Please take everything I say here with a grain of salt (or more!)
You are living your situation and I am far removed in many ways, now. But I think I had to deal with some of these same type issues almost 50 years ago - when I was 19 and married my first wife who had just turned 17 and was pregnant.
We were both caught up in a KISA-DiD trap situation (Knight In Shining Armor "rescues" Damsel in Distress). She felt she had a VERY unhappy childhood and that her parents "abused" her - especially her Mom - by tieing her up and locking her in her room to control her, e.g. Her parents were much older and her older siblings were already either in college or just about out of HS when she was born. She was an "accident" unplanned child just as her parents "Golden Years" were about to start. One reason she finally gave in to my own pressure for her to have sex after 10 months of "going steady" dating (yeah - some KISA, eh? ;-( ) may have been her conscious/unconscious desire to just get out of that household as soon as she could. In 1968 that pretty much DID mean marriage for a pregnant girl if the guy was in ANY way shape or form willing. And I was willing.
But she would do some things that I thought seemed kind of crazy - and we did get her into counseling which I also was involved in just a tad so I could be aware of some of her issues.
I THINK I was told back then how very tricky this kind of situation is - for everyone involved. My wife was actually pretty smart - though dropping out of HS obviously she hadn't learned a whole lot yet. (She later had no problem getting her GED thru night school and even started some night college classes.) But I was told that what might be considered "crazy" or at least "irrational" behaviors or responses by her were actually QUITE rational to her - just given her background. Her basic "assumptions" about people and especially "loved ones" was quite different from my own very happy childhood with a TOTALLY consistently loving mother as my own personal childhood emotional "rock". She didn't have that and it made for great ongoing fear and trust and intimacy issues.
For one thing, my wife could absolutely not STAND the slightest criticism from me about anything at all. Period. I just could not go there - even things I would consider benign and nothing but "positive" "you might be able to do that better if you..." - nothing but extreme emotionally negative response from her. It takes a long time for a person to get over some things in their childhood - and I don't know that my ex-wife ever really totally did. We WERE married for 9 years, and after our divorce she remarried another guy within a year and has been with him ever since. So, I guess she worked it all out, somewhat.
Again, your wife and situation is different - but it just struck me as a tad familiar. But even you suggesting counseling for your wife, now, might set her off because I think you may have been tipped over into the "unsafe person/can't trust" column in her own mind. A place you obviously don't want to be and never thought you would be. But that is what just ONE yelling at her or forcefully touching her might do - which may seem unfair but is merely defensively logical to her - depending on just how bad her previous abusive history MIGHT be. (Again - I really don't know. Just some food for thought, maybe, and further careful investigation for truthful knowledge on your part. Again - be very careful of seeming to appear to her even further "untrustworthy". It can seem to be a huge Catch-22 kind of situation. Very hard for you to do the right thing. Maybe just revisit the 1st Corinthians definition of "love" and always keep that in the back of your mind when trying to communicate with your wife...)
