Husband was kicking our cat

[Guest clancy]

He started kicking her against a wall....did you take this cat to the vets to get him/ her checked out...what if that kick had caused some internal bleeding/ problems....personally that would have been my first port of call.....that poor cat!!......

Edited March 17, 2021 by clancy

[missmuffet]

On 3/16/2021 at 9:54 AM, bornagain2011 said:

I feel numb and scared right now. One of our cats was about to pounce on our younger cat and instead of my husband picking her up and removing her he started to kick her against the wall, he kicked her 3 times I think.  Not with all of his strength but she was freaked out and so was I. 

Right afterwards my husband came over to me and didn't say anything, but  was calm. I said "really?!" And he said "she was going to attack him" I said "you could've picked her up and moved her" and hesaid "she won't do it again" . Our 3 kids were in the living room so they didn't see, but one of them said "what?" and I said "nothing" and went into the bedroom to try and process what I saw and what to do.

I came out to go into the bathroom and my husband was like "what's wrong?" As if nothing had happened, and I said "really?" And he said "you think I kicked her?", I just said wow. So already he is going to try and deny and gaslight.

Here is the thing about my husband. He is a "nice guy", also passive aggressive. When he gets caught watching porn he always swears he will never do it again and says he is disgusted by it. When I found out a few months ago that he was watching things on his work computer he was like "I wasn't even tempted I don't know why I did it", he tries to act like he never struggles with sin, that he is perfect and just struggles with a bit of anger. I have caught him in lies that he would keep denying for so so long. 

I honestly don't know what to do right now. What sucks is that he is the typical "nice guy", he can be very loving, and reads his bible daily, but I get a peak sometimes at the condition of his heart (deceitful, lying, prideful) and it seriously makes me want to divorce him and be single.

What should I do? Can't afford counseling. 

For someone to do what your husband did has problems. If your husband will not get counseling you should go alone and get counseling. It should be Christian counseling and if you called them and told them your financial situation they could direct you what to do. 

[leah777]

The threat of divorce is an effective tool to shut you up. It's the verbal equivalent of a blow. It is manipulative and controlling.

I will ask: do you both have a fulfilling and loving intimate life together? What is his excuse for porn?

[bornagain2011]

16 hours ago, DDisconnect said:

... Why is it that when people are in what seems to be an abusive or an at least unhealthy relationship, most advise to just stick around and try to be a good Christian example? Like yeah, maybe they can change, but I'd say that's probably not the common occurance. It's probably far more common that some poor sister just stays in an abusive situation because of some sense of religious duty.

You suspect that he is or has been cheating on you, and there is multiple instances with proof. He has shown as aptitude for emotional manipulation and denial of responsibility. He brings up divorce often I think because he wants to move on but just like his Bible reading and moral postulation, he wants you to initiate it so he still looks like a good guy or whatever. And he may not have kicked the cat hard, but he is seemingly unbothered by it. He emotionally manipulates you by telling you that if you divorce him, he will watch porn whenever he wants - that is manipulation and coercion, that should not be taken lightly. In fact, most of when and if he does seem bothered or tries to make excuses, I'd assume it's because he fears you might blab about it to someone - such as when you told the pastor about him looking at porn. So all he's likely doing is just playing you for a fool, from your side of it. Even if he seems to get better, claims he isn't talking to women or anything, has he not claimed similar before? Has he not apologized before just to do the exact same thing yet again?

I know how this goes. My brother will tell people whatever they want to hear. I will get a job, I will be well behaved, I regret what I did to you before, please, I'm going to kill myself cause nobody loves me have pity please. And so you give in, you let him in because he makes you feel guilty or sorry, and you know what happens? He doesn't get a job, he doesn't get himself together, and it ends the same way it always does, with violence. He doesn't get his way and so he gets nasty. The only reason my brother is actually kind of getting his life together right now is because he hit absolute rock bottom and because he doesn't have someone to leech off of and abuse. And I know your husband hasn't raised his hand at you, near as I can tell, but the fact he sees no issue with kicking a small animal is kind of a massive red flag that he has that potential to be a dangerous fellow.

The others have not given terrible advice, I just think it's neglectful of the details. My advice would be an ultimatum of sorts. Tell him you wish to seek counseling from an older, experienced pastor. And if he refuses or yet again displays how incapable of changing he is, bring up 1 Cor 7:12-16

_______

To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

______

If he really wants a divorce, just let him go. It's absolutely not worth it to try and drag it out longer and just spend your life as a punching bag. Being a Christian doesn't mean you have to be subjected to that kind of treatment. That, and adultery is grounds for divorce as well and I'd say it seems likely he's guilty of that in more than a few ways. 

