In summary, my wife of five years is physically violent. We have a two and a half year old daughter. I need advice, I can't take this any more, and I dont want my daughter to understand this as normal behaviour.

We live in London and have done so for over five years. I am an EU national, my wife is Japanese. I think part of her stress was because she had spent a good 6/7 years studying to become a teacher in Australia, but she never really did anything with it and only managed to get instore sales jobs that paid minimum wage. When we landed in London I was working from day 1, she on the other hand moved around and always had 'issues' (which I believe are partly fictional) with the people she worked with. I ended up paying the majority of the bills as she never earned enough.

To help her with her confidence I tried giving her the monthly money for the groceries, however I had to stop after a month or so when she spent it all in about 10 days... I put this down to lack of experience with money, I found out she has no clue what a budget is.

She has always been a bit excitable, however after we got married she kind of went off the rails a little. A week after marriage she became physically violent and among other abuse, burst my lip. I foolishly put it down to stress over getting married.

She wasnt really physically voilent after this but was verbally abusive etc. Then two years pass and we discovered that we were having a child, she seemed to calm down and be normal, but then would have outbursts during teh third trimester.

After baby was born she was nuts for months (I even called the healthcare team asking them to please talk to her), caring for a baby isn't easy, especially when you dont have family close by. I did as much as I could for her emotional and physical support. I started paying for her to attend mom and baby classes when our daugther was 3 months, she seemed to settle down and get into a normal routine. Her demands grew and grew, she's doing about 4 classes a week still. Some of the moms she meets have gone back to work, and their children have gone into nursery. My wife refuses to return to work, initially she said when our daughter was three, but she has recently said no, only when she turns to five...

Due to it being London, nursery is a unbelievebly expensive. She said she wanted our daughter to go to a Montessori school. I said no, we cant afford it, she said she would pay half, so I could just about manage to pay it. After papaers were signed she reneged on her agreement.

With all this Brexit stress, and my trying to sort out an Irish passport for our daugther, and this evening after refusing to hand over money to her she went nuts again... This time with our daughter sitting next to me. She tried to choke me, punched me in the face, kicked, scratched and pushed me about.

Just to add, I do shout back as good as her, I have slammed doors etc I am not a physically violent person, although I have her twice, once in the thigh to get her away from me when she was violent (when she burst my lip). The second time in the shoulder a few months ago again when she was violent and wouldnt leave me alone.

I have kept a sporadic diary of why she was angry and what she did. I have a lot of audio recordings, probably 99% she is not aware of - they do not portray either of us in a good light, but they do serve as a record of her violence (if not for legal use, then at least for my daughter if she ever wants to know the truth).

I want a divorce, what do I need to do? I want to retain custody of my daughter, but I know Japan doesn't adhere to the Hague Convention and I am unlikely to get anywhere if she heads to Japan.