Rysmom, I am so sorry you have to go through this, but good for you to have the guts to confront him. I hope I am that strong when the time comes.
I can really only comment to you on the verbal stuff--I don't know how I got to the age of 47 and never heard from any of the 6? or so councelors I've been to over a 15 year marriage, but you need to WALK AWAY when they are being abusive. All these councelors would tell HIM to stop (but he never did) and NEVER told ME to LEAVE for a while!
I don't know if it's because I've insisted on Christian Counseling or not (and the whole "submit to your H thing") but they always focused on my H and not on me--until the last one I went to. He told me to get away and it has been an absolute Godsend. It felt weird, my H would be spewing HORRIBLE things at me, but I would calmly tell him I can't hear him when he is like this and I have to go out and I hope he would feel better and we could talk when I got back.
I have been doing this for about 3 1/2 months now and again today (Mondays are his normal "blow up" day) he went off--and I calmly gathered my stuff, told him my "script", and all he yelled as I left was "Don't take my van".lol. I NEVER take his van--guess he had to say SOMETHING.lol. But it wasn't the usual string of obscenities--so it is slowly working.
