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I grew up watching my mother constantly abuse my father (and me to a lesser extent). She punched and kicked him, threw things at him, and even came at him with knives and rolling pins (although she never did serious damage with them). He never hit her back because "it wouldn't have been right." And I completely disagreed with him.
She knew that she could get away with anything, and never realized the consequences of her actions on anybody else until I eventually started hitting her back every once in a while. This made my dad hit me, but I didn't care. An occasional bruise made her try to remember what happened after she calmed down, which she otherwise repressed. And it worked. She started to realize that what she was doing was wrong, and it became less and less common. Simply talking about things afterwords had never gotten anywhere.
As for just restraining her until she calmed down, that wouldn't have worked. It would have only made her more mad (and it took her a couple days to calm down no matter what). She also physically prevented my dad from leaving. If he pushed her out of the way to get out of the house, she'd start destroying his things or even chase after his car with her own (so he learned not to do that). On a longer timescale, my parents did not want to separate, presumably because of me (although they're still together). Also, my mom wasn't always crazy. Her mood swings tended to happen at about the same time every month... Luckily, she's now relatively normal.
This thread isn't exactly about cases of habitual abuse, but I think that this story does have some relevance. Violence should certainly be avoided, but it is sometimes justified. There are a significant number of women who like to take advantage of their "frailty," which I have no patience for. It doesn't matter that women are smaller. They can still hurt a man without too much effort, and are smart enough to know that a man could hurt them back with even less effort.
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