Vanilla, I agree with all that and it's entertaining the way you write it! I guess we tend to think of a abuse in a narrow sense but I can see how many of those behaviors count as abuse. I wasn't trying to hijack Arsh's thread because we don't even know if her husband has had an affair. He may not have had one. It's more of the struggle to understand how someone can be a certain way for many years or even decades (not abusive at all), and then suddenly one day they morph into this horrible monster with no morals or ethics.
In my husband's case it's not that coming from another country is an excuse for his behavior but rather that perhaps he didn't have those opportunities there. The he came here and got married right away and was happy for a while but it was like being a kid in a candy shop and finally he gave in. I don't know if that's what happened to Arsh's husband or if her husband met someone by chance and wasn't looking, or if he is simply depressed and wants a different life. Only Arsh can guess at that, but for me it was a general question about whether abuser is an umbrella term that we should use for everyone.
