I can't break the abuse cycle, my wife delays professional help

I (M34) love my wife (F35) and my son very much. They are the most wonderful people, and I cannot picture my life without them.

Our love story: I met her in one city, we were both foreigners, we felt in love there, and our common language is english (not our first language). It was wonderful, she is wonderful. We have so much fun together, sex is great, and we are a good team. She moved for a good job in her own country. A year later, I found a (not so good job) and followed her. The new country has been a challenge for me due to a new language and a difficult culture to penetrate, but I'm here, and happy to be with her, and I have embraced what I can from the culture. We got married, and had our son a year ago. We have had wonderful adventures and memories, have a lot of fun together and now with our son.

However, I'm stuck in an abuse cycle with my wife. I can write a wall of text with examples, but it would make me feel angry and sad. I will just describe the pattern (skip if bored):

She feels bad about something, let's call it "the trigger" (stress at work, her period, sleep problems, has a cold, has a few drinks at a party, arguments with her parents, doesn't have lunch…). But the problem is that instead of discussing those, she just randomly explode. Her attacks usually start by blaming me for something either insignificant or nonsensical. I always fall for it, and get defensive. Invariable, she then accuses me of not caring enough about her, and starts calling me names and yelling. If I try to calm her down, and she gets angry at my voice tone or physical language to calm her down (she doesn't want to calm down), she pushes me away violently (very rarely, she has physically threatened me or has tried to destroy my personal items). Then she starts crying, acting as a victim, finally bringing up "the trigger" and discussing how she feels bad about it, and how I "need to cut her some slack" because of "the trigger". "The trigger" is always some reasonable normal-life challenge, that yes, indeed, kind of sucks, and I can understand she feeling bad about it, but it never is a real crisis, or deserves the explosion, or is even related to the she abuses me. I feel bad for her, and things calm down.

When things are calmed, sometimes a few minutes later, sometimes days later or weeks later, I decide to bring it up again focusing now on how I felt this was abusive to me. I want this abuse addressed, as it is too hurtful! She would always deny or downplay it ("you are just too sensitive"), in which case then I get angry and yes, sometimes yell at her. She rightly points out instantly that I am now verbally abusing her, and I feel bad, apologize profusely about how this is not appropriate language, and that is the end of it. Then she mentions "the trigger" and how she has been feeling really bad about it, and cries. Sometimes, within this, there is a short "I'm sorry", but without specificity, I'm left feeling like she abused me and got away with it, that I spent more time apologizing to her for getting angry at her denial, than getting my concerns addressed or my feelings validated.

I'm always worried, always walking on eggshells. It feels like no matter how much I do it is never enough. In my worries, I have isolated myself from many friends as well. This is very hard for me, as I was always a very social person, and I feel very lonely now due to this (and the new culture/language). It has also affected my own relationship with my parents and siblings, the few times I do see them. She has been "triggered" by small things with them, or has exploded in front of them. Both things now make me very nervous to even visit my family. Now the problem has even propagated to my work space, which was my safe place. She has called me and exploded on the phone, and since then, I can't fully concentrate at work anymore. I'm always worried now she will call and be angry. I never had sleeping issues, but now I do, and have nightmares related to this. I'm performing poorly at work, and I feel I have lost myself, and I can't find the person I used to be.

This cyclic behavior is very scary. We don't disagree about anything important. But when she feels bad about something, a normal life-challenge, the cycle happens every time. I've read much about it, and it seems like a very "classic" pattern. I have also noticed that she does it with her siblings and mother. I have even described this cycle to her, step by step, and she has admitted to it.

If this was all, I wouldn't have written here, I know the standard advice of "counseling" and then "divorce" that reddit gives in similar cases, and I agree with it.

The reason why I write is due to the following circumstances. Now, the story goes into details of the delay tactics, where I asked for professional help, and she agrees, but then she delays and delays our need for professional help for more than two years with both bullshit and very real excuses (skip if bored):

The first time this abuse happened (when we were dating), I almost broke up with her because I recognize that this were signs of an abusive person. We each recognize different aspect of this pattern on our own childhoods, and how we were relieving them now. I told her we should break up because it would be too predictable that this would keep happening between us. It would be cliche, even. She agreed, and she herself (Ph.D in Psychology) told me regardless of what happened, she would go back to therapy. And we didn't break up, fulfilling the cliche, mostly because I hoped that maybe this professional help she wanted to take, and with time, things would make things better.

Six months later, in another abuse event, she revealed she hadn't been to therapy because she was too busy. True, she was too busy, but still, that is bullshit excuse. She promised to go to therapy. Then bureaucratic things got in the way, and there were delays, months and months of delays. Then there is wedding insanity, so more delays because she is too busy, abuse events. Then she gets pregnant… we are delighted, but now she is not feeling well… more delays to professional help… I just take it and take it, because now she is very unstable emotionally, I want to be a good husband. A year and a half of cumulative abuse in the relationship at this point. Our son is born, we are very happy, but then she has terrible postpartum depression. I take a work leave to take care of her and my son. This was hell on earth. It was like living with "The Hulk", where my job was to get it to transform into Bruce Banner to feed the baby. Abuse 24/7 from her, non stop, because, well, now "the trigger" was a very real crisis. I took it and took it.