He now says he wouldn't watch porn or do anything sinful if we separated, but I have doubts about that. I don't have solid proof that he physically cheated, just emotionally cheated, and mentally cheated.

We had a long talk/argument today where we were both honest with each other, I hope he was honest with me. It was emotional. He swears up and down he has never physically cheated on me. 

He is not usually an angry person. I have been in physically abusive relationships before, and this isn't one. He loses his temper, but it's pretty rare. He usually just holds his thoughts and emotions in, and expresses it through passive aggressive actions, sarcastic remarks, or silent treatment. He tells me he doesn't know how to communicate his feelings when he is angry without blowing up, so he shoves it down.

Our argument today was basically me venting to him about why I don't trust him, all of the things he has done in the past, all of the holes in his stories etc. He just sat there taking it (like usual), and in the end I just feel like I pretty much verbally abused him, especially when I remember the scripture that says Satan is the accuser of the brethren. Which is basically what I did.

[leah777]

1 minute ago, bornagain2011 said:

He now says he wouldn't watch porn or do anything sinful if we separated, but I have doubts about that. I don't have solid proof that he physically cheated, just emotionally cheated, and mentally cheated.

We had a long talk/argument today where we were both honest with each other, I hope he was honest with me. It was emotional. He swears up and down he has never physically cheated on me. 

He is not usually an angry person. I have been in physically abusive relationships before, and this isn't one. He loses his temper, but it's pretty rare. He usually just holds his thoughts and emotions in, and expresses it through passive aggressive actions, sarcastic remarks, or silent treatment. He tells me he doesn't know how to communicate his feelings when he is angry without blowing up, so he shoves it down.

Our argument today was basically me venting to him about why I don't trust him, all of the things he has done in the past, all of the holes in his stories etc. He just sat there taking it (like usual), and in the end I just feel like I pretty much verbally abused him, especially when I remember the scripture that says Satan is the accuser of the brethren. Which is basically what I did.

Sorry but please read about what constitutes abuse. Passive aggressive is anger. Sarcasm is anger. Silent treatment is anger. It's anger in a different form from what you think.

 

Telling someone the truth is not accusing the brethren. Emotional adultery is adultery. Mental adultery is adultery. 

He may not be yelling, but he is feeling anger and expressing it. Please get some help from a wise unconnected councillor on these behaviours of his, and do research on gaslighting, and the wider face of abuse and control.

He doesn't need to shout or hit. He gets his way, and has you focused on him without needing to be aggressive.

Peace and blessings to you.

[bornagain2011]

12 hours ago, AnOrangeCat said:

I've found that the use of scripture in personal arguments can come off as very much a blunt force thing, but sometimes it's needed. So far as the cat goes there's Proverbs 12:10, which says that the righteous regard the lives of their animals. Unless the cats have a history of violently fighting with each other or the younger one has some special conditions it's probably best to let them figure out the pecking order and their boundaries on their own. I say this as someone who's had cats for about 20 years.

Regarding his reluctance to see the pastor for counseling, Galatians 6:2 tells us to "bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ". Sharing our problems with other Christians is what allows us to do that. That really applies to sharing with your friend, too. The very least any fellow Christian can do is to lend an ear to you. Another thing to keep in mind is that the Bible also encourages a certain amount of social pressuring when it comes to dealing with sin as outlined in Matthew 18:15-17. There's also what Jesus said in Matthew 5:29: If an eye causes us to stumble, pluck it out. Don't push for a literal interpretation there. It's probably less about the eye and more about ease of access. The porn is an addiction so it should be treated as such. Part of breaking addictions is making them difficult to access.

I have to agree with DDisconnect that you should draw a hard line. Aside from the counseling part of that should involve letting you set up and control the necessary filters to block pornography on the computer. It's a long way from being perfect or foolproof, but every hurdle you put between an addict and their addiction helps.

About the cat, so we got a new kitten last month, he isn't like an itty bitty kitten, but about 6 months old. Well, our older cat hasn't warmed up to him yet, she has gotten better, but sometimes she will hiss or bat at him. Our new kitten was using the litter box and our older cat quickly went over like she was going to attack, that's when my husband leaped up from the kitchen table where we were sitting, and ran over there and kicked her (not hard) about 2 or 3 times. She didn't hit the back wall, but he was kicking her back towards the wall. She didn't cry out, but she was trying to get away from him. It was very hard to witness.

