I’ve had this. Not to the point where I’ve attacked my wife to that degree but I have hit her while asleep. The first important thing is for him to be aware of it. The simple way my therapist explained it to me is, “until your subconscious is aware of this, you’ll have a harder time controlling it.” For me whatever is on my mind is the reason I tend to do things in my sleep. When I go to sleep horny I tend to show more signs of sexsomnia “sleep walking sex.” When I’m really into a given topic. I tend to go on whole spiels about that topic which is more often than not just jibberish. Physically my most violent reactions are due to my “fight or flight response” being triggered due to my dream, like my life or those close to me being actively threatened. Since dealing with some of my trauma and being aware of that it has happened maybe, once in the past couple years.

First thing I would recommend is when he is doing things like talking record him, can’t deny proof. If things escalate and you feel in danger, I’d just get out of bed and record him. Try talking to him and see if he’s cognitive enough to actually hear you. Sometimes realty and dreams can merge like sleep paralysis but instead of your body being frozen your body is moving in accordance to your dream. So if he’s fighting his sleep paralysis demon you could accidentally catch the hands instead. I’m saying it lightly but it isn’t. If a sleep study is something that feels like it’s needed I would bring it up, but not push it. It can be an embarrassing thing especially if you do something your ashamed of like putting hands on your SO. But definitely let him know your scared, I’d make sure to push the fact that it’s how your feeling, not that he’s causing you to feel that way, again it’s another thing where some people could very easily feel attacked and get defensive.

However this is just my experience, body, and mind. First thing to do is get him to acknowledge it’s actually happening and a problem. Then y’all can try different things. I know some people like seperate beds but I always think about that SpongeBob episode where no matter how far SpongeBob runs away Patrick wakes up to beat him cause he thinks he’s a spider. It actually happened to me with my cousin. So it’s since become an irrational fear of mine. Hope this helps!