Abuse?

Honestly I think I know the answer here but I just want someone else’s opinion. I’ve been in these relationships before

I’ve been with my boyfriend for over a year now. Been a bit of a rollercoaster it started with him smacking me and hurting my shoulder within a month of dating because I tickled him, when I brought it up he broke up with me on my birthday. Fast forward a year we broken up like 7 times on his end of things.

He’s slapped me quite a bit shoved me etc, he used to put me down for me not being in university saying I have no life blah blah, so here I am starting university next week. He’s kinda destroyed my confidence which was probably apart of the plan.

I remember asking him why he tried to hurt my shoulder back in September last year he told me he was trying to clean snap it so it wouldn’t be obvious a human did it but he knew it was wrong so he didn’t go forward with it.

My boyfriend has repetitively been mean to me and blamed it on nicotine with-drawls. But he doesn’t do that with his friends which confuses me.

He also used to blame his hitting on alcohol which he stopped. I don’t know anymore he ended up applying for a program with the women shelter that helps men with anger issues and abusive tendencies last week.

But literally yesterday we went on a date and I don’t know if this is my fault but we were joking around and I was trying to get him to look at a photo and he was turning his head the other way. So i very very gently pulled his head towards me by the hair and he didn’t like it so he grabbed the top of my hair and pulled my head down towards his quads really hard, I then asked him why he did it so hard when I gently tugged his hair and showed him again like how light I did it and I guess that was my mistake but he did it again but worse. He never apologized or anything, which led me to saying I’m sorry and when I asked a hour later if he would say sorry he said no I got what I deserved.

I just don’t understand and don’t know what to do anymore, I feel like I keep waiting for him to change and it’s really hard because I really do love this guy and he can be sweet almost 90% of the time but then he does things like that or he’ll snap out of nowhere and tell me my voice is annoying and too high pitched.

I guess what I’m looking for is clarification, do these men ever change?? Is he going to continue being physically violent, and how do I make him stop treating me like that?? All I do is show love and kindness.