Dear terry216:

Congratulations for ending a relationship with a man who has clearly and undeniably been abusive to you!

Congratulations!!! Please give yourself the pat on the back that you deserve.

A couple of thoughts: your daughter: how old is she?. Has some of this abuse has happened in her presence? If so, I imagine it scared her terribly. If this is the case, she needs a lot of your comforting as children do, when they are scared. A lot of problems will arise if a child is scared repeatedly. What is her state as a result of this?

As to your questions: how can a person say “I love you” and abuse you, denying their actions, not apologizing (not sincerely if they do)? I will attempt to answer this question and you tell me if it sounds like a real possibility in your case:

Your ex boyfriend, here is a scenario: he feels distress, a tension and he doesn’t like it. He calls you name, says abusive things to you, destroys some of your property and he feels better, his distress is relieved. He feels better. He knows somewhere in his brain that what he did isn’t right, but he feels better. And hey, how can you argue about feeling better? Isn’t that what everyone wants, to feel better? Don’t we all rush, sometimes, to do the first thing that comes to mind so to relieve our distress, from eating a cookie, to listening to our favorite music to reaching out to a friend to sitting in the sun…etc etc etc.?

Well, he felt better and you were still there, available. So he did it again and again when he felt distressed enough. Had another cookie, figuratively.

What do you think, a possibility that his MO was as simple as that?

anita