Hi everyone, this is my first post and I am hoping I can get some good advice.

Last weekend I was with my wife and 2 children in the desert on a family trip. The weekend was going well and then Saturday night hit. My wife of 7 years sometimes has issues when she drinks. She seems to get on a tangent and chooses a victim to verbally belittle and harrass. Usually the person on the receiving end of her verbal assault is me and I have become accustomed to it and learned how to handle it over the years. Well, on Saturday night she had been drinking a little too much and decided that my close friend would be the target of angry verbal assaults. As I saw that this situation was going to create too much drama, I interviened and seemed to have her clamed down enough to call it a night. As she was walking away to retreat to our RV, she said some rotten things to me along the lines of that I loved my friend more than her and that she was going to leave me etc. I then allowed her to go into the RV and cool down while I did a little bit of damage control with my friend to assure him that she was just drunk and meant nothing of it. Well, after I talked to my friend, I went into the RV and talked to her to try to explain that I was only trying to stop her from saying something to my friend that she would regret in the morning. She had gotten into the shower and as I approached her and began to talk to her through the shower door she started in on me. I just kept telling her that I was trying to help her and she kept arguing. I opened the shower door so that I could look at her and talk to her. She shut the door and told me to screw off. I kept on trying to appeal to her with kindness and she just got more and more verbally abusive towards me. I got frusterated after awhile and once again I had the shower door open to make eye contact with her and ended up slamming the door shut. At that point something totally unexpected and definitely uninteded happened; the shower door shattered into thousands of pieces giving her 3 small cuts and scaring me to death. I have never hurt her, nor would I ever even think of hurting her. Well, her state of mind because of alcohol lead her to call 911 and the police ended up arriving. I made no effort to stop her from calling the police nor did I resist the police in any way shape or form. I was 100% compliant and told the whole truth. I understand why I got arrested and had to spend the night in jail, but I don't have any idea what to expect in court. My wife didn't press charges and even asked them not to arrest me. The next day she realized that she had over reacted and she knows that I didn't try to hurt her and that I never would hurt her. She was just trying to gain the upper hand on me and was too intoxicated to realize how extreme it was to call 911 and let me get arrested. She is not just backing me up because she loves me, but she honestly knows that I meant no physical harm to her and that I have never and would never hurt her. Do I need a lawyer? Will her testifying on my behalf help me? I need to know just how serious this could be for me. I have only ever been arrested 1 other time for drunk in public. I really appreciate any and all responses and input. Thank you

I can't really see a DA pushing this one, but get a lawyer anyway, to help him think it through.

Next step - and I speak here from my son's experience - either get your wife into AA and yourself into Domestic Violence counseling, or expect this to take a toll on you and your kids that you can't even begin to believe.

My (now) ex-daughter-in-law has effectively chewed holes in my son's soul and is working now on their son. If you don't stand up and start to manage this, you will receive the same fate, which is a slow death. You will see things in your children that you will be appalled at, and it will be too late.

This is toxic love, and neither you nor the kids should be in its presence any longer. You need very much to learn to control the situation, to no longer push your hurt to the background and make excuses for her. You need to see this as something other than love. Love may be mixed in with it, but that's like eating your ice cream with a little arsenic on top. Kills you eventually.

