My X had all the different types of abuse..the physical never reached a serious point (he went to jail several times, took the classes, and learned to walk away when he was getting to that point).
When he was drinking, there was lots of verbal (lots of awful name calling, saying MEAN awful things)....but what was worst of all to me, was the daily, all day long, emotional abuse, and also I just found out from my therapist that sarcasm is a form of abuse. He would do this a lot, and say "I was only joking, but I forgot I can't joke around with you". There were days that he would do or say things that were so subtle that they were even hard to describe to somebody...like flipping through the channels and then stopping on something like "Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders" and he KNEW it bothered me. Stuff like that about drives you crazy.