Hello,
I've been reading gransnet and not posting for a while. I am not a grandmother, I don't know whether I should still use this site.
I am posting because I have a relationship problem. I have been with my boyfriend for 18 years. Once in the earlier days of our relationship in a big argument I spat in his face. I won't try to give reasons/explanations for what I did. I have not done anything like this to him since.
He stayed with me, more than 17 years later, I still think he feels I am abusive and sometimes I think so to, because of this. Am I an abuser? Most people would have left me after I did this, but as he stayed and as i didn't repeat the offensive abusive behavior I have trouble thinking that I am an abuser, but many people say an act of a abuse makes you abusers, one or lots. I tend to think that domestic violence/abuse is a pattern of behaviours over a longer time, I would say the same if it was a man who hit/slap his girlfriend one time in a decade long relationship, I wouldn't see this isolated act as abuse, ut I could easily be kidding myself simply because I don't like to think of being an abuser which I am.
my past includes mental illness, not that it is ok.
was he right to let me have a chance after an incident of violence/abuse?
am i an abuser?
