Thanks for that brain .. I will listen as soon as i get a chance.

MNG- Kudos to you: you are here getting advice.

From a woman's perspective, freshly separated from a husband who refused to protect her from his abuse and anger:

Men are SCARY when they are angry. They are much stronger, bigger, and more capable of harming - even killing - women. She is NEVER responsible for your reactions to ANYTHING. Until you understand that you - and you alone - are responsible for your abusive behavior, you will continue to abuse her.

Regardless of your childhood, self-esteem, or feelings: there is NO excuse to blow up at your wife.

My H continually blamed me for his abuse. Funny, he blamed everyone for everything wrong in his life. Personal responsibility should be your #1 goal right now. Entitlement and blame-shifting are the foundational attitudes that create abusive behavior.

Did you know the #1 cause of injury in women ages 15-44 is damage done by a male intimate partner? She has every reason to be afraid, to kick you out, and to protect herself from you.

If you choose not to protect your wife from yourself, you will lose everything. I wish my H had chosen to protect me: he didn't, he's even more belligerent than before, and we're divorcing.

You have a MUCH better chance than we did: you are actually posting here, being honest, and seeking help. It's not easy to see yourself as you really are (I don't like it either!) - but you will become great if you do. Good luck!

MrNG, if you truly owned your actions, you would understand fully why your wife feels unsafe around you, and be willing to give her the time she needs to feel safe again. I think the best thing you can do is to plan activities with your kids and invite her to join, like alcohol-free things out in public where you would control yourself better. If nothing else, you'll make some good last impressions of the happy family life for yourself, your wife, and your kids, in case you decide to reconcile later.

Thanks everyone... I had a good convo with my wife last night. (first good convo and 2nd convo in 6 days) I also went to the counselling appointment..

Shes feeling alot better .. and I am in a better frame of mind. Our fight has done some more damage to our extended family as we sought support and spoke of our own perspectives .. time will fix that I am sure though.

My wife was disappointed with the cost of the counsellor that took me in and decided that we cant go to him long term. The first week would have cost us 600$ cad. My wife is also contemplating coming here more often to seek support in her perspective and to help with keeping marriage builders tools our top priority for recovery.

The counsellor was familiar with MB but did not use it. I didnt even see one book of it in his collection. I looked over his library and brought HNHN and LB with me to the appointment .. he seemed intrigued by it. He asked for all my background info .. including what brought me there in recent events. He felt I was not an angry person but had a hard time being emotionally honest and just let things build instead of dealing with them on the spot in a respectful way with my spouse and that it was a instinct or habit i have taught my self from child hood. Told me to be calm .. try and make any convos with my wife as pleasant as possible, to hold off on marriage talk unless she brings it up and if i felt like getting angry to just politely ask to stop talking and hang up til a later time. He said from there he would talk to her and get her perspective and background and then come up with a plan. I cringed when it was over as I paid 200$ for my first session (after taxes). That is not sustainable for us long term. MB is our plan .. we just need some additional tools to help us communicate in a respectful way when we are upset. I need to learn to not bottle up whats going on inside me

After my wife talked to me last night in a very respectable manner and let me speak (which felt like such a HUGE relief, even though I am not home yet).. she explained to me pretty much exactly what Zhamila said in her post above .. and the reason things went down as they did was she feared it would escalate beyond what it already had done. I dont blame her anymore. I can see and understand her reasoning. AFter all .. I am 6'2" and 185lbs (lost like 13lbs while separated in 6 days from all my anxiety over this situation so currently like 173lbs) and very muscular. So yeah .. Just hard to hear. I dont like it.. dont like what i can turn into.. but its a reality and i need to get it in check.

NewEveryDay .. i did that yup. Took my kids ice skating a few days after i separated with my wife over last weekend. WE had a blast. Kids wanted to question me about the situation .. but i asked them not to talk to me about it. I just told them I am working on doing the things moms asks .. and I will be home as soon as i can so lets just go have some fun. They know pretty much everything going on as they heard it they days leading up to the separation when we were fighting in our room, but I am sure they could still hear us and not to mention a bit of my bad frame of mind carried on into their presence not alot .. but enough that its something I dont want to ever happen again. I am damaged from my own childhood from the things i witnessed ( i guess that was part of my justification since im not holding my wife by the throat off the ground like my dad did when he was much younger) and so is my wife. She has her triggers .. I have mine. We have to learn to change them and over come them. This is the worst ever in 20 years i have been with my wife where i let my anger get the best of me. BOTH of us know really well how to get the other going. That has to stop also.

SO .. I am looking into my own anger management class .. going to listen to the clips today by Dr. Harley .. and call a different counsellor that my dads friend went to which is almost less than 1/2 of the cost .. just a bit more travel time. My wife even said I may be able to come home if i get all this set up. I am on it like white on rice.

