This is coming from the view of a divorcee who's soon to be ex husband's father is a police officer. When we were dating, everything seemed to be fine. My ex and I were high schools sweethearts and I loved his mother, but I was terrified of his father. For some reason he scare the living hell out of me. I would make excuses just to stay far away from him. Their family life always bothered me. The family was all boys who had perfect grades, became Eagle Scouts, and joined the military after high school. My ex always seemed a little off, but I thought that he just had an ego problem, and that I was the only one who could understand him. He always acted like he needed to prove himself and that he was better than everyone else. When we got into fights, he would "bow up" on me, you know, stand up tall, push his chest up and get close when we fought. It was always a little scary, but I thought that he wouldn't hurt me. We ended up in one fight that led to him throwing me on the ground, and for some reason, I forgave him. I loved him, you know? Fast forward a little bit and he's in the military, of course. We stayed together although we lived far away from each other for a good year, so all of the normal signs of an abusive relationship weren't there anymore. We'd fight on the phone, but he couldn't hurt me through it besides emotionally, which he did quite often.. Fast forward a little more and we are living together and married, after being married for a year and 6th months of those being deployed, he began to become really angry and and we stopped being as close. He started pushing me during arguments, which led to throwing heavy things at me and threatening to break my nose. He would try to buy back my forgiveness, but after a while, I got the nerve to leave.
Anyways, when I started the divorce process, come to find out, my lawyer was an old family friend of my ex's family. "Oh god" I thought. I figured it wouldn't turn out well due to this. But one of the first things I was told is that I am doing the right thing, getting away from that family. Come to find out, the father (whom which always scared me) was very abusive. I had heard a story from my ex about how his father threw him against the wall once, but that was about it. My lawyer told me that he wasn't close to the family due to the father being very abusive to the mother and the boys. :/ Which is where my ex possibly learned to be abusive as well..