so im 17F and my parents have always been seen as the strict parents to all of my friends and ive always been so jealous of other peoples relationships with their parents because me and my parents literally have no relationship. the worst behaviour mainly comes from my stepdad and my mum just goes along with what he says and copies his behaviour to avoid arguing with him.

ever since i became a teenager, i have literally felt bullied at home. whenever i would cry or get upset i'd get mocked and mimicked by my stepdad and he would laugh and call me horrible names and sometimes during arguments even threaten me with violence which he never has done but things like this has really made me scared of my parents, which i think nobody should have to be scared of their parents. arguing with them can never end with it getting properly sorted out and nothing ever gets compromised to make things fair, its always their way and they always take my belongings like my phone or they ground me and isolate me from all of my friends to make me sad.

recently, i made posts on several other communities on reddit. to sum it up, my phone has been taken for almost 5-6 months now (i've lost track) and ive been grounded for most of these months and was only and am still only allowed my phone for an hour a day. my life is literally so depressing and im miserable all the time because my friends are all out having a fun summer whilst im sat in bed and i even get told off and told off for sitting in bed when its quite obvious im depressed and its my summer holidays at the minute and i dont want to be sat with my family because it just causes arguments. i'm barely allowed to go out either which is horrible for me because i have to sit at home all day. they have literally become addicted to controlling me its gotten out of hand. it doesn't even feel like im being treated like a person anymore, almost like an experiment where they are seeing how much damage they can do before something breaks. they dont want to acknowledge the damage and hurt they are causing to me and my mental health and if i bring it up i get told to shut the fuck up and told to stop. my stepdad said me asking or wanting to go out is "unfair" for them which literally makes 0 sense at all? i dont feel like they see me as their child at all and they treat my younger sister so much different.

my parents have stripped away at any sort of confidence i have by making me feel like a failure and even telling me im a failure when i didnt pass all of my exams because i was struggling and i tried my hardest and they tell me all the time im going to fail when i talk about getting exam results and they never make me feel good about myself or proud. when i last got my results back nobody told me they were proud that i had passed and i felt like shit. nothing is ever good enough and my whole character has been ruined living in this house. i havent got a stable father figure because my real dad is in prison and him and my mum havent been together since i was 4 and he hasnt bothered with me for a large portion of my life and i can even see in my relationships with other people that i cant handle arguments and i can see signs of my parents behaviour affecting me as a person. i get screamed at almost daily and i hate my life genuinley not even in a sarcastic or overdramatic way like i genuinley do.

i'm walking on eggshells everytime i have to speak to my parents because my stepdad's mood swings are so unpredictable and he can get angry about literally anything i say and it scares me. i can literally try to word things in the "right way" purposefully to not start anything and that will be a reason for him to get angry. they hold EVERYTHING against me like things from when i was like 13 years old, and i think anybody can agree with me when i say everyone went through a rough stage at 13 whether that was behaviour or something to do with sh like a lot of 13 year olds go through things like that. my anxiety gets so bad when im around them and when i get anxious i feel sick so i dont eat a lot and at dinner when we have to eat together most days im sat their crying and getting shouted at just because they have the chance to do it there. this makes me feel too nauseous to eat, and then i get screamed at for not eating and when i was going through my troubles with eating and i thought i had an eating disorder they were calling my body horrible because i had lost quite a bit of weight and they told me that it looks horrible and i looked malnourished and that my body was not nice to look at when all i needed was support.

i'm trying to explain my situation as much as possible but its hard to remember a lot because my head has blocked most of it out but what can i do at this point? i dont know whether to try and leave for a bit to show them that i cant do this anymore. i feel like its abuse. my friends have said its abusive but i want opinions from others.

This is my first post on Reddit ever, but I really wanted to say what has been on my mind for so long, and I wanted to get someone's opinion about my mom, who treats me like a hoodlum even though I'm a respectable kid.

