He told me that he wants to "go back in time and stick up for the men that raped me"

I am embarrassed that this post came out so long, but I am desperate for some perspective here. I am not sure whether my boyfriend's recent abusive behavior is a poor reaction to stress, or indicative of an abuser. The verbatim text he sent me this morning is at the bottom.

Backstory: we have been together for almost a year. There have been a few bumps in the road, but nothing I would consider major until recently.

Over the past several months I have had two miscarriages. I really cannot overstate how devastating they have been. It has been tough, but I thought we were managing as well as could be expected. The abusive behavior began two weeks ago when he drunk dialed me at 1:00am. He verbally berated me for three hours straight, during which some truly nasty things were said. I was hurt and angry afterwards, but decided against "fighting back" because a) he felt horrible about it and b) I attributed the outburst to non-related work and family stress.

Surprisingly (sarcasm), repressing my anger didn't work. Last Thursday, it all came out. I laid into him about how he treated me that night, and about other things I had been holding inside. I still can't decide if I was overly harsh with him or if he deserved to hear it. I never went "below the belt" but this was the first time in our relationship that I didn't sugarcoat things. It was the first time I didn't let him off the hook. This is the night he is referring to when he said that I was "willfully cruel" and he didn't deserve it, etc.

I do have to stress that he is not physically abusive, and the recent verbal abuse is out of character for him. As you'll see in the text, there are no Angels here.

So - here is one of the texts I woke up to this morning . It is verbatim, except for the removal of potentially identifying information. It's a wall of text, to say the least.

"I need to make sure you're hearing this and the odds we get time to talk about it are not great because once again I'm awake sleepless. **And I will ****ing murder you if you start yelling at me at 11 Pm again.** Because we need to have a real serious talk about how all that happened. You were willfully cruel to me, and I did not deserve it. You tore me down completely when I tried to talk about my **** that I had spent the past week not talking about because you always have to tell me that you forgave your mom so I should too. Yet when I tell you I didn't go, you don't ask if something's wrong, you go straight to "he's lying to avoid me." And the issue you brought up was "you're a ****** boyfriend," not "I've felt sad and angry and abandoned," so I was defending myself not minimizing your feelings. Which I figured out at the end when you said something about your abandonment issues. And then you throw the **** about the doctor and how you needed to tell me that you didn't want to have a child. I mean WTF? I said "I am sure <my name> wouldn't send me another passive aggressive text where something's really wrong and she's just not talking about it". But yup! So my trust is reeeeeeal low right now. **And the problem in my life is this relationship.** I have been traumatized by the way you treated me, and you really ****ed up on the aftercare by making it into a power struggle . You don't think I'm worried about someone having an addiction to fighting? With you acting like everything is okay, and not telling me that you desire more contact, you ****ing threw **** fits and deliberately trying to make me feel bad to nights that I came to visit you. Both times before I got to your house, I thought things were fine between us and I was very happy with the way the other parts of my life were going. Now, you apparently feel a little better, but I am so ****ed up over this that I can barely work. I am more behind than I was when I was *****ing about being behind last week. And let me tell you a little something about being supportive. This relationship has been at least 80% about you ever since you got pregnant the first time. Guess what, these pregnancies and miscarriages did not just happen to you. One of the things that I did to prepare myself to provide for you and our child was to put serious effort into financial stability. That's why I have so many deadlines and I feel like I'm behind and I just want a weekend in the office or nobodies going to ****ing call me and <coworker> is not going to ask me to do something and deal with my <identifying info>. I missed a ****ing deadline on Friday because I had basically no sleep for two nights running and I could not ****ing think. Truthfully, the odds that anyone will ever even notice are just about none, but **it terrifies me the way that this relationship has been killing my whole life for the past week. You can say or think whatever you want about that making me weak and you can ****ing kiss my *** while you do it.** You purposely tried to hurt me as bad as you could, because you had given yourself license to have as bad a fight as you wanted because you were hurt. Well guess what? You definitely succeeded. At this point, I am a hell of a lot more concerned about my well-being than yours, and you are not getting off with this "oh, we both need to work on it." You need to start dealing with your issues real fast. You have been punishing me for two weeks instead of having the courage to contact me directly. I don't know why you think this entire relationship is my responsibility, but you are not getting by with just being a passenger anymore. You have got to take responsibility for your emotions and your needs and communicating them. I don't know if it's a gender thing, or if you are copying your own mom, or what is going on, but I feel like I am responsible for figuring out how you feel, filling your needs without you having to express them, making the plans in the relationship, making the decisions, and doing all the stuff that's boring, like actually finding someplace between here in <where I live> that you and I can both stand to live. It would be nice too if you could provide me a little emotional support when the issues in my life have become problematic enough that I display them to you. I don't know what you're weird deal is with my relationship with my mom, if it's something unresolved between you and your mom that you are projecting, or if you have just decided that I'm the kind of person who needs to forgive someone that you don't know a damn thing about and have never bother to try to learn. That is 100% you. You ****ed it up when I brought it up the first time by not listening, and you try to fight with me about it again when you just told me "that with your mom, I'm not cool with that," and I am so tired of you acting like it's something weird on my part that I have some problem with you and it's a touchy issue. It makes me so angry, **I want to go back in time and stick up for the men that raped you and tell you it was probably something you did.** So yes we both have to work, but I am trying really hard to work on it and also take care of myself. I think that you are the person who has to do some work now, because you are not going to continue to get emergency unplanned pregnancy level of boyfriend care from here on out, and I have had all I am going to take in terms of you acting out. Like I said, my trust is extremely low, my defenses are up, and I'm doing it because you gave yourself permission to hurt me as bad as you could. You can be pissed, but at least I was shocked and apologetic when I realized what I just done. I'm doing the work to understand where this anger is from so that I don't direct it at you. You decided that I deserve to be made feel miserable because you were miserable, and expected me to leave. **You have been crazy psycho ***** girlfriend for two weeks.**"
G

Welcome to Psych Central (PC). Sorry to hear you are being mentally abused. I would consider having a safety plan in case of verbal and mental abuse turns physical. In fact if got this kind of text from someone I would consider my options to exit to a safe environment. Here are some articles that may be of interest.
http://psychcentral.com/search/?Matc...+abuse&x=0&y=0

There are many caring people here at PC.

What about going to a therapist that can help get to the root of the problem?

You may find the forums of interest
Survivors of Abuse - Forums at Psych Central

http://forums.psychcentral.com

After 5 posts you can do the Chat Room Forums at Psych Central - Calendar

Feel free to private message me or any community liason by left clicking on their name underlined in blue to the left of the post and selecting Send a private message to .....[their name]

Notmenotnow1, Hello and welcome to PC.

I am so sorry to hear about your struggles. It is no fun being sleepless with so much on your mind. You have been through so much. There are very caring people here.

Please keep reaching out. I wish you the very best here at PC.

The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans saved my life. Abusers are excruciatingly insecure and will do and say anything to hold on to their victims. THey rarely change unless they get into therapy and that usually dosn't happen, because they don't feel they have a problem. No contact is the best idea. Abuse is a CHOICE. he chooses that and it has nothing to do with you at all. You can look up online verbal abuse and get some much needed insight and resources. Responding to abuse simply validates their abuse.

Sorry, my eyes can't read a block of text like that, but I picked out a few things toward the bottom. It sounds like an incredibly toxic relationship. I can't tell from your post...are you seeing a therapist?