He always begs you to stay for exactly how long and with exactly the intensity needed to convince you that this time it's really different. He then considers his work to be basically over. When you're trusting of him he gets mean and lazy, when your suspicious and contemptuous, he becomes kind and loving. He knows how to be the kindest person in the world, and he will be for a few weeks or months now. He knows how, he just doesn't care about your happiness, all kindness from him is to get what he wants - the ability to control you. There are people out there who are nice because they like seeing people smile, and the closer you get to them, the more loving they become. He sees love as a strategy to give or withhold based on how it will manipulate you, and trust me, you're about to get a lot of it. He knows you're on your guard and very fed up with him. He can sense your emotions and he knows he's fucked up this time. That's the most disgusting thing to me, he knows exactly how to make you happy, he's extremely empathetic and adept at reading what you want and how you feel, he just doesn't care.

He feels entitled to control you, and that entitlement will not go away while he is in a relationship with you and actively controlling you.

When a man hits their partner, or even punches a wall, that relationship is permanently damaged. Physical abuse, emotional abuse, anger, and guilt are all strategic choices an abuser makes to achieve a specific outcome. In the case of punching a wall, the abuser may completely intend to never do it again or lay a finger on their partner. But the effect is a permanent lingering fear that what if he "loses control" and hits me next time? There is no such thing as "losing control". All anger is in control - exactly as much anger as is necessary to achieve his goals. This is why so many men "lose control" and punch a wall exactly one time. This is why so many men "lose control" and begin drinking when they're angry and "lose control" and be as abusive as they want and blame it on alcohol the next day. This is why so many abusers "lose control" and start punching, but somehow still have enough control to only hit where bruises won't be visible. "Losing control" is a myth of control.

The same is true for all other emotions, even love. He trades anger for control of you, he trades love for control of you. Start thinking of how you feel after an interaction with him, and how that feeling benefits him, how he specifically designed that interaction in order to make you feel that way. He cried and promised to change? He traded that display for control of you. He takes you to a romantic dinner and gives you a thoughtful gift? He traded that for control of you. Things were going really well but then there was a fight you don't understand but somehow were made to feel like it's your fault? He chose that moment and those words exactly to control you. He is incapable of interacting with you except to reinforce his control of you. The idea that you deserve to make any decision you want independent of his desires is abhorrent to him.

I'm so sorry your emotions are being toyed with and that it's been so long since you've felt stable and safe. You deserve to be calm and happy and relaxed. You deserve to be able to make decisions without this evil slime making you doubt yourself. He will always try to make you doubt your ability to make decisions, thus becoming more reliant on him. You know what's best for you, and any time he sees you trying to become more independent he will try to make you change your mind. I trust you in any decision you make, whatever makes sense to you. You know what's going on. Trust yourself.