I hope my wife comes here for some support also... her perspective is hers and I will not argue it nor post on her thread if and when she decides to make her post about her life issues.

Thanks for your support guys ..

MNG

You don't have to share anything with anyone other than you and your wife are working through issues.

My wife and I used to yell and scream at each other. Having confidence and not refusing to be disrespected has nothing to do with screaming, yelling, and throwing things. That's how teenagers, emotionally out of control, and immature people respond.

The better solution is to tell your wife calmly when she stays blowing up that you'd appreciate her not telling/raising her voice/being condescending/etc.

While you might feel anger toward her when she talks to you certain ways, you are 100% responsible for your actions and reactions.

I agree kilted .. I am no saint and DEF have to get control of myself. As I said .. I realized I can be very scary. I am not happy with myself in that regard. I feel like a bit of a failure actually. This reaction has only happened like this less than I can count on one hand in my entire marriage... But none the less .. it happened .. I cant afford to have it happen again.

I listened to these clips today, since I have some anger control issues myself. The key phrase I brought out of this was that it is nobody else's fault for your anger. People may cause your frustration, but they do not cause your reaction.

yup I agree 1995droptopz .. ***EDIT***

The problem is .. i KNOW what I am supposed to do. IE: walk away .. count to 10 ... etc. But how do I STOP before it gets the best of me... how do i not get sucked in. THATS the issue. At least for me.

Well .. good news. I am back home. My Parents were feeding my negative emotions while i was separated. Telling me things like "your wife has not been with anyone but you so maybe she is out exploring" and other horrible things such as this. I already have insecurity issues and felt that those insecurites where being exploited by my Dad and step mom while i stayed with them. I had to get out .. even if it meant getting my own place til my wife was comfortable for me to come home. It felt weird for me to come home and everyone that knows about what happened are treating me like a monster now. Like I am some villan .. going to shoot anyone at any moment. I never felt that way.. nor thought about it.

My wife and i sat down and had a heart to heart. We have agreed we both need help in this regard. We both need help to keep our AO's in check and we realized that there is too many things taking up too much of our time. We need more balance. WE focus too much on the kids and not enough on each other. Spin too many plates and care too much about what others think of us. We agreed to reorganize our time so things fit better to make our marriage work.

I listened to the clips with my wife last night .. i think we both took it to heart. I will be buying the GSR and both my wife and I will be using it to learn to relax under stress. I also got another counsellor appointment thats not so expensive and one that my wife is enthusiastic about. The man we will see has helped someone I know .. and 3 of his friends also. THat was very promising for us to know of 4 accounts of success with this man.

Please keep us in your prayers as we work towards being better parent figures and better marriage partners.

If you got anymore 2x4's for me .. i can accept them .. I failed to protect my wife from myself and I dont want it to happen again.


MNG (although my username is not so fitting anymore since I am no longer considered a nice guy from my actions as of late) *shrugs*

Those all sounds like very positive things MNG.

Any chance you and her will try to follow the MB plan? This counselor might help you with your reactions to each other but you still need a plan to recover.

Oh we will DEF be following MB still .. we have just lost sight of what we are to be doing. We have begun to go over MB material again. ALot of our stresses come from not enough time together. I had mentioned it several times prior to this blow up and christmas but it seemed we always had excuses to not make time. Too tired ... etc. That ends now .. neither one of us can afford to let this happen again.

I pulled my youngest kid from his martial arts since that takes up alot of time 4x a week and its also his before and after school care and they dont give hime time to do his homework he is forced to do leadership and help train lower belt level kids in the even younger kids class and costing us a fortune. I was angry to find out that my son had asked to skip leadership to use his time to do homework only to be told he has to go teach the todlers and so as a result his homework has been slipping as he (in grade 3) often gets up to an hour or more of homework a night on top of his other activites.

My daughter may follow suit and leave the martial arts herself .. but I told her she doesnt have to, but we have to cut costs somewhere to pay for our counselling for the time being. Putting our marriage on the back burner is no longer acceptable. While its not perfect and its had tons of UPS over the past year .. recent events have made us realize its not as good as we need it to be yet.

Super. Good luck.

Little update ... been to some anger counselling. MY wife has an appointment with a marital counsellor who agrees with MB and tells us to keep doing that.

My extended family is all chit chatting about my wife and I and our recent situation. Its come full circle like 3 or 4 times now from various people who we have not spoken to. That was a HUGE mistake on my part to disclose some of the info i did when i vented to my extended family after i was kicked out for my angry outburst that scared the daylights out of my wife (not like me at all and was way out of character for me so no wonder)

Also Dr.Harleys anger management 101 link was fantastic (thanks again Brain!). I have listened to it a few times.