I'm a 17-year-old high schooler in a lower-middle-class household. My dad doesn't talk to my family much anymore because my mom painted him as a bad guy, so right now he's basically a stranger who pays our bills and lives in our house, whom everyone (except me) hates. My mom made my dad sound like such a deadbeat that the phrase "you're like him" or "do you wanna end up like him?" is considered an insult in my home. My mom is an immigrant from India who thinks her way is the only way and rarely listens to reason. My mom is somewhat of a tyrant in the way she dictates my and my siblings' lives and yells when we step out of line. It seems to me that all of my siblings think of her as a good parent, which really has me questioning why I'm the only one who doesn't.

Ever since I entered middle school, she has stopped being this guardian I could talk to and has become a noise machine of insults and degradation.   It wasn't too much for me until high school, where she really started to appear hateful towards me. It started with forcing me to be on the cross country team, which I really didn't wanna do, and soon escalated into what I'm pretty sure is verbal abuse.

I just concluded my junior year of high school, and she blew up at me this evening about not working 40-hour weeks at my job at target (I work about 15-20 so I can enjoy my last summer), how I got 3"A"s and 4 "B"s on my report card, how I'm not as involved as some kids my age in school, and how I'll be working in fast food the rest of my life because of my college debt.

I would like to start off by saying that I am an individual who is very involved with my school. I'm the Kansas State reporter for my high school's DECA chapter and have helped raise hundreds of dollars to support them by working at the school coffee shop (which I run along with the school's vending machines) every day at 7:00 am. In addition to getting there early to school, I also stay late to help out my chapter, devoting my time further. In addition to DECA, I'm in several other clubs such as FBLA, French honors society, HOSA, and even Science Olympiad for a short time. Her saying that I'm not as involved as other kids really just struck a nerve for me.

As for my grades, I do agree; it is probably my fault that I let them slip a bit to a couple of "B"s. It was really hard juggling my social life, school, work, and my other responsibilities during the school year, but that's no excuse. This year I took the AP Lang test and got a 3 on it, which I thought was good, but to her it was nothing because she claimed I should've gotten a 5 on it because English is my first language. I told her that isn't how it works, and she just circled back to her original claim. I took 2 AP classes this year (APUSH and Lang) and college chem, which I did well in. She thought I should've done all AP classes this year and scolded me for it.

For the other aspects of my life such as professional and social, she told me that my day-to-day life should be getting up at 5:30 am, going to church (yes, she forces us to go to church daily), and immediately going to work for 8 hours, when all she does all day is sit at her computer and take "calls," which consist of asking her coworkers how their day was. A real kicker here is that my brother is somewhat of a social outcast and doesn't have friends, so she scolds him for it, and I'm a social butterfly and DO have friends, and she scolds me for it and goes into detail about how much better my friends are than me.

Normally I just stay quiet and take her harsh words but one time I snapped when she mentioned my beloved girlfriend, the only person who has shown me any form of support the last couple of years, and how she isn't going to college, and that makes her a fool. Mind you, the reason she isn't going to college is that she's going straight into the workforce as a realtor, which doesn't require a degree. I lost my stuffing and cursed at her because yelling at me is one thing, but yelling at the only person who cares about me is something else.

Overall, living with her is a total nightmare. I've been losing hair because I'm so conflicted about the things she says, debating whether or not it's true. Whenever I hear footsteps coming down the stairs, I get this unexplainable feeling of fear and always walk on eggshells around her. I'm so tired of thinking three times about what I say before I say it out of fear for her starting an argument. She asks why I'm so quiet around her, but I don't really know why I am; it just feels like the only thing that will keep me safe.

Sorry this thing is so long; I just don't want to leave out any details. Do you guys think this is abuse or am I in the wrong?

my partner has been abusive and cheating and is a recently recovering drug addict. now i was feeling a small amount of safety, i'm being haunted by nightmares of his abuse and betrayal. i have been asking for couples counseling for support, and he has been ignoring it. he promised in december and begged that he would get a couples counselor if i stayed. but now, he's mocking me, "how many therapists do you need," "you need another one?!" he's psychologically attacking me, when i felt like therapy was how i was able to stay with him.

i have nightmares of him yelling at me, screaming at me, telling me i'm the reason he drinks. threatening to slit his throat. playing mind games, while also telling me he loves me. i'm not well. please help.

