He told me that the pastor who we met with. The one I really like and who conducts the recovery group. Anyways H says he has been talking to him a lot on the phone.
The H admitted his anger to him he says. That he has driven into fence posts, punched holes in walls, broken things.
Then the pastor said "Every hot blooded male has done such a thing, its part of being male. Its natural instinct"
I just cringed and immediatly want to interrupt. It reminds me of the saying "Boys will Boys" excusing certain mens behaviors that are wrong.
Ok so maybe its natural that we get angered by actions. But does everyone act out destructively? I said to H "My Dad never displayed these actions"
He said then the pastor asked him "Well what happened to cause that anger?"
So now I said to H "Are you saying that type of anger is justified if your wife does something wrong or that you dont agree with?"
Am I alone here? So everytime a bill showed up in the mail I knew nothing about that H created without telling me, I should have broken something, drove erratic? All of that and it been justified?
Instead I cried, told him that he was hurting us financially. Sometimes I had to leave the house. I once went to the park nearby, called a girlfriend and just cried feeling helpless. She in turn told me his creating debts and then hiding them from me, me being the one who handled the finances. H would dump his crap on me, that that was a form of abuse.
So he was hurting me? Did it give me reason to act out? NO!
Im learning one thing in the womens group. That people do abuse, and no we cant make them act different, But we can choose what we will allow. And they teach abusers that its not ok to hurt someone. Regardless of what they do, if they do not like what someone is doing, that is where a person sets up there own boundary. If I do something H dissaproves of, or is wrong. He can choose to say "I cannot be with you" and remove himself from the situation, right?
This is the one area that makes being a Christian and this whole situation so difficult for me. There doesnt seem to be very many who have a grip on abuse and christianity and marriage problems.