I posted yesterday evening about how my husband had both of our boys (ages 2.5 and almost 4) in the car with him yesterday and when our boys were fighting and screaming at each other my husband got frustrated and smacked my older son in the face. Afterwords once my husband gained control of his emotions he apologized to our son and he said he felt horrible when he saw that our son flinched and shied away from him at first when he went to apologize. This is the first time my husband has done something like this. We don’t spank our kids. For the whole rest of the afternoon yesterday I did not let my husband be alone with the kids. It was exhausting because normally he’s a very involved parent and I’m also four months pregnant. Last night we spoke about what happened a little more and he said he realizes he made a mistake and that I’m just going to have to trust him that it won’t happen again. But of course all the what-if’s are gnawing at me. I’ve spent hours upon hours reading mommy/parenting forums online (like reddit and babycenter) where women have shared stories of their husbands hitting their kids and all the responses are like “call cps” “he needs anger management therapy” or “you need to leave.” The small “rational” part of me is saying this is an isolated incident and he is a great dad and it’s okay to move forward without making this a huge deal. He made a mistake and apologized. He acknowledges that what he did does not align with our parenting values. The anxious part of me is saying that I’m a horrible mother if I let him be alone around the kids and that of course this will happen again and that I need to stop trusting my husband altogether. I am having trouble functioning normally today because of how physically anxious I feel. My husband, I can tell, is tired of talking about this. I think he wants to move on. But my anxiety is saying that he just wants to move on because he isn’t really as remorseful as he should be. I guess this is like real event ocd/harm ocd but in regards to someone else who I can’t really control... which makes it all the more maddening. All I have to go off of is his character and his previous behavior and I know I need to make a conscious decision whether or not to trust him. Has anyone else struggled with a situation like this? Any other moms who can give input? I know so many other women in this scenario would say “trust your gut” but I know because of my anxiety my gut is not very trustworthy.