My partner, who I'll call John, and I have been together for a few years now, and he's the most kind-hearted, intelligent man I have ever met; but he also struggles with PTSD. Normally, we're able to handle this. Sometimes it's night terrors, some days are just blah- but we've managed to handle everything healthily. But today something he did concerned me, could it have been PTSD related? Or just that he was fed-up?
We just celebrated purchasing a house together (yay!) and invited both of our families over. There were about 20 people milling about during dinner, including his brothers. John grew up with two brothers, one younger and one older. We'll call his younger brother Todd and his older brother Pat. Pat and John are very close-- Todd and John aren't. I don't know what the differences are, but Todd rarely ever comes around, even when we invite him over. Todd wound up getting drunk tonight, against John's wishes (he doesn't drink and asked the guests to not bring alcohol), and Todd sounded off throughout dinner. John was getting noticeably irritable, and I suggested that he and I start cleaning up while everyone finished their food.
John and I began cleaning and Todd followed us out to the patio where John's grill is. John is extremely passionate about grilling (I know that sounds silly but it's one of his hobbies) and asked Todd to be careful around his equipment. Long story short, Todd ended up getting sick on John's grill. John lost his temper and yelled at Todd, telling him to get inside-- and during this, Todd made some nonsensical comment about John's prior military background. John hauled off and hit him.
It caught me off guard, John is the least violent person I know-- he's always able to keep his temper under control, but I tried to intervene. It went on for a few more moments until Pat rushed out and pulled John off of Todd. Pat took Todd home and it's been a few hours since it happened, everyone left and now it's just John and I at home.
John cleaned up his grill, asked me to give him some time to cool off and came in to apologize a while later. I told him not to apologize to me, I asked him why he felt the need to resort to getting into a fist-fight with his brother-- and I've never seen him look at me with that expression before. He looked so wounded that I would ask something like that. Was I in the wrong for asking that? Should I just have let it go and pretend that it didn't happen? I'm just really conflicted. What should I do now? I just want the best for him and the best for us. Sorry for the wall of text, I'm just kind of shaken up and flustered right now. Thanks all for reading
tl;dr: Partner beat the living daylights out of his drunk brother at family party, advice needed
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