Question: My husband and I have had a great marriage. He’s a wonderful man who wouldn’t hurt a fly, and wouldn’t let anyone hurt me, especially never himself. He’s always done some strange things during his sleep, from moaning, to even doing a karate chop, and different things, that never warranted me to be scared, and he was easily woken by me just shaking his arm briefly, and would quickly fall back asleep.
However, this past Thursday night, my daughter came into our bedroom to tell about a nightmare she had. My husband was asleep and never awoke. I put our daughter to bed, and then came back into our room and climbed into bed next to my husband again. He had all the covers close to him, so I tugged the covers ever so slightly and said “babe, can i have some covers?”, he FLIPPED around to face me so fast and then SHRIEKED at the top of his lungs. And not like a scream of fear, but more like he was trying to scare something away, a very deep shriekd, eyes wide open staring at me.He then put his hand around my throat and forcefully pushed me off the bed causing me to knock into the nightstand, hurt my arm and fall onto the floor. As i scrambled to get up, he got up out of bed so quickly and stormed after me cornering me in the hallway, but standing about 1 1/2 feet in front of me, STILL shrieking loudly, hands up in the air, and one of his knees up in the air, almost like a karate move that you would make, he stayed like this, eyes staring into mine, his tongue hanging out and just screaming at the top of his lungs at me, this lasted for about 4 minutes straight.I was screaming and absolutely terrified that he was about to attack me, with my daughter sleeping behind the door right behind me. Finally, he lowered his
arms and knee, closed his mouth, looked at me and gave me this evil grin, turned around, walked back into the bedroom, laid down on his side of the bed, and just closed his eyes. After that I said “Babe, is it you? is it you?” over and over again, becuase I was so scared, and he was just looking at me confused and said “what? what’s wrong???”, and i told him what he did, crying my eyes out. and he then was so scared.He thought he had been posessed, he said he vaguely remembered screaming and doing something with his arms, but he had no idea he was actually doing it in real life. He was crying, and my husband NEVER cries. He was scared that he had just done what i showed him. I ended up making him sleep in a hotel becuase i was deathly scared to go back to sleep next to him, i was absolutely terrified and STILL am.The next night i slept at a friend’s house, and for the last 3 nights I have slept next to him, but i awake between 3-5am and can’t fall back asleep because I am scared to move a muscle no matter how stiff my arms/legs are from being terrified to move thinking that I will awake him and he will attack me again.I’m terrified now during the day and terrified of the dark. Every sound and movement scares me. I’m so afraid that although it hasn’t happened since, that next time, he could possibly kill me. I don’t know what to do. I love my husband and he has been the most caring, amazing, and sweet man I could ever imagine, but I am terrified of him when he’s asleep. Please anyone that has any advice whatsoever, I just don’t know what to do, and I would love some reassurance that this won’t happen again, but I think I may be foolish to think that it won’t. Please help.