Well, I've posted about this situation a number of times since April, but it's still troubling me greatly. I have bipolar and PTSD (chronic violence during childhood). I've been married 14 years to my college sweetheart, and diagnosed two years before we married. My husband attacked me physically this past March when I was 30 weeks pregnant. I got away and was okay. I was hormonal and probably overreacting to some extent over hurt feelings, but I keep asking myself whether it was my fault that he got so upset, because I have bipolar disorder and can be more sensitive than your average person (but to be clear, I have NEVER touched my husband or children in any negative way, even in self-defense). Could you weigh in on this? I'm trying to make sense of it.

My husband had only been violent a couple times until last March, and nothing too serious - kicked a bar stool at me once when I made a snide comment, and threw a little box at me once during an argument. In short, in March, I had found out he and his sister were talking about leaving me out of the 75th birthday gift to my father-in-law. Their rationale was that if my sister-in-law's boyfriend of one year wasn't included in the gift, that I, as my husband's partner, perhaps should not be as well. I was livid and extremely hurt when I found out, and I was immediately very vocal and told them they should be ashamed of themselves to even consider excluding me after 14 years of marriage. Anyway, I cried and whined about the situation for 24 hours. My husband continued to say that I'd misinterpreted the note I'd seen between him and his sister and that they "never really would have left me out." The next night I approached my husband before bed and calmly told him I felt hurt that I hadn't heard from his sister with an explanation or a simple "I'm sorry." I could see he was getting angry so I told him we should talk about it another time and headed up the stairs to bed. But instead he completely flipped out. Long incident, but basically he chased me up the stairs, threatened to douse me with a big mug of very hot water, and then hurled a chair at me from over his head. I got out of the way in time, ran downstairs, and locked him out of that floor while he screamed and pounded on the door and said I was crazy and had blown the chair-throwing out of proportion. It went on for another 15 minutes or so until I finally called my neighbors for help and he calmed down.

A couple weeks later, he said things to me like, "If you love me you won't tell anyone," "What I've done in the past isn't abuse because I've never hit you," "Everyone knows you have a bad memory," and ""Your therapist is paid to believe you" (among other hurtful things). I told him if he ever tries to hurt me or the kids again I will leave and take the kids with me, but he said he'll never let me have the kids. (He'd rip me apart in a divorce - He knows how to destroy me emotionally.) He's been good to me again for the past several months and is clearly making extra efforts, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting past the incident - I still feel violated physically and emotionally and I can barely stand for him to touch me.

The thing is, I think I WAS on the irrational side about what we were arguing about, and I definitely was pissed off. Did I provoke him? Am I partly to blame? Am I being unforgiving/rigid? My emotions are all over the place and I'm beating myself up over this, while I look at my husband and he seems perfectly normal and nice again. So confused.