

He threatened to kick me out, argued for a while, then stormed out, but he knows how to break in, so I knew he would be back soon. He broke back in about half an hour later, so I told him to stay out of our room and sleep on the couch.

The next day, he told me that he had been going shot for shot spiced rum with another guy in the vehicle and doesn't remember anything that happened after his brother hit him. A few days later, he let it slip that the reason he was two hours late was because they were doing shots at Buddy’s house. I talked to him on the phone before that, and he had already created a lie to facilitate why he was late, although, he wouldn't have been late yet.

We had previous problems in our relationship as he has addiction issues with cocaine, and while we broke through some barriers and have had relative success with that addiction, the side effects are still there with his anger issues. I refused to have children with someone who is a drug addict and he worked very hard to overcome his addiction, but refused any professional help.

I feel like an idiot now, because I allowed myself to get pregnant and now he has repeated this same horrible behaviour. I am 12 weeks now and feel that I have made a huge mistake as his behaviour is resurfacing.

In the past he has dented our fridge with his fists, broken the glass in our French doors, kicked out a brand new big screen TV, punched holes in doors and walls, thrown my stuff and damaged my belongings.

This happens roughly once a year, so while it isn't terribly frequent, it is frequent enough that I am not comfortable with the idea of raising a child with someone who is so unstable.

I want him to get help, but whenever I mention substance abuse programs, or anger management, he tries to turn things around on me that I drink and smoke pot (though I have NEVER behaved in any violent manner) and "look how angry you are right now! YOU need anger management!" He also tells me, "if you're so unhappy and I'm such a terrible person, you should leave me."

He even suggested this 'solution' after I became pregnant. I am prepared to suggest couples counselling to try to remedy this, but I'm not certain how confident I am that he would take it seriously.

I grew up in a relatively healthy family, so this is an unacceptable environment for me to raise a child in. If (when) this happens again, I am prepared to film it as evidence. I don't know what else to do, short of walking out on him and setting myself up to be a single mother.