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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here. He was not a yeller when dating. He doesn't yell at my daughter, only me. I am vigilant about sexual or physical abuse of my kid.

I am not a selfish mom. I ended up marrying him because he wasn't just great to me while dating, he was also great to my daughter. We will not be having any kids together, we've never wanted to.[/quote]
So he waited until you were trapped before the mask dropped. You fold like a lawn chair when he starts yelling. It’s only a matter of time before he starts yelling at your kid. This guy is bad news.[/quote]

+100.  This is how abuse works - they are nice to you, and their behavior doesn’t change until you are trapped.  He picked you for a reason over a single woman without kids - your profile is more likely to accept boundary violations from him because you have the trauma of being a widow, plus trying to fill a loss for your daughter.  It’s not your fault. You had no way to know that his behavior would turn abusive. But, it has and now you have to choose how to respond to his abuse.

Please get individual therapy.  You need someone to explain coercive control and healthy communication to you and to help you set and enforce boundaries and think about a safety plan when you put up your boundary.

Please also get a lawyer and get advice about divorce.  You need to set a boundary - yelling is not an acceptable form of communication under any circumstances. He must stop immediately & if he feels he needs support to stop then he should go to individual therapy.  Do not go to marriage counseling.  You are not doing anything to cause his yelling, and he is the only one to stop himself from yelling - thus, this is not a “couples” problem.  Marriage or couples therapy is never appropriate with someone who is engaging in abusive behavior. Yelling is abusive.

FWIW, you do not have to set an explicit overt boundary about yelling.  You can leave at any time without giving him a “chance” to correct his behavior.  I wish someone had told me this when my fiancé first started yelling at me.  But, I stayed, and over the course of the next 5 years, his abuse escalated to verbal abuse, coercive control, to raising his hand toward me (but not hitting me), and then finally raising his hand to me and threatening to “beat the crap” out of me and punching a hole in the wall.  At the time, I was (and am) a well-educated woman, who knew a lot about domestic abuse and who had financial resources to leave.  But, we are taught in our culture to “work “ on relationships with people we love, so I stayed.

I wasted years I can’t get back.  It took me years more to understand that I was primed to accept yelling because I grew up with a parent who was a yeller in my household. I thought it was normal.  If you stay and allow yourself to continue to be yelled at by your DH, you are teaching your daughter what other men and future relationship partners can do to her.  The biggest favor you can do to her is teach her, by example, that women are allowed to decide how men treat them.  We may not be able to make them treat us kindly, but we can control whether we remain in the presence of someone who is behaving unkindly.

I had 2 abusive fiancés (each in different ways). I left the second when our 2 kids were 18 months and five years. It was the greatest gift I could give them as a mother - to be raised at least 50% of the time in a non-abusive, non-neglectful household. They are the happy, healthy, independent people they are today because I made that difficult choice. [/quote]

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