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First of all I wanna say that I love my boyfriend with all of my heart and I truly feel like he is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

I don't know all of the details or how deep the rabbit hole goes but my boyfriend was abused physically and emotionally by his ex boyfriend. My boyfriend told me a couple months ago that his ex once punched him in the chest because my boyfriend wouldn't have sex with his ex and his ex would constantly belittle him as well so as you can probably imagine, his self esteem is not in the best shape. I feel like if my boyfriends ex was willing to punch him because he refused to have sex with his ex then I'm sure his ex did other things that he hasn't told me about yet and it breaks my heart. I feel like this is the biggest reason why my relationship with my boyfriend has been so rocky and uncertain. I

am more than happy to be patient with him while he works everything out but one of the things he does is he cuts contact with me for anywhere from several days to several weeks at a time but everytime I ask him if he wants a relationship with me he always says yes. Every single time I've asked him that he h as s always said yes and I've lost count at this point as to how many times he has told me he wants a relationship with me still. I feel like he cuts contact with me out of fear and I feel like he needs to face his fears but I also know thats a lot easier said than done. My question is, how to do I encourage him to face his fears? How do I bring that up to him because I feel like if I try to talk to him about it, he will cut contact with me again. We both want the same thing out of this relationship and that is ultimately marriage although that probably won't happen for a couple yesrs. I love him to death and I know he loves me because he is not the type of guy that would intentionally lead someone on and tell someone he loves them if he doesn't mean it.

I have never been abused quite like he has so I want to get input from others who understand him better so that I can hopefully understand where he is coming from myself. I would eventually like to ask him to marry me although that'll be at least a year from now if not longer than that so I want to make this relationship work and I know he does too.