Is it likely that a 50 year old emotionally/verbally abusive man can change?
He was raised in a very abusive home-physical, emotional, verbal. His first wife divorced him after 17 years. I think they both had issues. I have been married to him for 9 years and we have 5 children between 2 and 8 years old. It was a whirlwind courtship and we married after only 4 months of knowing each other (probably my first mistake, but I was naive and trusting.)There have been a few incidences of destroying things, throwing things, and physically intimidating me. Mostly it is a constant state of walking on eggshells. He will get very angry about things and “go off” on a tirade. It could be about anything, but once he starts ranting it goes on and on and he brings in everything in his whole life that is wrong and how nobody around him ever does anything right and he is the only one in the world who is smart or good enough to get things right. We work together on projects and he is always yelling at me for bringing the wrong tool or not being in the right place. If I don’t want to help he starts on about how I don’t have the best interest of the family in mind and he doesn’t get any help or participation and I must not care about our marriage. A year and a half ago I took the kids and left. He promised to make improvements so we got back together. Things were much better for a while, but he is again falling back into the pattern of yelling and guilt tripping and controlling. I try to tell him how I feel but he minimizes it and makes me feel like I’m the one with a problem. I feel like I’m at a crossroads. I believe strongly in marriage and don’t want to just walk away, but can a man truly change after a lifetime of abusive behaviour? I want to suggest counselling for our marriage and as individuals, but we have talked before about how he doesn’t think it really helps anybody, it just brings out false accusations and blame. I don’t know whether to give it one more try or just give up.