I was asked what exactly is verbal abuse (which to me, goes directly hand in hand with emotional abuse and can be almost intertwined).  Here was my answer even though I am not a therapist by any means and if I am off base in my thoughts, I would certainly like to know other's views to help me get to a more correct version...if it is not abusive, then I will certainly stop claiming that my husband is verbally abusive to me.  I'm not out to say he is a monster, and if I'm incorrect in my view, please let me know so I do not feel this way about my husband.

First of all, let me preface the following viewpoint of my relationship by saying that because I do not know what your marriage was like, I am just telling you what I have dealt with in my own marriage. Your wife may have a valid viewpoint of verbal abuse in the relationship, just as you may have a valid point of verbal abuse regarding her, it definitely is a 2-way street and it can be a vicious cycle and constant circle with both of you being the abuser. I'm not judging in anyway because I think verbal abuse is very rampant in almost every relationship and throughout the normal course of every day life.

Verbal abuse is most classically and VERY simply defined as name calling and intentional put-downs of another person. Now, I think everyone of us does that at some point and it is normal so I do not classify the occasional absolute frustrated name calling total abuse and worth leaving a marriage for.

In my marriage and relationship with my husband, as well as his every day life, he is a bully. Being a bully is being verbally abusive and can take on different forms other than threats of physical harm. He bullies me and has throughout the entire relationship, purposely finding things to criticize me for and bring up my lack of education as a reason for why he is justified in telling me that I am not as worthy of his praise. That's a broad and very harsh statement and I will try to explain it better, but I can put almost all of his abuse into this broad statement.

I left school when I was 17 and when I moved here to Lincoln, I tried to go back to school to get my high school diploma, but with the hours I was working to make sure I had a roof over my head, I did not finish school. I got my GED in 1999 and I am actually a very smart person, but for some reason my husband felt the need during our relationship to bring up my lack of education when I tried to have discussions with him, and more so when we got into arguments.

One of his most coined phrases over the years is that when I swear he says things like, "You do not have much of a vocabulary since you cannot find any other words to say." (I do say F*** You when I just get absolutely frustrated - not the best choice of words by any means and even that put me into the role of being a verbal abuser especially if I didn't apologize and try to express my frustrations in a different way)

He would also say words that I hadn't heard of - just as an example, I had never heard the word "moot" prior to an argument with my husband one time - and he will say that I need to look the definition up in the dictionary and that I must not have really had a great education growing up if I didn't hear these words being used before. He uses his knowledge and the fact that he graduated high school as a point to put me down and tell me that I am not educated or knowledgable in life.

To me it becomes abusive after years of saying as well as the fact that I actually am very smart - I just got into some trouble and made some bad choices at that time in my life which did not allow me to really shine in my abilities like I know I can - I made it through Trigonometry and Pre-Calculus. I failed those 2 classes by only a couple of points, but the time when I took those classes I was not focused on school as much as I should have been. I could have passed if I had buckled down and didn't have so many family problems at the time…

The fact that I am not smart plays in his mind because there are things I was not given the opportunity to be around growing up (my mom didn't believe in "classical" arts and theater as relevant to life, so I was not around much of that growing up), therefore I was not nearly as educated as he was and he brought that up to me all the time. He always had to be right in EVERY single conversations, no matter how petty it was, and after so long of that, I began to fight back and became verbally abusive to him in return. I will never forget an argument regarding Disney Land and how he swore Disney World was built first - I actually for once tried to prove that I was right with that argument - and how he kept bringing up the fact that I didn't know what I was talking about and there was no way I was right.  He never apologized for telling me there was no way I was right, even when it was easily verified, when I proved that I was in fact correct...

After time the more I proved that I actually am smart, he moved the abusive comments to claim that I am irrational and have no logic. Those are his favorite ones the last 3 years or so…

Instead of saying that he doesn't understand what it is I am saying, he will cut me off by saying my name repeatedly (to get me to stop talking) and then say, "do you hear yourself right now? That is just irrational. You are not being logical." I have tried to explain to him that just because my logic and rationale do not follow the exact route his thoughts take, it does not mean I am irrational or illogical. My logic just may be parallel to his, but if it doesn't follow what he feels is correct and logical, then I have no logic and I am irrational.

He cuts me down with very personal attacks, normally disguised as sarcastic comments, and if I get hurt by them, I am always told that I need to "grow up". To me, that is verbally abusive. I can handle sarcasm in little bits, but for him, that is the way he operates and over time he does it more often, and they can be very stinging.

He now constantly tells me to grow up just because I actually tell him that something he said hurts my feelings. I have been told the entire time through our relationship that when he attacks my logic/rationale/way I do things, it is not a personal attack and that I'm just too sensitive and can't handle constructive criticism. To me, I handle criticism very well in every day life, otherwise I would not be where I am today. I believe and feel that he is so insecure and has been hurt terribly over the course of his life that he tears me down to feel better about himself. He's a bully and finds faults in every single person - even driving with him can be awful when all I hear is how stupid other drivers are and how nobody can drive as well as he can.

I can't handle some of his criticism regarding me because I feel he has no right to criticize how I do some things - when it comes to how I handle situations in my job as an example because since we met, I have held this same job and moved up the ladder (however slowly due to corporate politics, not because of my abilities or lack thereof) and my husband has switched jobs almost every 2 years exactly. He has no right to criticize me regarding working and how I handle my stressful situations and times when my bosses probably take advantage of me (though they have actually paid me back very well in other ways)…I have held my job for this long and can take the criticism, learning how to be better, while he gets upset and finds a reason why the job he leaves just wasn't being "fair" to him.

My husband verbally abuses me, especially more since I have begun to actually say, "gee, that bothered me" instead of just screaming back at him. He finds a reason why every single thing is my fault…even when it comes to his physical assaults. If I would just do what he says, then he wouldn't have to yell (which he never thinks he is yelling anyway…sometimes he will admit to raising his voice slightly so he can be heard) and he wouldn't have to be physically threatening. He is "reactionary" and expects me to control my actions and words, but feels that he doesn't have to do the same because I somehow made him react.

He is verbally abusive when he expects things out of me or the children th