Hi. The history: My partner and I have been together 8 years. We live together in a lovely house, have no children (our choice), just a beautiful dog, I am divorced (relationship broke down as we married too young) I am 29, he is 34. We work at the same place (although never see each other at work), earn a good wage, we enjoy the same things and basically have a lot in common. We are close and have no secrets and do have a good laugh together. The problem: He has been violent to me in the past, mostly when he has been drinking, its my choice to put up with this. I am scared of him and do walk on egg shells when he has had a drink. Just recently he has been going out drinking and not coming home til the next day, says he has stayed at a mates house. He has been going out a lot drinking over the last week or so. So I decide to go out and he encourages me to go out, so say I go out for 1 hour, he has to go out for 2 hours, etc etc. So today I wait for him to bring the car home so I can go to work.....what happens? He doesn't show. I have to ride my motorbike which I hate doing when its wet. So after a couple of hours at work I decide to take the bike home and swap it with the car (before it rains too much) So I ride past the pub and my car is there, so I go in to tell him I need the car, he looks at me like a piece of crap, tells me to take the f*****g car ( which I cant do as I have the bike) basically looks and speaks to me like crap. Basically this is the icing on the cake to a real crap weekend. My problem although I hate his guts at the moment, deep down I do love him despite all the grief. I think I could leave him tomorrow but I couldn't bear to see him with someone else. We live in a small town and gossip spreads like wild fire. I just want to be loved and shown some respect, is that too much too ask? Please help.........x