TW – violence
Me and my boyfriend are having huge issues navigating his angry outbursts. We moved in together almost a year ago. A few months into us living together he started having these outbursts where he would break things. I’ve known him for many years and have never been worried that he would hurt me, it’s just been a bummer to replace furniture etc and it became rather costly. In january of this year we had a huge argument, both intoxicated, and I wanted to leave via a cab. He physically held me back and pulled my wrist so hard it dislocated. He felt awful afterwards and cried uncontrollably.
Today, our cat scratched him and tried to wiggle out of his arms (he held the cat because it had gotten into mud and I was on my way to wipe the paws). His reaction was not to just drop the cat to the floor, which they can handle because they land on their paws most of the time. He did something so much worse and so unnecessary – he threw the cat a few feet across the room and it landed on the side. When our poor cat landed we both heard a thud. This cat is very courageous and social but hid underneath the couch for hours, I carefully yanked the cat out and felt the ribs making sure there were no signs of pain or fractures. He was physically fine, just terrified.
Once again, my boyfriend cried uncontrollably and spent hours carefully trying to convince the cat to come out from underneath the couch.
I calmly just told him that I’ve been in the same situation with our cats since they don’t like to be held, and that it’s best to just drop the cat legs down while taking a step back. That there is no reason to throw and we’re very lucky no physical harm was done.
I haven’t dared to talk about my boyfriend’s anger issues with anyone because I’m scared it will be taken the wrong way and reports will be filed. He sounds like a monster and he really isn’t. His emotions are just all over the place and he doesn’t respond very well to stress. We have a very strong, healthy relationship but he fails to seek help over his ADD and stress related issues. He believes all therapy is bullshit and he’s been to a few that haven’t listened to him at all.
What do we do? Our relationship works really well in all other instances but I think he needs professional help to be able to work with this. Every time he has these extreme outbursts he promises it won’t happen again and is visibly upset with himself and genuinely sorry about what happened, but it happens again and it was honestly traumatising to see one of our fur babies get hurt today.