My husband is reluctant to see the Pastor for marital counseling because he wants someone who is older and wiser, and counsels for a living. Pastor is only 34 and has only pastored for a year. And my husband doesn't want him knowing personal details about me or the marriage. My husband did send Pastor a text this morning asking for a recommendation for a good marriage counselor, Pastor said he couldn't think of one but he would like to help, to which my husband thanked him but said they will talk more later. 

The only internet access we have at our house is my old smart phone, which I have a parental control app on it, our old tablet- which I don't think he would use because it is glitchy, and this laptop I am using right now- that I changed the login password to last night. 

My husband has internet access at work in the computer room which is sometimes empty, and he told me that he can hear when people are about to come in. That is the computer he was watching "youtube videos" on. But I am suspicious that he was actually accessing real porn sites through it, and/or dating sites, because he started getting a lot of spam from those sites sent to his phone. And I don't think you get spam from watching videos on Youtube. But that is another thing he swears up and down about, that it was youtube videos of women dancing, not porn sites. I even made him swear on my life (yeah I know that's immature). 

I kind of feel angry about even having to put locks on devices, I feel like if he really loved me he just wouldn't look at those things. How can a man love his wife if he wants other women? If he loves me he wouldn't be tempted to want to be with other women.

[bornagain2011]

11 hours ago, clancy said:

He started kicking her against a wall....did you take this cat to the vets to get him/ her checked out...what if that kick had caused some internal bleeding/ problems....personally that would have been my first port of call.....that poor cat!!......

When he kicked her it wasn't hard. After some of my shock wore off I went to check her out and see if she was ok. She didn't cry or anything. I think she was mostly just freaked out. I couldn't really process at the time what to do, I kind of froze and went dumb. This was the first time that I have seen him act this way towards our cats. She has been attacking our new kitten that we got last month, he isn't really little, but about 6 months old. I think my husband had just had enough. She was going to attack him while he was using the litter box. 

[bornagain2011]

3 hours ago, leah777 said:

The threat of divorce is an effective tool to shut you up. It's the verbal equivalent of a blow. It is manipulative and controlling.

I will ask: do you both have a fulfilling and loving intimate life together? What is his excuse for porn?

I asked him today if he wanted to separate, he said it seems like that is what I want because I have been argumentative etc. I told him it seems that is what HE wants because HE keeps bringing it up. He said he doesn't. I told him I don't either because I don't want to destroy our son's life if our marriage isn't that horrible. And also, I can't afford to live in the house with the three kids, we would have to get an apartment, I would have to go back into the workforce, which I don't want to do because I want to be home with my kids. So a divorce would completely turn everything upside down. 

We have no choice but to stay together. 

As far as intimacy goes, he rarely initiates, he wants me to initiate. And I don't really think about sex unless I am thinking "it's been a few days, he would probably need it". I have some hang ups around it because of my past, so it takes a lot of effort for me to be vulnerable to him. And when he is caught watching things... oh boy... that REALLY shuts me down, and only confirms what my past abuse has taught me- I AM JUST A PEICE OF MEAT, put on this earth for men's pleasure. I have shared all of these thoughts with my husband before. I have told him that I feel like just another piece of meat, that if I don't do what he wants as often as he wants, he will just get his need met with a different piece of meat.

We are intimate often enough, few times a week usually. His excuse for watching porn? "I'm sorry, I was dumb". When he was having an emotional relationship with the 19 year old woman (and watching porn), I had just given birth to our son, so I had a c-section I was recovering from, plus post partum depression, and then I had to go back in 8 weeks later for another operation, so I was in very bad shape, plus a bit heavier than I was before by 30 lbs (which supposedly has never bothered him). His excuse that time was that I was distant from him, and this other woman enjoyed talking to him and was fun. He was up texting her at night when he was supposed to be watching our son. He swears up and down, and on his son's life that nothing physically happened between them, just lots of flirting. I think he was on his way to committing adultery before he got fired.

You see, when we were dating we were BOTH watching porn. BUT, I got saved and became convicted and stopped, whereas he was already a Christian and should've known better. We were also intimate (not living together though) before I was saved, and one of the major reasons we got married was because I - NOT HIM, felt convicted about it. I felt too weak to stop, and he had no desire to stop. So many red flags.... flirty FB messages between him a other females he knew etc. But I only saw the good things, he didn't have a temper, he adored his mama, he treated me like a queen, we just got along so so good, we were best friends. I still consider us really good friends, our personalities seem to work so well together. 

