Muddle,
That is what I was trying to get at. Basically that happiness is a choice and something he has to find outside of the marriage (not with someone else but inside hisself). That he can not blame his unhappiness on his W. You just have a way of wording it a lot better than I do. I am glad you came by to point that out as well as the abuse portion.

However, the physical portion of the abuse (in my opinion) is totally uncalled for. Especially in front of the kids. However, I still believe that the physical abuse he recieves at certain times are just Sol's W's reactions to something he has done to ignight it (not always but in most cases). I strongly believe if Sol takes himself out of the confrontational sitch's then the Physical abuse ends, unless she starts beating herself ofcourse... ;\)

Verbal abuse in my opinion does have a grey area. The verbal abuse stems (at least in Sol's sitch) from an on going struggle for Sol to prove to his W how she should be acting instead of how she is currently acting. We as LBS's have this picture of the perfect M and if it deviates from that then we try to fix (especially the men) it instead of just working on ourselves and letting go.

Again just my 2 cents.

Ben 32
STBXW 29
3 kids (D1,S4,SD8) (1 dog 5months)
Status: Fighting for the Kids.

"The only thing we know about future developments is that they will develope."