Healthy Relationships: "Perfect" man becomes abusive.

Dear Mark: I have been married before and have a daughter. After my first husband, I dated a number of jerks and almost gave up. Then I met my current fiancé after taking a chance and posting a profile online. We lived in different cities and I was very cautious at first. But, as I got to know him, he seemed to be everything I ever hoped for in a man. He was kind and handsome and successful and loved my daughter. After about 6 months, my daughter and I moved in with him. Soon after, he and I were engaged.

Soon after the engagement I started noticing some troubling behavior.

For instance, he's very impatient. He gets very angry when things aren't done the "right" way. The first couple of times it happened, he got this crazy look in his eyes and looked like he was going to explode, but just walked out of the room. Then he began to raise his voice and yell. Then he began to call me names. It started small like "You're stupid" or "Don't be an idiot." This past weekend it escalated.

We were at a party and I got upset with him for interrupting me. I asked if I could speak to him privately and brought him over by the bathrooms. I told him I always let him talk and didn't appreciate him cutting me off in front of my friends. Well, he just exploded. He said he had had enough of me. He told me that I was a "Crazy fat bitch," and that I should get the @#$# out of his house. I was stunned. I didn't know what to do. I just walked away and went to find my girlfriends.

At the end of the night, he came up to me and said "Come on, let's go." That night, I slept with my daughter. The next morning he acted as if nothing had happened. When I began to bring it up, he got that crazy look in his eyes again. He insinuated it was my fault he got angry because I had embarrassed him in front of his friends. I was so intimidated that I just dropped it. But now I'm not sure what to do. We've had a nice run but these bumps in the road may just be too much for me. Weary in West Palm

Dear Weary, Relationship problems are rough, especially if they're unexpected. I would give his anger a couple of days to die down. When people are angry to such a degree, they often are unclear as to what their anger is really about. If he got this angry, it's definitely something more than you "embarrassed" him. If you want to be in this relationship, it's up to you find out. This by no means makes his verbal assault on you okay. Name-calling is a form of verbal abuse and should not be tolerated.

Have you thought about couples therapy? This could be a perfect venue to bring up your concerns. If you can't get him into a session, find a time/place that is neutral and the two of you are not in conflict. Tell him that you need to have a conversation with him because there have been some things weighing heavily on your mind. Tell him you care for him very much but were deeply hurt by the way he spoke to you at the party and the threats he made to throw you out. Tell him the absence of verbal abuse is on your short list of must-haves in a relationship. It's okay to feel angry towards your partner. It's okay even to express that anger to your partner. It's just not okay to express it in verbally or physically abusive ways.

Try to take ownership of your behavior. Find out if there was anything you did that might have set him off. This is a great learning tool in a new relationship ...finding out what buttons NOT to push. Tell him you would like to work on this, but it has to be a joint effort.

Your goal is to not have another hurtful interaction like the one at the party. See how he responds to you reaching out. His reaction will tell you a lot about his ability to be in this relationship long term. Mark