wow
this situation reminds me of my relationship with my ex fiancé - i left more than a year ago. absolute co dependence. he was verbally abusive and emotionally abusive when he was drinking and it got to a point where i would say mean things right back to defend myself. He could dish it but couldn’t take it so a few random times he would get physical, but something small that i normalized due to my childhood like grabbing and squeezing my face aggressively or slapping me in the face.
it got to a point where he would purposely walk into our bedroom during a date night if i brought up anything he didn’t wanna talk about, he would lay there and pretend to sleep while i cried and begged him to get back up and hang out with me (pathetic). he would pretend i didn’t exist and i’d slap him so hard on his side to get his attention and on several occasions he ended up losing it on me and i ended up with bruises all over. meanwhile, while what he did wasn’t ok, neither was my subtle violence .i always had a guilt because i felt that my violence was justified by others but his wasn’t. also, he started to use it against me and make me feel i was the only one with a problem. when i left, others in my life saw it as me leaving an “abusive man”, i saw it as me leaving for both our sakes. we were toxic. i wasn’t any better although my behaviour was provoked