Here is a great example how it has affected me already.

I was walking to my dads place (i was separated from my wife but had listened to the link brain gave me) and it was POURING rain .. i mean seriously pouring rain it was bouncing off the road as the drops were so huge.

There was a river flowing next to the curb of the road that was like 6 inches wide and almost 1/2 the height of the curb. I was approaching a crosswalk and this car goes by and just SOAKS me ... it literally went and soaked right into my backpack.. and my coat, my jeans, my sweater and my t-shirt shoes .. you name it. At that point .. i turned with a fit of rage towards the car and yelled at it with some obscene words,also would have thrown something if i had something in my hands as the frusteration mounted from the moment.

Took a deep breath and remembered what Dr.harley said "NO ONE MAKES YOU ANGRY" ... at that moment i realized i let me being soaked by the car make me angry. I recognized it, diffused it, and thought about Dr.harley and how i am going to get my wife to let me come home and carried on walking down the road with the thought and a prayer that "god, if it happened again I would not let it anger me like that. It was unacceptable."

Moments later .... *SPLASH* it happens again even more soaked now and worse splash than the first (gods funny way of testing me i guess).. but that time .. i didn't even feel angry i just sighed .. and carried on just thinking wow i didn't get angry that time but the first time i was furious! I was soaked .. and had about another 40 mins of walking to do (i hate buses so its my fault and i gave the only vehicle we had when i separated from my wife for that week to my wife)but i was actually proud i didn't let it anger me. Then out of the blue .. my dad drives by and picks me up (he was on his way home from work) Lucky me!

It was a light bulb moment for me thats for sure.

So glad to be home. A week away was SO scary .. i cant imagine ever losing my family I would be devastated. Not only that but after i got home my wife also appologized for her disrespect and rejection she had been displaying to me and agreed to also get some counselling to help her control her anger. ALso my kids have been alot more respectful since i have been home too ... its very refreshing.

That was a nice update MNG.

I hope you can keep the momentum going.

Question. If you're to keep doing the MB plan ... then why do you need this other counselor? Will he/she follow MB principals or merely do his/her own thing while asking you two to follow MB on your own?

You're welcome and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Good update. How's it been since you've been back?

Thats a good question. Originally it was my wife that asked ME to go get some counselling as it seemed I could not control my anger (my wife was beaten as a child by her grandmother who raised her).. so it was originally intended to be just anger management to help me control myself so i dont trigger my wife (although i didnt feel i needed it, I have only lost my temper about 2 or 3 times in my entire life. I just felt i needed my wife to stop hurting me and properly meet my needs when i often felt rejected and emotionally abused by her with her verbal assault that shes often not even aware of and I dont often call her out on to keep the peace, but of course no one makes me mad so I agreed to go).

I learned that I am not as emotionally honest as I would like to be so I am breaking the PORH by not expressing those things in a respectful way. I rather just let it build up and then when my wife is mad at me bring up all the things I am mad at her about at the same time. Bad choice!

The local community mental health resource center I found out had a person working in it that was part of my step moms adopted family (puke) and she ran the anger course. I didnt want my dirty laundry aired anymore than it already has so I opted out of that place and suggested I see an individual counsellor for it instead. That resulted in disliking one counsellor (the 200$ per hour one) and since that was not sustainable I took my dads friends suggestion and went to another and he was much easier (who saved his marriage) and didnt want to really dwell on the past too much, rather help me learn some techniques to stop the crazy cycle from brewing in my head.

It was during that session that the counsellor asked to see my wife as he feels that my anger was totally situational and that he figures that we will not have to be there any longer than my health insurance will cover or even less. I was surprised to hear that as my experience reading here and what counsellors tend to be like is to milk the client as long as they can and facilitate divorce.. it seems like thats not part of his agenda.

The other reason we are going is because my extended family feels we need to "learn the rules of engagement" as they have expressed that this last episode has really taken a toll on them (they have hardly been involved in our lives in the last year). So in a way we feel obligated to do so to show THEM we are doing something to prevent this in the future since they express very diligently that they feel MB is not working for us and often make fun of us when we use MB words to describe things.

MNG

Thanks!

Its been good for the most part. My wife and I are getting our time management going better. Made some progress on UA time and we are feeling like we are making progress feeling a little in love again. Had a heated talk a few nights ago about all that has conspired and i think my voice was raising and my wife gently told me i was so i stopped ... and shut up for a few moments and apologized.

However to add fuel to the already burning fire, my son has had an episode at school in which he told one of his teachers he wanted to kill himself YESTERDAY >.<.

He expressed this after one of the teachers gave him punishment for dancing in a sexually suggestive way during gym class where they follow a dance video. The teacher grabbed his arm and dragged him to the side of the gym and gave him a time out (it was really not intended to be sexual in nature he was rolling his hands over each other in the dance like he was peddling a bike with his hands but low in front of his privates and the video was telling them to do it over their heads). Lame I know.

