I am a 31 year old woman and have a partner that has anger problems.
He is a very gently person, but he has lots of frustration and anger about things that happened before I met him. In example is his ex wife, the person he had his two sons with. She is a horrible person and to this day she tries to make his life miserable. Because of his sons there is really no way out.
There are also other things probably, but this is the most noticeable for me.
We are both gentle people, and everything else goes wonderful, but his rage issues is killing us. I don't know what to do.
Certain things trigger his anger and for some reason one of them is when I am sad or worried by something. I worry about my mother for example, or about my chronic illness. Every once in a while, I just break down a bit and can get a bit down and teary.
I turn to him then, just for some warmth or an arm around my shoulders, or something like that.
But usually his reaction to it is stress and anger. He stresses out, and then starts angrily naming all the troubles he has in his life. The focus goes to his list of problems and he gets more and more frustrated while he is naming all of it. Its a form of serious self pity, he drowns in it at some point. He says things like: "nothing is right, everything in my life is stuck, I am up against the wall, when it goes on like this I will crash myself with my car" etc. He pretty much thinks his whole life is horrible then. Which is not true, but he cannot see it different in that moment.
I try to calm him but nothing helps, he listens to nothing.
His voice gets louder and louder, angrier and angrier.
At some point I ask him to calm himself, and to please not do that again. I feel weak in such a moment, I was already a bit sad or tired, and then he begins is cycle of rage towards me. I cannot carry that.
When I tell him to calm, he gets enraged even more, shouting and completely stressing out. Sometimes he stands up and stamps his feet or rushes to the kitchen to throw something there. He growls loudly and sometimes yells extremely hard at me to 'stop, just stop'. This makes me angry at him, because I really do not do anything to make him so enraged. I tell him to stop shouting at me at once and talk to me normal, but he will only become more furious.
The more I say to him, the more extreme his anger and rage will become. I get scared of him when he is like that. His body language is very aggressive.
I sometimes just stand there and stare at him in disbelieve. Its completely outrageous, I did not do anything to him. When I get really scared I leave the house for a couple of hours, even when its the middle of the night.
I often break down and cry which makes him rage even more, it really hurts.
He will slam doors and rush out of the house and throw things in the shed.
Its completely ridiculous.
30 minutes later he is calm again and comes back, says nothing and sits down next to me to put his arm around me. He says no sorry, but he tries to solve it with his arm. The first times I tried to talk with him, but this can cause his complete frustrated rage to return. And also, he will often act as if I caused the rage, which is completely unfair in my eyes. I just turn to him for support, nothing more. I should be able to do that.
So now, I say nothing anymore, out of fear that it will cause something nasty again. We sometimes sit like that for an hour or so and then he wants to go to bed.
He usually sleeps within 30 minutes and I lay awake for hours and hours.
The next day I am completely depressed and I feel locked in, lonely and unable to talk with him. He has to work so he goes and that is it.
I cannot talk with him, or turn to him with my troubles. Because he has old issues that cause him to go onto crazy rage.
He never beats or harms me physically by the way. But he does harm himself. One time he lifted the side table and slammed it against his head about 10 times, until it actually broke.
I was very very close to leaving him right then and there. I demanded him to stop but of course he did not stop.
Afterwards (the day after) I told him to get help, I told him our relationship would not work if keeps doing this. I cannot deal with that.
He said he does not believe that therapists can help and that everyone gets angry sometimes. ... as if it was something normal to do.
The oddest thing about it is that he really is a gentle person. He is very reasonable, honest and always very careful with the feelings of people around him. When he is not in rage, he is the sweetest person.
I do not understand why it happens, I asked him and he just says that I go on for too long. But really,.. I don't,.. it can all happen in 5 minutes and I am very careful because I 'hate' his rage. I fear it.
So I do not go on for too long, I actually tiptoe around the house and try to do everything that might lower his stress level.
He says its not healthy that I tiptoe, and am not myself, he sees it. But I cannot stop as long as he will fall into rage so easily.
His ex wife is the biggest issue at the moment. she actually kicked out her 15 year old son, who lives with us now. He has autism, and is very sad because his mom does not want him back. My partner feels very angry about that, he cannot believe how harsh she is. His son is not that difficult, he is a normally functioning child, his autism is barely noticeable. He is just being a teenager a bit.
I do not know what to do. I feel like a small bird inside a tornado sometimes. I cannot deal with it anymore, but I do not want to lose him either.