Finally I talked to her calmly and lovingly, and told her she was abusing me too much. She had to stop, and we needed professional help together, counseling, I say. She apologized and agreed. Then, more Postpartum Hulk. We talk again, she promises that soon she will look into help, since she understand how the system works in her country. More abuse, Hulk Smash. I ask about the counseling for us, and she said that she thought I meant for her to get therapy, that she didn't understand that I wanted counseling for us. This is a complete lie, but I decided that she believed her own lie. Counseling or divorce, I say. More abuse.. Now the excuse was that "it was difficult to get counseling because it has to be English, our common language, and those are hard to find". I mention how many therapists she knows (her friends), all speak English, and how I'm sure they can recommend somebody. Counseling or divorce. She says she will look into it, she convinces me she doesn't want divorce, she will do whatever it takes. More excuses and excuses. I do understand that in her PPD things were difficult for her, and this was the cause (and sometimes bad excuse) for delays.

I fall apart crying in anger one day. She REALLY promises now to get help, she loves me and couldn't stand divorce. I don't believe her anymore. More delays. I finally get sick of excuses. I google to find a counselor that fulfills our language need in our area. Yes, there aren't many, but google found one. She is stunned that I found this so easily, it clearly deflated all her excuses of why it was so hard to find, but I didn't rub it in. We make the appointment! I'm relieved! I felt hope, finally. It will take long, and I don't believe these counseling things are magical or a quick fix, but at least I have hope that we are going to try something new, something to break the cycle. Then bureocratic delays on getting the appointment. Then, she has some temporary health issues (real, but short), and she delays appointment more.

This last delay to get counseling was for real reasons, but it destroyed me. I was holding on "just a little longer" for sooo long. And now I have to wait another month of abuse. The new date officially made it such that it was over a years since my first "we are in crisis, we need counseling now" conversation. I feel tired, broken, alone and trapped. But mostly, I feel perpetual anger at her. Not even for the abuse cycle, but for the excuse pattern. I blame her now for being too busy and not caring enough to address these issues on time, and hurting me and our relationship in the process. I blame her for years of delays, although I know the last one was partly due to real problems and a crisis. I blame her in my mind for being a coward for not owning up to her responsibility, for all her bullshit excuses and delays. I feel like I have communicated very clearly that we need help, but that this is very low on her priorities, to the point, that I don't think she really cares about it, except to play lip service. Yes, she had some good reasons many times, and I do know the birth and following depressions are real, and I really support her, but what about all the many other delays before and after? This makes me so angry now, that I don't feel any hope anymore that the counseling will help. I now sometimes wonder if she is deliberately sabotaging the relationship, but then I think that she has been really in crisis or another for the past year. But then tell myself I have just been too hard on her lately, she did just go through PPD. Sometimes I don't even believe she is coming to this counseling in good faith, I think that she is doing it just to not feel like she is the bad guy, because she cares about that a lot, but not because she wants to own up to her part. And I'm angry at myself for being unable to break the abuse cycle or the excuse cycle. I resent that she doesn't care enough to deal with this, although I admit she has had too much on her plate the past year. But still, I feel the abuse has affected our trust, my optimism about our future, and even when things are going good, it is hard to enjoy them because I know things aren't fixed. In a way, it feels like my patience and optimism for "getting help" has just given more space to make the problem grow worse.

In my dream, a monster came into the house through the balcony. In the dream, I try to wake up my wife, but she ignores me and goes to sleep. To save my family, I tackle the monster out of the balcony, we both fall to our death. As we fall, I scream very loud such that my wife can hear me because my biggest fear is that she will not realize that I was trying to protect them, and that she and my son would conclude I just abandoned them. My wife woke me up because I was screaming in real life.

Additional details that came up from the discussion below:

I have spent more two years lurking here and in other subreddits. I did read "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work", and it is a great book which help me realize early on how this pattern would erode our marriage. I tried a lot of the things there, and although they do make sense, I'm afraid they didn't make much difference. This doesn't discourage me, they are sensible ways to sustain a marriage, but it isn't enough to break the cycle we are on. I also read "Stop Walking on Eggshells", which many redditors like. It is a good book, but the focus is for BPD, and it didn't seem to fit our situation. I have read other books on communication, on validation, etc.

The main problem is that my wife is a psychologist herself, and she thinks very little of what she calls "pop psy" books. She can also recognize the techniques there when I use them, and now our fights are she getting angry about the meta-communication I'm using. "Don't even start with your 'I feel...' crap" she says preventively. She knows these things too well, and can destroy the script-patterns that those suggest. Communicating without letting the emotions run is hard, and without those patterns, it is even harder to keep my cool.

She also, finally, just started therapy herself, after almost 3 years of excuses and delays. I know these things take time, but man, i'm tired and frustrated, and I can't convince myself anymore to be more patient or optimistic. What if this is now just another way to delay?

tl;dr: Happy marriage with a very frequent abuse cycle. I can't break the pattern, and my wife just delays getting professional help. Now I feel so angry at her for the delays, I feel it is just feeding the abuse cycle.