Yes - I have been working on my boundaries. He has been terribly verbally abusive to me - though not for a while now. In the early days of our separation I would ring him, upset, and he would shout at me and ridicule me, and I'd hang up, then ring him back, and it was bloody awful. Really awful. Now I don't call him for comfort when I am upset (and I am not that upset very often anyway) and on the rare occasion when he has been blaming or sarcastic or belittling, I've ended the conversation. I haven't yet had a conversation with him about his changes - I haven't said, 'if you want to work on this M then I need you to know there will be no more verbal abuse' - but I have lived the boundary rather than explaining it. It's easier to do as I don't see him that much. I am nowhere near ready to see him more than I do, nor to have that conversation with him.
There was one incident of him being violent towards me - about a year ago now. Never before nor since. I called the police at the time. He wasn't charged. I did try to talk about it with him in therapy later that summer, and his general response was that his violence was my fault because I'd made him angry. He seems a little less quick to anger this month than he has been previously, but I don't think I will feel safe living with him ever again until and unless he's willing to take total responsibility for his violent choice and let me know what changes he has made so it will never happen again. I don't know how to ask for that, and I don't know when the right time to ask for that would be.
At the moment I am just working on being cordial and having boundaries and working on my own changes. He's not putting on offer what I want for an R so I guess we are not in piecing.
