I’m “edgy” about this with you, b/c you are assuming my situation is like yours, and it’s not. Perhaps something you can work on is reading an entire thread (or at the very least, read carefully the original post) so that you know the situation you are commenting on.
Maybe we ought to move the topic of the thread to the hypothetical, rather than your particular case.
In other words, in what instances does an outside person need to be called in for counselling, when does there need to be an emergency intervention, and when does there need to be some conscious monitoring?
I think that in a case when tempers are lost by a couple who normally gets along well and no one is excusing the episode–when no kind of assault it is in any way habitual, conscious monitoring is a reasonable way to go. If verbal assaults are habitual, though…that is another story. In that case, this kind of thing is just waiting to happen. An escalation from the verbal to the physical would be a huge red flag. Go directly to counselling, and do not pass Go. In that case, a physical run-in may be “the heart attack that didn’t kill you.” You don’t wait for the one that will.
That is not to say that many if not most marriages couldn’t stand to have some outside advice or some formal time for mutual reflection and communication. When in doubt, a couple might want to consider Marriage Encounter, not necessarily in response to a particular event, but just as a weekend set aside to talk honestly in a setting where there is no room for denial or putting off topics that are sensitive. If the weekend turns up sore subjects that are uncovered but not resolved, then they would know to enlist a counsellor’s aid.
Professional athletes, after all, have trainers. When you want to go the extra mile in pursuit of excellence, it is no shame to seek help from people trained to do that. You don’t have to wait until you fear an assault is in the offing.
