remove please

unsure

It came up that I had posted this searching for help for her and she wanted me to take it down.
She's made her decisions, I'll help her in any way I can. Thanks for your advice, guys.

wasted pixels

I'm just going to say that in my personal experience (and I have a lot of hands-on and observational experience with fucked-up, broken relationships), a guy who physically abuses his wife will eventually physically abuse his kids. Maybe not when they're little, but once they're big enough to talk back? Pretty much a given.

So with that in mind, I think it's pretty clear what the right advice here is. It's not happy, it's not pleasant for anyone involved, but it's going to be a lot better for everyone (especially the kids) in the long run.

LiquidSquid

Let's keep God out of this for a moment, shall we? Unless He's going to personally intervene, I don't think that the state of her religious beliefs are relevant.

Tom is thrice a cheater and a perpetrator of domestic abuse to boot. Should she stay with him for the kids? No. No kid deserves to grow up in a household like that. Should she call the police? Probably. But only in regards to her own abuse - the police don't really deal in possible crimes.

I think the best course of action would be to get out of the house and hire a good lawyer. She'll need it for the divorce and ensuing custody battle. The two of them are going to have to fight it out with regards to the kids; no amount of hypothesizing on our parts about his worthiness as a father has any bearing on whether or not he's fit to have custody of them. He may have been somewhat questionable in his actions, but as far as the kids are concerned, I believe a court is going to have to sort the issue out.

admanb

If he's going to change, it's not going to be without a massive shock to his system. He won't slowly change if she just stays and loves him, and, as much as I hate to sound like a preachy athiest, god isn't going to turn him into a person -- he's the only one that can do that.

Your anger is justified, and he deserves it, but your focus should be on helping your friend and her kids be safe, not on justice. From how you've described it, it's going to be hard enough to get her to leave, let alone press charges. Focus on that.

Dalboz

I'll be frank and brutal about this. Tom sounds like a giant douche. Mary needs to take the kids, leave, find a good lawyer, and report him to the police. If she has any marks on her still, get photographs. Start the police report, because the following divorce will go better for her if he's developing a rap sheet and there is evidence of abuse.

This is probably not what she wants to hear. She probably has the idea that things can heal and go back to a nice loving marriage, something the kids can look up to. Honestly, I doubt that's going to happen. It's going to be difficult for her, but the alternative is being stuck in a loveless and abusive relationship that the kids will the grow up with as their example of adult relationships.

My aunt went through a similar situation and she's got three kids with her ex-husband (he both abused her and cheated on her). She ultimately had to make the difficult choice, and it's been difficult on her and the kids, but ultimately it has been better and a huge relief on her to be rid of him. The analogy would kind of be like being stuck on an oceanside cliff with a boulder coming down on top of her. She can either stand her ground and be crushed by the boulder, or she can jump into the freezing cold ocean which, while extremely unpleasant, will allow her to survive and swim to safety. Like I said, it hasn't been easy on anyone, but it's been better than the alternative of being stuck with an abusive and cheating douche with the hope (and it's only a hope, not reality) of it turning into the perfect little idealized family.

EDIT: Okay, I saw your new post, and this is sounding exactly like the situation my aunt was in. He was "incredibly sorry," wanting to maybe take a break and work things out, blah, blah. The truth was, he didn't give a shit, he just didn't want to lose and wanted to have his cake and eat it too (meaning he was still going to cheat on her, but he wanted to keep her in the wings so he could still have a fallback). She needs to get the fuck out.