Last week, there was a small get together at my friend’s house; just us 9-10 of us close friends. Now he invited one of his friends, Susan (28f) and she brought along her brother (30m), who none of us knew. My wife (28f) was present there too.

Her brother, Dave, was being weird with my wife from the get-go. Half the time he was there he was staring at my wife inappropriately and trying to touch her whenever he found her alone. She even asked me to hold her hand the entire time because he was making her uncomfortable. I told her we could leave if she wanted to, but she said she won’t let a creep sabotage her evening. This was a bad decision on our part; should’ve left earlier.

I got a work call in the middle of the party, and my wife told me to take the call and assured me she would be fine with her friend, Lisa. When I came back after 5 minutes, I see Dave trying to talk to Lisa and my wife and both of them looked very uncomfortable. Apparently he’d been trying to convince them to get inside the pool naked. I confronted him, and well, things escalated. He said some colourful words to my wife and Lisa, implied that my wife was totally leading him on before I came back.

I physically shoved him away from my wife and Lisa. He retaliated and not proud of this but we got into a fist fight. It was all adrenaline and fists and punches. I raise my hand to punch him, gained enough momentum that’d have knocked his teeth out and all of a sudden,his sister, Susan comes in front of him trying to shield him. And my fist hit her in the face. I apologised, I profusely apologised and even offered to take her to the hospital. I’ve never raised my hands on a woman and I never will. This was a fuck up and I was very ashamed of myself.

Susan didn’t accept my offer and neither my apologies. Dave took her to the hospital. The next day, she put up a story on Instagram about how I hit her, with a photo of her injury and her face. The story they’re going with is that my wife and Lisa were totally hitting on Dave and when I found out, I hit Susan out of anger. Now I’ve been getting threatening messages on my social media accounts, someone even found my LinkedIn profile and messaged my company asking why they hired ‘woman abusers’. Lisa and my wife have tried to mitigate this disaster by posting the correct version of this story, but it looks like people have made up their minds that I’m an abusive asshole. Some have even messaged my wife asking her to divorce me or if I abuse her too or why is she supporting someone who hits women.

I contacted Susan through my lawyer and said that we’re gonna sue for defamation and slander, that let’s settle this in court and that other people present at the party are ready to testify against her. Dave and her are now begging us to forgive them as they’re very poor (they are, both have been unemployed since two-three years) and they’re even ready to post on SM that they lied.

My wife thinks that we should definitely sue them. Lisa thinks that a court case will really fuck them over and destroy their lives. I kinda agree with both of them. What should I do?

Edit : I replied to a comment saying this and since a lot of people think that I shouldn’t have gotten into a physical altercation with the guy,I’ll replay his exact words. ‘Your wife was begging for my cock before you rudely interrupted us.’ This was when I shoved him away and then he threw the first punch. It escalated from there. I know this isn’t a justification for the physical fight but well, it is what it is.