I understand though as the school has had a very large increase of bad sexual behaviors with many students and the principal told us our son is not involved in that but they must be diligent about anything that's inappropriate in that nature. My son argued he was not being inappropriate or felt he was not and then he shut down and got upset as the teacher began to have an outburst (also the same time she grabbed his arm and dragged him to the side). When the teacher asked why he was crying that's when he told them. He got sent to the principals office and had to talk to a counsellor and Told them whats going on at home .. told them how he feels the other students are treating him and how he feels the teachers are often mean to him. We have had a few episodes of my sons outbursts in class over the past few years. He is very good with his school work but feels he must argue with the teachers if he doesn't think they are right and can usually out argue them and give very good reason for his thoughts and actions. He is very confident, uses his manners but often uses them with the wrong attitude or tone of voice but also he is very sensitive. He is always trying to help others, but also feels many students provoke him into an emotional outburst for entertainment value which then he gets busted for as the other kids then pretend it was all just my sons doing. He tries to explain his side but he has out argued so many teachers they have no patience for him anymore. My son has tried to appologize for his behaviors when he has calmed down (his own doing actually not prompted by us) but the teachers in question just glare at him and don't accept it (we have witnessed this reaction). He feels rejected by several teachers and many of the students. He says the kids ACT like his friends but then provoke him and then he is the one always getting in trouble because he is very vocal about his complaints.

The school has taken this threat of suicide to defcon 5 now because of the recent bullying suicide in our area and are now asking us to provide counselling for him. They sent us links to help him with anxiety and such and ask us to review the material with him and make reports on his progress to the school via email. They will be having regular counselling sessions about his progress now too. My son is a good boy ... the principal has told us this and so have many of the OTHER teachers who know him but dont deal with him in classes. I know it ... yes he can be a handful at times after all hes 8 and his energy levels are through the roof and he is smart as a whip.

Of course with the lack of support and betrayal from our extended family and all the events as of late .. he is DEF full of anxiety (poor little guy). I know i have an anxiety issue so I am actually glad to be doing the student counselling online stuff we were given as it may even help me.

It also seems alot of the teachers are bitter about their jobs. Recent job actions and strikes has cut their wages and school fundings. Every news letter from the school is always asking for money for something. The school has lost its spirit. When my daughter attended that same school it was up beat ... the teachers were all friendly and nice and generally in a good mood and things seemed to be running smooth. Now its been strike after strike .. and wages cuts .. I think they even lost paid summers. Its no wonder they don't have patience for my son when he is being sensitive. They are bitter about their jobs and take it out on the kids.

I feel very overwhelmed. My head is spinning... its like a big zit that has been brewing for a while now .. and its finally decided to pop and let out all the ugly stuff all at once.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Sorry for the long posts .. i got tons of stuff to say. If you need any clarification plz ask. Work becons so I have to stop typing.

MNG

I would consider homeschooling your son. He wouldn't have to put up with the attitudes of the other kids, and he'd be free to learn at his own pace and also be involved in things he particularly likes since he'd have more time to explore them. My son, for example, took ground school at age 15 and became a pilot at 17. Your son sounds like some of my kids. They are pretty intelligent but also very sensitive. My oldest son argues points w his professors in college and usually wins, but he didn't have to go through that at such a young age. As a counselor,'I've seen so many young boys, especially, labeled negatively when they were just smart, energetic BOYS! I find it heartbreaking.

I dont know if i can home school my son. Both my wife and I work full time and my wife will not give up her job.

With all the school strikes etc .. my son did not have a proper report card up until recently. He is getting better with his work but his report cards keep getting worse. (we did get a general report write up to be considered report cards until the job action stuff was done). Most of his bad traits are the social aspect where his report card tells us he is doing bad as i described above and the recent events of his sensitivity. His academic side is fantastic.

I dont understand why he gets so much homework and how the teachers expect the parents to help the students with THAT MUCH every day. I am hoping his grade 4 teacher next year will be much better as his grade 2 teacher was awesome but she left the school. he is in grade 3 right now and it seems all the great teachers left the school .. gee .. wonder why. All thats left are a bunch of grumpy old bittys who flare up just as easy as my son does. Very unprofessional as far as im concerned. WE are in talks with the principal now every day. its draining and my son is FAR from being the worst behaved kid ... and in fact makes a great effort to make ammends for his sensistivity on his own only to be rejected when he tries.


MNG

Edit: i need a vacation.. one with the entire family so we can relax and recharge...lol

There is always a way to homeschool. Maybe get more flexible jobs that allow you both to pitch in. It only takes a couple of hours per day of instruction time.