I've just been having the toughest time deciding what to do.
I've been with my husband for 8 years and we have 3 kids. When my first baby was a few months old (6 years ago), I think was when the first physical incident happened. I don't remember the argument, I just remember that he ended up pulling me out of the house by my hair and locking me out. I remember being so upset and feeling so ashamed of what had just happened. I remember thinking I had really mad him mad.
Since that time he has been physical a few times - but it happens so rarely, like once or twice a year, that I really have a hard time believing he is actually abusive. And he definitely does not believe he is. In the past he has shoved tables into me, pushed me, put his hands around my neck (without crushing), hit me, grabbed me, etc. For some reason though, it never even occurred to me that it was abuse - I always remember feeling so ashamed and like I had caused it.
Then a year ago we had the worst incident up to that point. He shoved me against a wall, held his hand over my face so hard I thought he was breaking my nose and told me if I ever talked to him like that again, he would crush my face in. He then forced me out of the house and locked the door and refused to let me take the kids. I was trembling and crying. I tried to get back in the house, but he had locked the chain lock. A few minutes later he opened the door and started throwing some of my collectible items out the door at me, one by one, all broken and completely destroyed. My heart broke into a million pieces. I kept feeling my nose and crying, sure it was broken. Then I heard him go into the garage and start throwing stuff around. At this point my oldest son got a chair and unlocked the chain lock, I grabbed all 3 of the kids, ran out to the car and drove around the corner (so he wouldn't see me if he came out). That was the first time I was genuinely scared. He sent me a text message saying to bring back the car and the kids or he'd break the rest of my stuff. I dropped the kids off at his moms house and brought it back. He then locked himself in the bathroom and sat in the tub with razor blades and an anatomy book for 2 hrs, telling me he was going to kill himself.
The next day I apologized and somehow I decided to stay with him. I called one of my friends and told her about it. She immediately told me I should leave and she said that her and my other best friend from college had seen verbal and emotional abuse at the very beginning of our relationship and had been waiting to see if it would turn physical. But they never told me this, and I had no idea they were watching out for me all this time - and I had never told them about any of the physical stuff before this. That was the very first time anyone had used the word "abuse" with me, and that was the first time it dawned on me maybe our relationship is abusive. For the next few months I had nightmares of him killing himself, killing me, and killing the kids. But last December I took him out to dinner and made him swear to me that he would never be physical with me again. He promised me it never would happen again. I felt good about it.
Then in May of this year he pushed me, 3 times. I remember being nervous and wondering if it was starting again. In June he slapped me, 3 times. And I was really upset. And then in July we were arguing over getting the kids ready to go, and he lunged across the room at me, tackled me, and then started to strangle me. I really believed I was going to die. When he finally let go, I stumbled into the other room, grabbed my phone, ran outside and called the police. I came back inside to see if the kids were alright, and he told me he was going to kill himself and locked himself in the bathroom with zip ties and pliers. I knew the police would get there before he could kill himself.
He was arrested, put in jail, and charged with spousal battery. He was convicted a couple months later and is now in court-ordered batterers therapy. I thought we were done for sure, but somehow I decided to go back because I just couldn't bare the thought of losing our whole family. He has promised me - again - that he will never be physical again. He says this time he means it because he never, ever wants to go back to jail again.
Now, he is saying that I am the abusive one. He says that I have been emotionally abusive towards him the entire relationship, and that my emotional abuse led him to be physically abusive. I am trying to remember things, but everything in our past is so fuzzy to me and I don't really remember. I remember feeling guilty every time he hurt me and truly believing it was my fault at the time, so I do wonder if he's right and I was always emotionally abusive to him? The only reason I think maybe he's not right, is because apparently my 2 friends saw HIM being verbally/emotionally abusive towards me in public at the very beginning and took it upon themselves to be "watching out for me" this whole time.
The only emotional abuse I can really remember on my end is name-calling. He has always called me awful names, and for a period of time I did it back to him because I was so angry. But at some point I decided that wasn't me and I did not like calling him names, so I stopped. I stopped about 5 years ago.
I just don't know what to do. I don't want him to kill me, or the kids. But the physical incidents don't happen that often? It's like things don't seem that bad in the many months in between each episode. And a huge part of me does not believe this is really him, or that he really will hurt me again. I want to believe him, but I just don't know. Is this really abuse?