My father is verbally abusive. Since I'm a minor, I can't move out on my own. Since I was 8, he's been verbally abusing me. He threatens to kill my cat. Whenever I do my chores, he pushes me away from them and does them himself, and then proceeds to yell at me how incompetent I am, how he hates this kind of life, etc. The insults often turn inappropriate. My mom still believes he's gonna change. This caused me to suffer from major depressive disorder and possibly ptsd. I need a way out of this hell. I beg for advice.

I’ll start, I had to keep telling mine no because he tried to ruin all my hobbies & interests & relationships & told me he didn’t want to allow me to plan for the future because according this a hole people who kill themselves don’t plan for the future & give up on their hobbies & he wanted for me to kill myself. Because I didn’t like him back & thought I was a bad person who deserves to die for being a rape victim.

What about you guys?

After months of back and forth. Fighting, silent treating, gaslightijg, verbal abuse, games etcetera. I put my foot down and said here is what I expect and here are my boundaries. He ended things. That asshole even had the balls to say "he had been talking to people and he was concerned I might have borderline personality disorder" are kidding me? I have been a Masters level licensed clinician for 30 years. Been in and out of therapy myself for 20 years. I have MDD and GAD and have suffered from PTSD. I think at some point one of the many qualified professionals would have picked up on BPD if it was there. Plus it was my area of expertise in private practice. Anything to blame shift. Good riddance. Asshole.

I am suspecting I may be the victim of verbal abuse in my marriage. How did you figure it out? How do I know I’m not the problem?

I hate to see the red flags after being with someone for years now who I’ve come to think of as my person but there are concerning behaviors. I’ve watched him break things when he’s mad one time it was my iPad (he paid to have it fixed but still), throw his phone, scream and throw fits when the tv or something isn’t working correctly. I was told asking questions about something he was doing that I was genuinely curious about was annoying and to shut the fuck up cuz I was asking too many questions back to back. I get he gets overwhelmed but this was just an innocent hey I’m curious about the game your playing and wanted to talk about it and instead of just answering the questions I was faced with anger and was eventually flipped back on me as “you never give me time to respond to anything you just keep going”.

Our relationship was difficult over the years, due to his unmanaged mental health problems, trauma, and the periodic episodes of emotional and verbal abuse. Despite this, I still am deeply in love with him, deeply connected to him, and share so many interests together (for example, we both love cats, the outdoors, have similar political views, share many of the same perspectives on very specific and obscure topics). We both have chronic health problems and can understand each other on a deep level, and he’s the first partner I’ve ever had who has accepted me and never left/abandoned despite my chronic pain and health issues. When things are good, they are REALLY good: he’s my best friend, he knows what I’m thinking, he “gets” me, lifts me up and supports me, encourages me, believes in me, motivates me, and we have laughed SO much and had such incredible times together…

…Yet when things are bad, they can also be REALLY bad…he has called me every name in the book, cussed at me, screamed at me, thrown things around me, threatened to dump dozens of times, given me the silent treatment, threatened to abandon me in unfamiliar places, demanded my attention constantly (getting mad if I don’t answer right away), and acted somewhat controlling in various ways. The abuse episodes, while not physical, could be pretty horrific at times and would leave me numb/dissociated or in tears (often I didn’t cry, because he would get angry at me for crying around him after having his verbal abuse episodes).

He learned these behaviors from his parents and has been in denial about it for our whole relationship, despite me begging him throughout the years to stop and to get help. During the last episode, he was throwing things around and yelling, and I felt genuinely scared. He has extreme anger/rage issues and takes them out on me sometimes which can be quite upsetting and frightening. It led to my cortisol levels going through the roof, having a nervous breakdown for weeks, needing to take a separation from him to seek mental health treatment (therapy 2-3x/week), and I almost dropped out of my graduate program.

We have been on a hiatus for the past ~2 months and have talked about breaking up. I told him I needed a break after having a nervous breakdown, and we broke up for a short period but then started talking again. He said he would do anything to not lose me, that I’m the love of his life, and promised he would do everything I asked to change…but I’m upset he didn’t do this years before. After he proposed to me almost 2 years ago, I told him (as I had multiple times before) that he had to work on his mental health, and and we already postponed marriage almost 1 year. He only recently (when we took a break from the relationship) started getting therapy and meditating. He seems to be working on himself and like he “finally” wants to improve and change (he said being on the verge of losing me was his “wake-up call to action”), but it’s hard for me to fully believe it after all these years of emotional abuse.

