In telling you that he loves you, he knows that he has taken his hurtful words and behavior too far, and is now softening the tension.

He wants you to believe that he does love you, so that he gets you to stay and not consider leaving him.

Sadly, he is hurting you on account of his past trauma.

These are emotions that he has never resolved.

Unfortunately, he is using you to take out his anger and resentment.

Think about what you have learned about his past.

Has he talked about verbal or physical abuse at the hands of a family member or lover?

When this happens without any reconciliation, he internalizes the pain.

This is negative pain that shouldn’t be stored within him for any length of time.

Without doing the work on himself to exorcise this internal pain, it lies in wait, brewing, and ready to explode to the surface without warning.

This is when he uses you to unleash his anger and resentment.

He hurts you in these moments by insulting you or acting as though you aren’t important to him.

You get hurt.

He sees it, and likes it.

It makes him feel empowered knowing that his hurtful words and behavior have had an impact on you.

So much more powerful than he has ever felt in the past.

He was weak and vulnerable in the past, and people took advantage of him.

When he hurts you so much, he is not only empowering himself in a manner that he has never felt, he is taking out his revenge on everyone that hurt or wronged him in the past.

Sometimes, he takes it too far.

He is raging.

Spewing the most hurtful words at you.

Giving you the silent treatment.

Telling you that no one will ever love you.

But then, he realizes that he has taken it too far.

This is when he pulls back and says that he loves you.

He doesn’t want to lose you as the source of relief from his emotional turmoil.

So he says that he loves you.

He knows that you want to hear those words.

They are like oxygen to you, making you feel like you are important to him.

He knows that in hearing those words, you are reassured that all of the hurtful words and behavior were merely temporary.

He was having an episode that is now over.

Every time you forgive him for hurting you, he knows that the next time that he attempts to hurt you, he can take it further.

Basically, every time you forgive him for such bad behavior, you give him the green light to do it again the next time around and go further with it.

This means you should brace yourself for the next time he hurts you.

It will be worse.

And the time after that, and after that.

As long as he knows that saying that he loves you is his trump card to keep you around, he will keep abusing that privilege, pushing the boundaries further and further.

If you don’t get out of this toxic relationship now, you are going to lose yourself in it.