lady411, from what you have shared here in your thread, right now what you are actually doing (unknowingly) is you are "surviving", and your dream of is "thriving". What you need to understand is that you are NOT thriving but only just "surviving" and living your life right now according to HIS ongoing "disorder" that he developed from growing up in an abusive dysfunctional family environment. And the reason his last relationship ended was because the individual he was married to could no longer survive the way he was behaving which is what YOU are now experiencing with him.

What Have Hope just shared with you is that her sister ended up marrying an abusive narcissistic man not all that different from her father. Her sister was NOT thriving in that relationship, instead all she was doing was simply surviving it just as she had done with her father growing up as she had seen her father treating her mother in similar ways SHE herself was being treated by her husband. It's important that you pay attention to what her sister is facing NOW with her children where they ALL have problems and have needed THERAPY.

Often what CAN happen is a child that grows up with dysfunction ends up experiencing the same kind of dysfunction in their relationship because "its' familiar". This is NOT what you want YOUR children to struggle with, AND THEY WILL.

I understand that you want YOUR marriage to last like the marriages your parents and their parents had. Yet, it's VERY important that you SEE why that desire can be not only detrimental to you but also to your children and they are already being affected even at their very young ages. ("My husband slapped me while I was 7 months pregnant and holding my 1 year old) That is NOT healthy AT ALL and nothing that 1 year old deserved to see her father do to her mommy.