How Can I Cope With All Of The Anger?

by Simone

My boyfriend and I have been living together for three years, and things were going all right for the first year. He did get irrationally angry, but because of the advice from my therapist and the abuse that I've suffered in the past, he backed off and went into another room to calm down.

A few times he threw things at me, but they never hit me. I thought everything was fine, but in the last two years, I've seen it get much worse. He began going to therapy, maybe because he was hurting me too much, and his therapist only told him to be more and more assertive.


This assertiveness turned into him telling me how stupid I was and how much I've ruined his life and any chance of happiness that he might have. He screams at me almost every day. I woke up very early in the morning to drive 45 minutes through traffic and meet him for breakfast, and when I got there, he told me to f___ off and eat by myself because I'm a stupid idiot.

He once told me that he can't see me as worthwhile to him because I was raped in the past. He said that he would love me more if it hadn't happened to me.

He recently got in a motorcycle accident and came out of it with a testicular hematoma. That was 2 weeks ago. After his visit to the ER, he was told to make an appointment immediately with urology because there may be more complications. When he forgot to flush the toilet this morning, I noticed that there was blood in his urine. He still hasn't seen a urologist yet.

I called him telling him that I was worried and that he should phone the doctor to see if this is an emergency, and he told me that it's none of my business. I phoned the doctor and was told that they can't legally give advice to someone other than the patient, but that it sounds very serious.

My boyfriend has stopped talking to me. I used to wait a few hours for him to apologize for the way that he treats me, but now I could wait forever and never hear a word.

In order for him to speak to me again, I need to apologize profusely. Sometimes it takes oral sex for him to pay attention to me again. He doesn't apologize anymore. I don't want to lose him, and I know that he has a hard life right now.

How can I cope with his anger? What are things that I could do to not set his anger off? I can never predict it. I just don't know what to do. He refuses to go to anger management therapy and says that his therapist is enough, but she has made matters much worse. It's getting to be so difficult that I'm not completing all of my schoolwork anymore. How can I help him?




Response from Dr. DeFoore

Hello Simone, and thanks for telling your story here. I'm glad you're asking for help. The help you need however, is for yourself--you don't need to know how to deal with your boyfriend.

You are abusing yourself by staying in this relationship. It is good that he won't talk to you. Please do not demean yourself any more by providing sex for him to get him to pay attention to you.

Read this page, and follow all of the recommendations:

how to deal with abusive relationships

You have to learn to love yourself, or you will continue to be drawn to abusers, and this could literally ruin your life. Get a copy of these self esteem CDs. This will help you to begin healing from your past, and learning to love yourself.

If you don't take care of yourself, no one else can or will.

Believe in the goodness in your heart, Simone, and follow these recommendations. And stay away from your boyfriend.

My very best to you,

Dr. DeFoore

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