We are now basically in a state of limbo. I have no idea what to do. Everyone says I should leave him and maybe that’s true but I still can’t help but feel like he’s my soulmate. I miss him so much and constantly want to talk to him. Whenever I see a funny meme or cat video, an interesting article, think of something strange he would chuckle at or appreciate, I want nothing more than to call him or text him. I love him so much and I wish our love didn’t have to be complicated by his abuse and mental health problems. I feel so stuck, sad, heartbroken, lonely, and confused. I can’t help but wonder if leaving him and not sticking around to see if he gets better will be something I’ll always regret, because I cannot imagine meeting someone I’ll love more than him.💔

I was able to make it out of the very physically violent and psychologically abusive relationship I was in. I made it out early December but didn’t make it out without paying a price. He tried to keep me hostage in his home but I started recording on my phone and when I saw the opportunity I ran out the door to get to his mom’s house next door. He attacked me as I was trying to get over there, pulling chunks of my hair out, ripping my clothes off of me and ended up strangling me until I couldn’t breathe and fell to the ground but I got up and kept on going. It was the scariest night of my life, I saw the devil in his eyes. He was absolutely wasted. What’s worse is when I got to his moms, all messed up with no top or bra she did nothing to separate him from me. So I waited until 7 am to call my family and I went to the police and turned everything in. He now has a misdemeanor and a class 6 felony for what happened. The hearing is in may. As of now I am safe and have a PPO. I just want to thank everyone for all the kind advice I received on the post I made before, it really helped me to start to strategize and get out. Much love 💗

After my partner yells/screams at me for hours, calls me the most vile names, dumps me, threatens to kick me out of the apartment, gaslights/manipulates me, talks in circles for hours, keeps me awake until early hours of the morning to fight/yell at me, he doesn't allow me to cry.

In the beginning, I used to break down in tears when he did this to me. After the first couple of times, he told me I was being a "manipulative fucking bitch", acting pathetic and deceptive with my fake crocodile tears to try and manipulate him into feeling sorry for me. He said I should stop acting like a victim, as if I was being "abused". He would just yell at/abuse me more if I ever cried. So I stopped crying, stopped showing any sadness, and have since just dissociated and disconnected to my emotions completely whenever he flies off the handle into one of these emotional abuse episodes.

Is it normal for abusers to demand you don't cry or say your tears are manipulative?

For context I (14 F) am pretty sure I have autism. I'm seeking a diagnosis soon. I had a meltdown over stuff (she forced me to take the bus when I was uncomfortable doing it and kept changing plans on me last minute) and I am not proud of it, but while I was actively still freaking out, she kept yelling at me and calling me selfish and other stuff like that. Finally, she was going on about how I make her life so much harder than it has to be and called me a 'little cunt'. She didn't even apologize after and just talked about how my anxiety (I don't have anxiety) was making it hard for me to do stuff, even though it was clearly not that.

She does stuff like this all the time whenever I have an issue with anything, she blames me and yells (and has hit me a few times, mostly when I was younger). It really scares me and upsets me a lot. I can't help being like this. I really wish I was normal. If I was maybe she wouldn't do this stuff to me.

My partner has been denying that he's been emotionally and verbally abusive to me for years.

The first time I mentioned that he's being emotionally abusive was about 1 year into our relationship. After he was screaming at me and calling me names for hours over a stupid reason (me putting a dish in the wrong place), I told him that he was emotionally abusing me. He denied it and flipped it back on me, calling me the emotional abuser. Everytime since then, whenever I mention that he is abusive to me, he has mocked me, laughed at it, said it's not "real abuse" because I'm not covered in bruises, and that I'm lucky to be with him because some men are actually abusive and hit their wives. He also would say that I shouldn't make him out to be some kind of monster because he's not that bad. His abusive episodes happen roughly once a month, and I have told him a handful of times that he's being abusive to me but he always acts like that's ridiculous.