Thank you for your comment, my reply was probably much more than you needed to hear. I haven't talked to anyone in real life about our problems recently. My husband says marriages should be private.

[bornagain2011]

37 minutes ago, leah777 said:

Sorry but please read about what constitutes abuse. Passive aggressive is anger. Sarcasm is anger. Silent treatment is anger. It's anger in a different form from what you think.

 

Telling someone the truth is not accusing the brethren. Emotional adultery is adultery. Mental adultery is adultery. 

He may not be yelling, but he is feeling anger and expressing it. Please get some help from a wise unconnected councillor on these behaviours of his, and do research on gaslighting, and the wider face of abuse and control.

He doesn't need to shout or hit. He gets his way, and has you focused on him without needing to be aggressive.

Peace and blessings to you.

Thank you. He definitely has gaslighted me before. He changes his story about some of the details about him and the 19 year old, as if the original story wasn't BURNED into my mind forever! He told me today that his supervisor from that job was out to get him fired, and that's why there was an investigation done on him and that woman, even though there was something else that came out right before which was going to get him fired and they needed to pull footage for. I told him that it doesn't make sense I said "if your boss had evidence that would cause you to be fired, why would he need to pull footage of you and her, and falsify documents to try and get you fired? Why would he risk his OWN job to falsify documents, when he already had evidence about something else to get you fired?"  my husband's response was "he wanted to make extra sure I got fired". This whole comversation came up because I asked him again about how on the report it said him and the woman disappeared off camera for a few hours, and that at another time the footage showed him sticking his head out of a room really quick while they were in the room together (as if to check if someone was coming), and NOW the answer he gives me is different, NOW he says his boss actually lied on the report and made stuff up. I don't believe that at all. And I was very offended that my husband thought I was such an idiot. His boss had to send the report AND footage off to headquarters to be looked at, now why in the world would he send a falsified report with video footage that would show the contrary? It makes no sense at all.

Some other things he did with her, he gave her a massage (he went to school to be a massage therapist), he gave her a ride home at least once, he texted her all hours and deleted them, after he was fired he had to meet with her one last time to give her something that needed to be taken back to work, he talked to her about our marriage, he told her if her boyfriend doesn't want them talking that there are other ways they could talk, one of the last texts between them he said "I will miss you... all". He can not give a reason or motive for any of this. He swears to God he had no impure intentions and that nothing happened. So either he is telling the truth, and this is one of several times that I just have to say "well, it doesn't look good, but I guess he is innocent", or he really is some sort of sociopath, which is hard to believe as well because he has shown remorse a few times. 

We "made up" earlier, we cried, hugged each other, and said sorry. We don't stay mad very long. But I don't want to just pretend that everything is fine. I want to be married to someone I trust. 

Sorry for the long rant, it feels good to let it out. 

Thank you for your response, I didn't realize that emotional/mental abuse could look like that. But I think pretty much everyone would be divorced if they decided they were done with their spouses passive aggressiveness, their anger, etc. No one would be married because we all have a sin nature. I would say that I have the tendency to be selfish, manipulative, verbally abusive at times to my husband (not super bad, but calling him a liar and accusing him). I just think about how much better my husband is than my exes. Maybe that's naive or foolish, but I have a hard time knowing that the truth is and what to do. According to worldly standards I should've left my husband a long time ago, but by God's standards you are not supposed to divorce.

[Marathoner]

@bornagain2011, I don't have anything by way of marital advice to offer. I can help you to understand the nature of some of what you're facing, however, and I'm glad to be of service in this capacity.

Pornography is terrible, rampant during these times when it is so readily available. As those who struggle with pornography have testified, it becomes an addiction against which many feel powerless. Your husband is an addict in denial. 

Addiction destroys lives, ruins relationships and homes, and inflicts great harm upon our children. The consequences of immortality are tangible; your husband is indeed committing adultery whether he confesses the truth or not. He is distant from you. I am not surprised to learn that he avoids his brothers in the Lord as well and so I will pray for his sake, that the Lord will convict him so that he might confess to his brother. 

One step at a time, that is my counsel to you. Adultery is the root cause and everything else he is doing is a symptom of his immorality. His threats, passive aggressiveness, and bottling things up are earmarks of the addict. I've witnessed this conduct in addicts time and again. It's grieving to learn of these things and so I'm praying for you as well, sister. May the Lord strengthen you and give you vision and peace. 

You've been given sound advice with regard to counseling. I would pursue this with haste.