I feel like I can chime in here because the thing that I did to contribute to our marriage's deterioration in the ever-more-distant past was explosive anger/losing my temper.
I have to agree that regardless of the situation, at minimum physical separation was very necessary on your part and to that extent I commend you for doing that.
I want to make it clear that I was never physically violent and my loss of temper never lasted for hours, just a few minutes...which can seem like hours to the person on the receiving end, I know.
What happened was she would do disrespectful things or hurtful things, I would keep quiet about it and take it for as long as I could, and eventually I would pop, yell and argue. I never saw myself as being intimidating or threatening. I only saw myself as being hurt and expressing my anger at the source.
It took me a long time to change that. But once I fully understood what I was doing and how it came across, I made huge strides and can happily say that despite some very intense hurt she's directed my way in the recent past, I have always kept my cool.
The problem here is that your H is either emotionally immature (this was me) or has a more serious issue. I am by nature an introvert and an analytical thinker. Whenever I have experienced strong emotions or emotional responses to outside events or people in my life, I never knew how to think about, deal with, or control my emotions if they were strong enough. Being an introvert, it's not that I don't want to talk about it, it just honestly never occurs to me to talk about how I'm feeling. So I didn't deal with them at all until the pressure built and I popped.
The thing is, as I saw with my wife, living on eggshells for fear of the next time (and there will always be a next time until he does something about it) will likely cause you to put up a wall until you will no longer feel for him or care about him in any way. You will probably get to where you say 'you love him but are not in love with him' because of the emotional distance his explosive anger is forcing you into.
Assuming there is not a more serious issue at stake and just immaturity, he has likely become addicted to the anger and the release cycle. I know I was. It's not something you can easily break and, in my case, I HAD to blow my stack like that because I had no other tools in the toolbox. It was the only way for me to feel some relief because the pain I was feeling was so great. But like most fixes, it only made me feel better for a short time, and only made my marriage worse.
The good news is that there are solutions and ways to deal with it for him if he is capable and motivated. I finally started to get very concerned about what I was doing because I felt like the way I was acting wasn't the 'real me'...yet, unfortunately, I had to admit that was who I had become and only I could change it.
I began going to IC myself in addition to MC with wife. I found through just talking it out with my C that I could start to see patterns in my life, her life, our marriage, and the broken way we did things that put me in the 'danger zone'. I finally was able to deal with the small things without any help. When big things would come up with her, I'd go see the IC about it and simply talk it out. Again, being an introvert and somewhat private person anyway, that didn't come naturally to me and I had to learn, at 43 years old, that it was necessary.
So I still get angry as all people do from time to time. Luckily for me and those around me, I have learned to deal with it constructively and haven't had any angry outbursts in years. So it is possible to overcome. But it takes a long time and serious commitment, and the proof is in the pudding. The only way to know for sure that it's truly safe is to watch from a distance for a good long while.
I was totally alone when I did it. W still lived at home but had totally emotionally disengaged from me years earlier. If you still desire closeness with him, I would talk to a counselor who specializes in helping males with this problem (there are those out there) how you can show him compassion and support from a distance to provide him with some concrete hope (assuming he wants it and is open to it) while not giving him the benefit of the doubt.
He should have to do the work, and you should be able to see evidence of it over a significant period of time. And if he has the right attitude, he will be repentant for his previous behavior and will be happy to do that for you.