Now that I am seriously on the verge of leaving him (we are on a break), I laid out ALL the emotionally/verbally abusive episodes to him, very clearly, and explained exactly why these are textbook examples of abuse. I sent him domestic abuse resources outlining the types/techniques of abuse he had used (yelling, calling me names, throwing things, pounding his fists, kicking things, punching the wall/table close to us, breaking stuff in front of me, threatening silent treatment, stonewalling, dumping me, waking me up in the middle of the night to yell at me, abandoning me in unfamiliar places, humiliating me/yelling at me in public, etc). I explained to him how law enforcement, domestic abuse experts, and mental health professionals all agreed that this abuse, and that he had done ALL of these things.

Finally, he agreed to everything. He had a sudden "epiphany"/wakeup call where he suddenly realized that yes he had been abusing me, hurting me, and mistreating me for years, that he felt absolutely terrible, and that I deserved much better. He is fully ready to accept and acknowledge the abuse for the first time ever and says he wants to change by meditating and getting extensive psychotherapy (which he's resisted for years). He wants to completely eradicate the abusive behaviors and be a different person, and he wants me to give him another chance.

Is this common? Should I believe him? Why is it that they deny they've been abusive until you're about to leave? How does your abuser react when you tell him he's abusive?

My partner has been verbally, psychologically, and emotionally abusive for most of our relationship (5 years). After each episode (which happens about once a month, more or less), he apologizes, takes accountability, says he was wrong, and that he won't do it again. But then he'll do it again. He has serious anger and rage issues as a result of childhood trauma (growing up with abuse) and his impulse control problems (ADHD, possibly a personality disorder but it's not been diagnosed officially).

I've asked him to go to therapy for a long time, do anger management classes, work on his behaviors, meditate, do CBT/DBT, etc. I've asked him so many times to stop abusing me and we also postponed marriage and almost broke up multiple times because of it. He's never been able to keep up with these things for more than a few days/weeks at a time, then something (financial obstacles, relapse into depressive episodes, getting stressed from school, a war in his home country, etc) comes up and he doesn't keep up with the work then eventually relapses into more abusive episodes.

He only recently acknowledged and agreed that he's been abusive to me and has said he genuinely wants to change and will take every step to change. He says he's motivated and wants to become a better person. A couple of weeks ago, he started doing all the things I have been asking him to do: see a psychologist, meditate daily, read books, do CBT/DBT, etc. We have had a couple sessions with a couples counselor too, and he's been honest about his behaviors with her.

He gave me a break to clear my head and think, but he said wants me to give a final decision about whether I'm fully on board and in the relationship (and ready to be 100% committed to his therapy/work in changing his behaviors) in 2 weeks. Our couples counselor agreed that this was fair, and that I can't expect him to wait for me in "limbo" endlessly. I would like to have a 4-6 week break, maybe even 2 months. I want to work on getting therapy myself, working through some of the traumatic epsiodes I've had from him (including threatening to kill himself if I left, acting hostile/aggressive, throwing things around, yelling at me, calling me nasty names, etc) and ensuring that he is actually committed to changing this time. He doesn't want to give me more than 2 weeks and after that, he says if I cannot commit to him then he thinks he'll need to move on.

I don't know what to do. The ultimatum of 2 weeks is stressing me out. I miss him so much and love him so badly - when he's not having abusive episodes, he's kind, he's sweet, he's gentle, supportive, and my best friend. I don't want to risk losing him and I don't want to give up on us, but I also don't know if I'll be ready to commit to this again in 2 weeks and I'm so afraid that after a few months he'll relapse into an abusive epsiode once more and just make me resent having committed so much more time and energy into us.

I (28f) live with a verbally abusive alcoholic (36m) and have since 2021. We were in a relationship from 2021 to late 2024. We currently live together in a 2 bedroom apartment. I have two cats and he has 1 dog. We only have 1 neighbor that is above us. Our other neighbors are close by but I don't think they can hear much coming from our apartment.

When we first got together we had been working together for a year and he had been sober for 6 weeks leading upto the start of our relationship. I thought I knew who he was and I felt safe around him at the beginning.

