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Razzleberry said: One more suggestion - could you get an appointment with that therapist, for yourself?

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Funny you should mention that. This past Easter weekend was rough. No matter how non-confrontational I am, just my presence irritates her to furious anger. Here's a small example: when she finds a song that she likes, she plays it repeatedly for hours at a time. We were headed into town so she asked me to burn it to a CD so she could play it in the car. I misunderstood her and copied the entire album to disc instead. When we got into the vehicle and she realized the song she wanted wasn't the first track on the disc she was upset, so I started to skip through the tracks to find her song for her. She told me to "forget about it", but I felt bad that I had misunderstood her so I kept trying to find her song to try to make it right. She blew up for five solid minutes - with our kids in the back seat - loudly and furiously berating me for not listening to her. And this kind of thing happens many, many times per day.

I know I'm not a worthless person but she tries very hard to make me feel like it, and I don't know what to say or how to act anymore to prevent it from happening, and it makes me feel helpless and rotten. So this morning I called and booked an appointment with a local therapist to learn some coping strategies and get some other questions answered, namely about her affair and her internet usage. I won't be seeing my wife’s therapist, mind you. The office has a policy not to individually treat multiple family members outside of a joint or family counselling session due to conflict of interest, so another therapist will see me.

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Razzleberry said: What happened in November? Is there anything you can think of that triggered this? If you can try and remember what made her "snap" maybe that can help you, and the therapist, fix it.

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I know exactly what happened in November. My wife and I and our two kids travelled about 300 km/190 miles to spend the weekend with our 21-year-old daughter's family - actually my stepdaughter, but I consider her my own child, since I've raised her since she was five. We had just arrived and unpacked all of our luggage when my daughter made some sort of comment to my wife about her destructive behaviour. The argument escalated quickly and my daughter, who also has a temper and is somewhat high-strung, told my wife, "Well, maybe you should just leave, then."

So my wife came to me and said, "We're leaving." I tried to take them both aside and get them to calm down and work things out but that seemed to make things worse. They were yelling at each other, and my younger kids were distressed. My wife left the house to wait outside in the vehicle, I packed up everything I had just unpacked, got the kids ready, told my very upset oldest daughter that things’ll calm down with a bit of time, and we left. My wife wanted to go home.

Before I continue, I need to clarify my state of mind that evening. I strongly believe that adults should be able to calmly sit down to talk about and resolve most problems without angry, dramatic gestures like this one that affect not just yourself but everyone around you, especially when younger kids are involved. Plus, I had just packed, driven for over three hours, unpacked, and repacked again, so I was tired.

So I did two things which I didn’t realize would light the fuse on her dynamite: first, I said that instead of driving another three hours we should go stay at my parents’ house that was less than ½ hour away. Second, I kept trying to tell my wife that, although she had every right to be upset, we should’ve stayed and resolved things rather than take off and upset the kids. She snapped, violently. She started shrieking, swearing, and hitting me while I was driving 60 mph on the highway with two scared and sobbing kids in the back seat. When we got to my parents, she took off in the car with the intent – she later told me – of killing herself. Eventually she came back, but although she was seriously depressed for years prior to this incident, she’s been a thousand times worse ever since.

My wife blames this incident, that she says was entirely caused by me, as the day "everything changed". Although she acknowledges that she's depressed, she says this incident made her the way she is today. This isn't true. This may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, but many stagnant years of her untreated mental illness led directly to it. And if she was in a right, normal, reasonable state of mind, she would've been able to defuse the arguement almost before it started.