Expert: james52144@earthlink.net - 1/21/2007

Question
My boyfriend and I have been together for about two years, and the whole time I have been unsure about us.  He says that he is deeply in love with me and wants to marry me ect., and my family loves him.  Our whole relationship I have not trusted him.  At first, he would get violent with me because I was not a virgin when we got together.  A little while later, he would get that way because I "never respected him" through out the whole relationship.  I asked him to tell me what I had done to disrespect him, and it would be things like interrupting him sometimes when he would be talking, or not liking his friends (who all do drugs all the time), or sometimes making fun of him in a playful way.  He has given me several bruises, death threats, and has displaced my ribs on occasion. He has given me a few explanations as to why he does that to me, and he gives me a range of different answers including that it's my fault it happens, that he can't take out his aggression on anyone else, that I deserve it and so on. This continued to happen and happened for the last time a few days ago, which had left me with a blood blister on my neck from where he had tried to stop me from screaming, resulting in suffocating me.  He told me that he has found a way for it never to happen again, but I don't know if I believe him.  I had at one point loved him very dearly, and I still do almost all the time, because 90% of the time he treats me okay, but even when he's not being violent, he still acts very selfishly.  He neglects our anniversaries, tells me to shut up when I try to calmly expain my feelings to him when he disappoints me, refuses to have sex because he doesn't want to feel "addicted" to it, and is *always* several hours late when we try to plan things for starters.  He cnsistently swears at me and calls me awful names when I confront him with doing this that bother me.
 His family is a broken one.  His mother, step fahter and both of his brothers are on drugs all day.  So are his friends, but he is not, and neither am I.  His mother is constantly coming up with new horrible thigs to say about me, but he does not listen to her anyway.  His step father used to get violent with him when he was there, and yells profanities at his mother, which is where I believe he got those traits from.  His family is also very two faced, always acting very nice but in reality they gather together and say all the horrible things they can think up about people.  I know that this is typical drug addict behavior.  He also acts very fake with them, and he has told me that they don't know the real him at all.
After we have a fight in which he gets violent, he will say that he is so sorry and that he hates himself, and that he what he has done is unforgiveable, yet it doesn't change.  In fact, he doesn't really seem to care about anything but himself. He will act this way about half the time and the other half of the time, he pretends that it never even really happened the next time he sees me, and acts as sweet as he did when we first got together.
 I have never been able to develop a normal trusting relationship with him because of his self centered cruelty and anger.  The only reason I have stayed with him is because I know that deep down he is a better person than that.  I really do feel that I am giving up hope though.

I don't know how to break it off with him, or if I even should.  Part of me knows that the bad traits about him are just from his childhood, and what he has learned, which can be fixed.  But I am too afraid for my own safety to bring it up to him, and I am also too afraid of what he might do to me when I try to break it off.  The last time I tried he pinned me to the ground and said that he would never let me go. I feel very lost, confused and pathetic.  Please help me with that to do.  How can I fix him?  How can I tenderly ask him to go to counselling?  Is it even worth it?  Thank you

Answer
Dear Joanna

You can't fix him. You need to end the relationship ASAP because you are going to end up being hurt. You have to ask yourself why do you accept his violence? You may have battered wife syndrome and should get some counseling on why you choose to stay in a sick and violent relationship. You can go to Court and get a restraining order if you have to. If he even thinks about hurting you, you can have him put in jail. My advice is to tell your family what he has been doing and ask for their help in protecting you when you end the relationship.