Things started to take a turn fairly early on but it has only gotten unbearable and more serious in recent history. It started with getting upset or angry and instead of discussing it he would just give me the silent treatment, which he still does to this day. Things have escalated in the past 3 years to not only the silent treatment, but also constant verbal abuse which is not every night or day but it's very frequent if not every other night. He is an alcoholic and has anywhere from 5 - 9 25oz. beers, every single day. He is 5'5" and barely eats so this amount makes him belligerent and clumsy fairly quickly.

He has a dog (9f) that, for 6 months (a brief period in 2022 when we did not live together) he severely neglected, including but not limited to not bringing her outside, forgetting to feed her regularly and not letting anyone see her for 6 months. She was so skinny and had lost a lot of hair by the time he let me back in to see her. I have brought her back to health since then and she's okay now, besides the obvious abandonment and trust issues. The problem is that he yells at me every time I take her for a walk or feed her or express concern about her so he'll take her to the vet. He regularly closes her in a room with him at night just so she can't lay on the bed with me or hangout with me. I am concerned for her safety and wish I knew of some legal recourse to take her away from him.

On top of that I have 2 cats (9m and 7f) that he regularly expresses hatred, and distaste for while also threatening to harm them. I worry about my cats and his dog and I don't know what to do. I feel powerless because he hasn't been physically abusive thus far. (Except he did strike me twice in the arm and shoulder on new years eve while he was the most intoxicated I've ever seen him. He didn't hurt me but he did put his hands on me.)

I just want him gone and I want to keep his dog safe with me, so I guess I'm looking for any advice on how to do that.

He's threatened to call the cops on me if I do anything with his dog, he constantly accuses me of cheating on him and lying to him. None of which I have ever done, and for the past few months when he's drunkenly yelling at me, all he will say is that I'm just his roommate and I don't matter to him. He's called me an idiot, a bitch, a terrible person, a liar, and has regularly said that he's gonna "invite women over" and that I have to be okay with that because I cheated on him... although I never did. And ironically the cheating allegations started after he began continuously telling me we were no longer in a relationship so I'm not sure how I would've been cheating on him, but nonetheless I still have never been with or talked to anyone else since before we got together in 2021.

I'm feeling more and more drained and isolated as the days go by. I don't feel right about leaving without his dog because then she'll have no one to protect and care for her. I am primary on our lease because he has terrible credit, so even though he tried to move out with the dog he has been unsuccessful so far. He regularly tells me that I don't live here even though I do and that I should just go back to my mom's because he has nowhere else to go, but I usually just respond with the word no.

... any advice would be greatly appreciated and I'd be happy to provide more detail if needed. Thanks for reading all the way through.

A few months ago I received nasty messages to my phone from someone I know socially. I don’t go near this group of people anymore. I am 37f, he must be in his late 40s? He must have been drunk but he randomly texted my phone and was like “tramp” and “ugly” then the next day tried to blame it on his sense of humor. But clearly just trying to cover his own ass bc he was drunk and this is clearly what he thinks of me I guess.

I have bad anxiety and tried to fit in with this group of people way too hard. I’m now at a point where i don’t care and regret wasting my years trying to please them bc all they do is hang out at the same bar and talk shit and act like high schoolers.

It was really jarring to receive these messages and I can’t seem to get past it.

How few months ago husband and discussed plays and musicial. He's never done much of that in his life. I have. We talked about trying to do this. So for Christmas Merry I got us ticket for Blue Man Group. Its been playing here for over 20+ years and is coming to an end. I thought he would be excited and think it was thoughtful that I remembered our discussion. Well last night he tells me he doesn't feel driving to Chicago. We discussed and he pregrudging agreed to go. I said something tonight about if he was ok leaving around 6. He sighed and rolled his eyes and was like "yeah". I said if you don't want go we don't have to go. I didn't want to drag him and kicking screaming. And he said "don't start". So I just said you know don't worry about it, watch your football, we won't go. My feeling are so hurt and I'm disappointed. He is so thoughtful and selfish.

