Help! Is he going to hurt me again???

[svictoria1]

Long story (as usual!) - basically i have been with my boyfriend for nearly 4 years. After the first year of our relationship, he told me he was questioning the relationship, however he didn't know why he was having these feelings. After a very painful 3-4 months of him going off me, blowing hot and cold, he eventually said he couldn't have a gf and that he wanted to be with me in the future and that he wanted to marry me, just not now (sound familiar?!) . Needless to say, i was absolutely devastated and even suffered with depression as i also could not find a job at the time (i had just graduated) and the two things combined made me so miserable. i thought about him everyday for 8 months.
However, I decided to get on with my life,and i went out and bagged myself the most amazing dream job in London with great career prospects. although i was deeply in love with him, i was getting on with my life and i knew by trying to get back with him i would push him further away. I barely contacted him for 8 months (1 or 2 texts at the beginning) and I finally felt like was getting over him - although in the back of mind i still had a feeling we may rekindle things due to the way he left the relationship.
As you can imagine, he started contacting me about 9 months after the break up, saying things like "happy valentines day" and then this proceeded to " i love you, i always have done" bla bla bla.
I'm not going to lie, i was thrilled that he had come to his senses and wanted me back. I knew i had played the break-up perfectly.
Anyway, we ended up getting back together, about 1.5 years ago. I told him to be sure before he got back with me, that it was what he really truly wanted, as i said i didn't want to be hurt by him again.
Honestly, since we got back together, our relationship has been amazing. He's a completely different bf to what he was before, he puts me first every time, he would do anything for me, he makes incredible effort with my family and friends. We have so much fun when we're together, his family are like my own family we're that close. (he is a real family man and i'm a family woman and we both want the same things out of life).
He recently asked me to move in with him ( i currently live in London and he lives about an hour away). so it would mean moving out of my flat with my friends in london to be with him. I just felt like i wasn't ready and felt like i need to live the london life a bit more before i do this as i don't want to regret not having the most fun as i can while i'm young! (i'm 25 and he is 26). So i said that i really wanted to live with him, but perhaps we could wait a bit longer, like 6months or so.
He seemed happy with this. ( nearly all his friends are in serious relationships now too).
Recently however, (the last 2 months) the last few times i have got drunk, (very drunk) i have started to lash out at him (physically) and he wakes up with scratches on him. This is so ludicrous to me, as I love him more than i've ever loved anything in the world, and i can't understand why i'm doing this. The last time i did it, i felt so guilty and awful like i was going to ruin this relationship I had worked so hard to have. I was kicking myself!
He finds it extremely difficult to talk about his emotions, and after this would happen he wouldn't really show if he was upset or not, even though i apologized profusely and i have promised to stop drinking so much around him.
Apart from the drunk episodes everything is great though... but i feel like it may have happened one too many times and i don't know why!!! it's so frustrating.
Anyway, last night he randomly told me, out of the blue that he has been questioning the relationship - which was a total utter shock to me. He said he doesn;t want to break up but he wanted to let me know he was having a some feelings and that he didn't really know why. He said he was thinking about the future and where the relationship was heading - he said i shouldn't worry though as it's nothing major. i'm now completely freaking out that he is going to break up with me again and i don't know what to do because i feel like it's hard to shake these feelings off once you get them - how can you go from asking someone to move in, to this? This seems like a warning sign to me, that this is the beginning of the end, especially as this is what he said the first time round! ( it feels very familiar, even though our relationship is 100% different to before).
I can't lose him, i really feel like i want to be with him for the rest of my life, not to mention the thought of losing him makes me burst out crying when i think about it. I hope i can turn this around but i don't know what to say / do
Someone please help!!!

[TablesandChairs]

Stay strong and for Gods sake stop drinking to the extent that you can't remember physically hurting someone. I know you're young and I'm less than a handful of years older than so this isn't coming from the perspective of some old Christian grandmother...but heavy binge drinking that leaves you with memory lapses is probably best avoided.

As for this guy and his 'questioning' of the relationship. For a start, WHAT is he questioning? That's not a statement you just come out with - you give your reasons. 'Hey - I'm concerned about our future because your drinking is out of control - let's try to fix this' (as an example, not saying that is his issue). He comes out of with this shit, seemingly out of the blue, and follows it up with no concrete examples or strategies? I would find this torturous. Is he on some sort of continuum whereby every so often he gets cold feet? Very flakey, I'd be scared to have a relationship with him.

You don't need Jekyll and Hyde...you need someone consistent, otherwise you'll go crazy. My first partner had bi-polar...when he was good, he was better than most; amazing, caring, generous...and when he was bad, he was a cold to the extreme. You couldn't get blood out of his veins.

So, my advice - tell him that when he comes out with the 'questioning the relationship' thing, it puts you in the uncomfortable and frustrating position of having to guess what the issue is...having to wonder whether he wants to work on things or toss you to the side (like the first time around). Tell him that you don't expect the relationship to be perfect but you do expect it to be able to survive minor hiccups. Grown adults talk through things and come up with solutions. Grown adults are consistent - they don't flake every time they get a bee in their bonnet.

You've been strong thus far - you moved on. He was the one who came back. And you'll be strong again. Let him know that if he bails again, that'll be it...don't keep wasting your time. He either wants you or he can go away and question someone else.