A
female
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:my boyfriend has cheated on me a couple times in the past but has completely changed all that but ever since it happened i have become incredibly abusive towards him. any time i get upset i hit him til i feel better, how do i stop this? i love him so much so i dont understand why i hit him like i do.
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male
reader, Richard_EMids  +, writes (27 January 2008):
 I would guess it is repressed feelings. The cheating is an unresolved issue for you, not surprisingley. In your conscious mind you can rationalise the change in his behaviour. However, deep down you are angry or you are hurting. It's a normal coping mechanism because his cheating caused you such emotional pain, as cheating normally does.
Once you understand this, then it is easy to see how you can hit him and love him at the same time. If I haven't explained the repressed feelings aspect sufficiently well, do a google search and try to understand it better than I have described.
How you stop this is the difficult part. You can try and resolve it yourself, or get professional help. Attempting to resolve it yourself involves bringing the anger and pain up to the surface. Facing it , discussing it, crying, telling him how you feel, asking him why he did it, dealing with the resultant insecurity, testing if it will happen again, more crying and anger and hurt. Getting all your pain and anger and frustration out. Restoring any lost confidence as well. It's a lot to do on your own but it can be done if professional help is not affordable. I'm in the UK so I don't know how it works in your particular state.
Don't under estimate how devastating cheating can be. I notice you say quite casually that he cheated , but this is a very very painful thing to have happen to you. It's affect can be very long lasting. You may have felt you dealt with it OK at the time, but we are human, and we don't always deal with things at the time. Part of the pain gets buried by an automatic part of the brain. It's a bit like delayed shock. WHen you learned of the cheating, were you frightened or prevented in some way from expressing your emotion at the time??? Did something stop you responding in the way you needed to?? The answer is probably in this area , though not necessarily.
If you feel unable to deal with this yourself and with your boyfd, then you are going to have to consider therapy.
Hope I helped a bit. Good luck,
Richard
A
male
reader, rcn +, writes (27 January 2008):
 You love him so much, but you choose to hit him. You need to remember this. What he did was wrong, but it was a choice he made. It was your choice to stay with him, and it's also your choice to inflict violence on him as well.
Being angry is OK. Things will cause others to become angry, but how you choose to deal with the anger is what is important.
You took the first right step by recognizing this behavior is not good, and the pain you're causing. I don't know what is causing this for you. It may be deeper than just the cheating, their could be some self esteem issues involved. I urge you to speak to a therapist. Generally counseling offices offer anger management classes.
Remember this, if you want a relationship that builds, and have him be the best man he can be for the both of you, this behavior has to stop. I was with someone, who with a disability, was angry quite often. We calculated it to be about every 24 to 36 hours. Even being a man, I lived in fear. I was afrad to come home at times, knowing it was about time for the next explosion. With abuse comes fear, do you want him to love you, and live in fear of you?
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