I have looked into marriage counseling and individual counseling. He says he is not abusive when I know for a fact he is. He constantly yells and makes threats and is just consistently hostile. He is more of all those things to my daughter (not biologically his) than he is to our son together or me. Everything they do wrong deserves a spanking and has harsh threats along with it. I feel as though I am loosing my mind. For example, my daughter has a chore every morning and night to clean out the litter box and feed our kitten. One evening she sat down to eat dinner and he asked her if she had taken care of the cat. She said "no sir". He got upset with her and said that next time he catches her eating before the cat gets fed he is going to make her go without dinner. If I try to intervene and tell him that is not appropriate to say he tells me to be quiet. If they run in the house he tells them he is going to break their legs. If my daughter starts crying over her feelings getting hurt about something he tells her to "dry it up" and if she doesn't stop crying he will give her something to cry about and if I try to go comfort her about what she was crying over in the first place, he gets pissed off with me for "babying her". She is 7 years old. Our son is 2.

I do love him but it is more of a love because I have been with him for 5 years. I married him because I felt rejected over my ex not saying he loved me when I thought he should and I thought my husband would. I don't even know at this point if I want to stay married or not. I am scared of being on my own. I am scared that if we divorce then the children would still have to be around him by themselves with me not there to protect them. Then what happens if he gets with a woman like is ex's were (physically abusive and alcoholics) and then my children have to be in that environment?