I (21 F) feel afraid when my long-distance boyfriend (23 M) becomes angry.

We have been together for one year. My boyfriend tends to take his anger out on me so I’ve come to believe. Even in small things, like when he’s tilted from losing on games, he will always end up screaming at me, sometimes saying horrible things to me, and/or blaming me for something somehow. It goes for really anything, anytime he’s annoyed or angry, things that have nothing to do with me or anything I’ve done, just his mood.

I have noticed that every time I can hear in his voice he sounds angry or frustrated I start shaking and I feel really uneasy. I feel like I’m walking on eggshells at that point, very careful with what I say, I just try to stay silent and wait for the worst. When he starts lashing out at me there’s really no getting through to him either. It has only been recently that maybe two hours or so after he’s done he’ll apologize.

The last time he lashed out at me was 2 days ago. We were playing a video game and I had told him he’s improved a lot at the game. I guess he felt like he started playing bad after that, and he lost a few games. He was tilted from it n he began yelling at me and told me that I jinxed it and it was my fault he was playing bad and we lost those games because of it. I told him I was just complimenting him and it’s just in his head, and he told me he didn’t need any compliments from me. I tried telling him as calmly as possible that I was only trying to be nice, and I don’t like being told I’m doing something wrong when I was only giving him a lighthearted compliment. He screamed at me in such a mean tone of voice to “shut the fuck up.” I just stayed silent after that.

I was silent for like an hour, and after that I tried my best to just brush it off. Like 2 hours later he did apologize and I told him it was okay. This has happened many times before, he denies having any anger issues and I’ve never really met anyone like this so I’m not sure what to do.

After many many times of that occurring he does admit now that he takes his anger out of me but he says he doesn’t know how to stop. I told him to maybe see a therapist, but he says he doesn’t need one. I am not sure how to help him anymore. I don’t want this to keep happening and I am afraid of it turning physical in the future. I really want to be with him though, so I need advice on how to help him.

TL;DR – My boyfriend lashes out at me in anger every time he becomes angry or annoyed about literally anything, even things that don’t involve me at all. What can I do to help him help himself?