Hello...my husband has been physically and verbally abusive to me and our sons for about 3 years. The abuse is shoving, grabbing, blocking exit from rooms, pounding on locked bathroom doors, very vulgar insults ("f___ing sacks of $hit", "f___ing lazy pieces of $shit"). He frequently tells me in front of the children that I'm a bitch, a bad Catholic, and that I'm Satanic. He has threatened to kill us numerous times or beat us up. Our attempts to not respond, to walk away are labeled as "disrespect towards the head of household". He invents purposeless manual labor for my sons to do to "make them into men". He often would be very demeaning and threatening to us and them call us to "family rosary" as if nothing happened. It's really mentally confusing to us because he seems to have no remorse and acts as if he doesn't understand why we don't like him or want to be around him. He shoved my son very hard into a door a few days ago because my son wouldn't leave us alone when my husband was screaming at me. My son wanted to stay there because he was afraid for my safety. I called the police and after investigating they didn't arrest my husband but they made him leave for the night. They privately advised me to divorce him. I didn't bother to explain to them that I'm a traditional Catholic and divorce is off the table. He is well respected in our town and is an usher and security guard at our SSPX chapel. He's also friends with the sheriff and many deputies here.
My husband is now coming and going as he pleases, not paying bills, works part time, and spending a lot of time laying on the couch watching tv and eating. He filed a false report with the sheriff that I stole firearms from him. They are still locked in his gun safes and never left the home so he is clearly delusional or a cunning liar. I have an email from him in that he admits filing the report.
I don't know what to do. Talking to a priest is a waste of time because I'm going to get more talk of "forgiving his brokenness" and I need to "help him" by giving more sex. I am not exaggerating--that has been some of the advice I've received. My husband was briefly seeing a counselor for anxiety and was told he is a narcissist. If he had known what that is I'm certain he wouldn't have admitted it to me. I have children in the home and I can't protect them and as they get older and bigger the abuse seems to be getting more severe. He's very entitled and loves using traditional Catholic morality and the Bible to justify his abuse of us.
What should I do?
Ok, so I'm gonna be the one who say the emperor has no clothes.
A number of things to note, and the OP can respond.
Did you address the advice the priest gave you? Were you giving the marital act everytime he asked? You leave all that out.
And you will understand why it sounds very suspicious when you talk in a cynical way about that advice. This is a remedy for most situations. If you had experience you would know that.
Another bizarre thing in your post is your putting the family rosary in inverted commas. Why did you do this?
Manual labour for your sons is a good thing. Why are you demeaning this?
And pushing your son into the door may have been excessive ( I don't know for sure- cos your story seems so one sided) but he should have obeyed his father.
Your dismissiveness of talking to another priest is also something that rings alarm bells for me. Why not find another priest? thats what I do when I have problems.
Not working hard is sinful. Not paying the bills i sinful. Is your family is serious economic hardship though because of this? What makes you so confident that a separation is the way to go for you?
Are you working yourself? This could be the cause of your inability to see things objectively.
Topic: Domestic Abuse (Read 5488 times)