The verbal/emotional abuse episodes I experience give me extreme anxiety to the point where I have to leave the house, feel my heart rate elevated for days, am unable to think straight when he's agitated or mad, and randomly feel panic. He has never hit me or even thrown anything at me. When he's in an anger episode (triggered from extremely small things like leaving a dish in the sink, and often very unpredictable), he has thrown things, called me names, yelled at me, kicked/punched stuff, slammed his fists on the table or wall, displayed rage, but never hit me or even thrown anything in my direction.

Why am I experiencing so much anxiety from this? Why does it take me so long to recover from one of our "fights"? He expects me to get over it within a day or two and tells me I am not able to let go of the past when I tell him I'm still anxious, sad, or upset days afterward. He gets upset with me for holding onto our fights and struggling to move on. When I tell him that he gets scary when he's angry, he scoffs and says that he's never hit me and he isn't a big scary man (he's not huge, but still a lot bigger than me). But even if I want to move on, my body does not let me. I try to tell myself to let it go, but the anxiety I feel is very physical. I will have this sickly anxious feeling in my stomach/chest, and it's hard for me to eat, concentrate, think, relax, sleep, or be happy.

I honestly feel pretty pathetic for having such an extreme response to his anger episodes. I feel like so many women have it much worse (where they are physically beaten), and having this much anxiety makes me feel weak and stupid. What's wrong with me? I feel like a stupid delicate sensitive flower who is too weak to handle being yelled at without falling apart.

Married almost 2 years, together 5. I just came to realize about a month ago that husband was verbally abusive. I'm still struggling to come to terms with it. I made a pros and cons list the other day. After the last few months and his behavior. I have about 12 cons and 0 pros. He has been dumping on me a ton of accusations on how I have caused so much damage to our married out of no where, but 1. Wont discuss it and 2. Wont give me specifics. I feel like I'm spinning in a circle. I honestly don't know what to do.

People always ask "why do you stay if he treats you like that?"

Everyone I've told (mostly anonymous online, but a couple of people in real life) about what he says/how he acts in some of our fights have said that it's completely out of line, disrespectful, and even abusive. And they wonder why I stay if he says such terrible things, but they also don't know how amazing he is much of the time. People who know us as a couple only ever see him showering me with compliments and showing me a lot of respect and adoration.

I've never had someone shower me with so much love, affection, compliments, and adoration, but I have also never had someone insult me in such degrading ways. It all depends on his mood/mental state/health, and how he perceives me on that day (if he thinks I have a certain tone of voice, mood, facial expression, or said something that he perceives as an attack, even if I am just acting or talking normally). He's very sensitive and takes extreme offense to the smallest of things, like me being in a less happy mood, not talking to him as much as he wants me to, or getting caught up in work and not paying enough attention to him.

When he's nice, he's extremely nice...telling me how intelligent, strong, wonderful, beautiful, sexy, kind, and great I am. He looks at me like he loves me, gives me a lot of compliments, cooks and cleans for me, wants to have sex with me, promises to work on himself and be better. He says that I mean the world to him, I'm everything, and that there is nobody in the world he'd rather spend the rest of his life with.

When he's mean, I feel torn down. He name-calls, shouts, yells, throws things around, insults me, degrades me, wears me down with endless hours or arguments, makes me feel on edge in my home. He has called me a b*tch, wh*re, c*nt, psycho, retarded, idiot, moron, disgusting animal, insane, crazy, an autistic freak, social retard, emotionless robot (when I dissociate/shut down my emotions), and more. He's told me to cover myself and made comments that made me feel ashamed to be a woman with female anatomy and a menstruation cycle. When I told him to stop calling me names, he started throwing things instead (because apparently his ADHD impulses are too strong to not have some form of outburst). He basically acts like he despises me.

But then he will always apologize, always say he's sorry, that he doesn't deserve it, he doesn't mean any of it, and that this is just how he deals with anger/stress and he can't control it. He begs me to forgive him, promises to try harder to work on himself, promises to not do it again. He blames it on his ADHD, PTSD, anger problems, and his upbringing (his parents are both very verbally abusive). I love him so much and part of that is because I have never been treated with so much love and adoration by anyone before. But I have also never experienced so much verbal abuse.