Thank you for the reply. I need to clear the air a little though because I believe that I may have inflated my wife's incidents while drinking a bit. After reading some of the threads in this forum and seeing how the DA has sentenced this violation, I wanted to get people's opinions as if the whole incident was brought about by my wife. Well, that is simply not the entire truth of the matter. First off my wife does not drink regularly, nor do I. We usually only drink when we go to the desert or to the river. She does not have these incidents every time she drinks and they are not as bad as I may have made them out to be. I have come to learn that this the night this happened, she misunderstood that I was actually trying to help her to not say something that she would regret in the morning. I had no idea why she was angry with my friend and really didn't care at the time. She took the fact that I interviened as me taking my friends side. Now that I look back at the situation, I can see why she would think that. Anyways I think that the way I described the situation and my wife came out wrong and seems alot worse than it actually is. She realizes that she has a problem when she drinks and we have both agreed that we are not drinking anymore from this point forward. Also, I know that I shouldn't have slammed the shower door shut in anger/frusteration. Both her and I know that I was in no way trying to hurt her and I believe that officers, who were actually very understanding and civil, know that also. I may very well need anger management classes to control my emotions when I am frusterated. I have slammed doors and punched a couple of walls in my day. My wife admits that calling 911 and having me arrested was a mistake in judgement and she is sorry that she did that. I just don't know if the DA is one that may just see this as a cookie cutter DV case without hearing the whole story and I guess I thought that if I put it all on my wife it would make it better for me in court (which was a mistake on my part). Honestly, I inflated the story and made my wife's situation out to be much worse than it actually is. I have not been mr. innocent throughout our relationship and for years I was in a depressed state because of other issues in my life. This caused me to be a less than perfect husband and father and I had simply mentally checked out and disconnected myself from pretty much everyone and everything. That damaged her emotionally and her anger is more than likely stemmed from that point in time. We both realize that we probably need marriage counseling and everything is out on the table now. We have never involved the kids in any incident and she is a terrific mother. She has never or would never use our kids as pawns or involve them in any way. I believe that both of our heads are clear now and that this incident was our rock bottom. I am just in need of some good advice as to how I should approach this when I go to court. Will I get have the chance to explain the whole incident and will my wife be allowed to explain that she overreacted and that she knows I would never hurt her? Will the courts see this as my wife trying to cover for me? I would hate to have to retain a lawyer and waste a bunch of money if this is the type of case that gets thrown out or if I am just going to get a slap on the hand.

I am very sorry to hear about the situation with your son. I hope that things get better for you, him and his children because it sounds like a really tough situation.

Sugar, do not minimize your wife's drinking issues- if these incidents are HALF what your initial post implied, she should re-evaluate her relationship with alcohol.

I had a feeling it would come off as if I were backtracking. She knows that it is a problem and is not drinking anymore. We both realize that our relationship and our family is more important than alcohol and honestly I can do with or without it. Thanks very much for your concern, (both of you), and I understand how it can appear that I am trying to cover up for her, but I am not. It is and has been a problem for sure, but I did inflate it and make it seem much worse than it actually is in the first post. Like I said before, I haven't been the perfect husband and we have both admitted our faults and are working towards a healthy relationship. That night was rock bottom and we are moving forward in a positive direction. I just want to make sure that my legal situation does'nt turn into a disaster. I know how the legal system can all too often look past reasonable explanations and I just don't want that to happen to me. My brother was involved in an incident 5 years ago and spent 9 months in LA County for a fist fight that he wasn't even directly involved in. His friend, (a black man), that was directly involved in it got 5 years. The "victim" sustained a supposed "eye injury" that couldn't be proven nor disproven in court. My parents spent $60K defending my brother with a lawyer who was supposedly top rated. My brother now goes through life as a double felon from one incident (for mayhem and assault with intent to inflict bodily harm). He never crossed paths with the law prior to this incident. I have only been detained for drunk in public. I am just scared that this stupid situation will turn into something like that. I guess i'm looking for someone to tell me that I should be fine:confused: . I really appreciate your responses and look forward to any insight that someone may have for me. Thank you

Document all the counseling and therapy. Get your kids to a therapist just for a general interview, to see whether there are undercurrents here that you're not aware of (inevitably, we see kids as resilient and we think we're successfully hiding emotional lability from them when they are actually feeling it, even though they may not have the words for it). Have that therapist ready to submit his/her analysis of the children's emotional condition to the DA, if your lawyer feels it may be beneficial (even if it isn't, you need to know!).

My court date is in 2 weeks, I hope I can accomplish this all in a short amount of time. Thank you so much for all of the valuable info.

With the situation you've laid out, I feel pretty confident in saying your legal position is pretty good, especially if you can present documentation of all the positive changes being made in your family and either depositions or direct testimony from others who have witnessed your wife's alcohol fueled antics, particularly, of course, the friend who was her verbal target that night.
Yes, your wife will be dragged through it a bit... sorry, but I see no way not to paint your wife the villian.