I'm sorry to hear that we have similar experiences, but both of you can shoot me a PM anytime you need to vent. It would probably be good for me to talk to people who may be handling this kind of stuff more successfully than I am. I feel that as I get old, I'm only realizing how bad things actually are/have been and that what I grew up with wasn't a normal dad, contrary to what I was told.
I don't know if I would call it handling it successfully, but I come from a family with many people in it that could be classified as abusers, and my family themselves come from their own families full of abusers. It's a long and arduous cycle and many people fall into it despite themselves. I've spent a lot of time working through my relationships with these people (to varying degrees of success) and personally found a lot of peace by going almost 100% no contact with the people who were the worst to me. Unfortunately the people I cut off contact with have a lot of mental health stuff (+ personality disorders, + other personal junk) to sort through, and it just wasn't productive or healthy for me to try to help them sort through it. I wish it wasn't that way, as they have some really great moments and I love them despite myself, but the positive parts of those relationships ultimately just weren't worth having the negatives, for me at least.
There's only so much normalizing that can happen before you have to stop and listen to that voice in the back of your head that's screaming "THIS ISN'T RIGHT OR NORMAL!". I don't know why, but that mantra has helped me out a lot. Somebody I love backs me into a corner and threatens to hit me - this isn't right or normal. Somebody I love tells me I'm hideous and stupid - this isn't right or normal. Somebody I love throws things at me explicitly to cause me harm - this isn't right or normal.
You can love all sorts of people who may or may not be good for you. However, the people who also love you will treat you in ways that are
right and
normal. Love is an action and it is a choice just as much as it is a feeling. People who are not willing to make the choice and commit to the action are people who you need to be careful around, no matter how much they feel the feeling.
I'm not necessarily advocating for going no contact with anyone right away (it's a bit of a drastic step), as I've also had other relationships that were mended a lot by some strong conversations and laying ground rules. Each relationship is different and (to me, at least) the salvageable ones are the ones that both parties want to salvage regardless of what the previous relationship looked like.
Anyway, I'm rambling a bit here. For those of you who may be working through something similar with your own loved ones, here's a site I found that were helpful for me (I know this particular site is personality disorder specific, but many of the articles pertain to abuse and some of the behaviors related to it):
http://outofthefog.website/ 
) hot yoga class.
