AIO for the dark rage bait from my partner? F[24] and M[25]

tl;dr He makes confusing jokes about me and rage baits me. He also always says I’m overreacting.

We’ve been dating for around 6 months. It’s generally going good. He is nice to me and when I look in his eyes I feel that he loves me. We both said it to eachother after 2 months in.

I have some trouble figuring out tho if this relationship is healthy. It started pretty intense. For the first 2 months after we got together (before that we were talking for 3 months) he would compliment me everyday and tell me all good things. We had a lot of intimacy. It almost felt like too much but at the same time it felt safe.

After those 2 months it changed a bit. He started to tell me less compliments and I noticed it. I sometimes spoke about it to him and it only made things worse. In general when I talked to him about my concerns about the relationship he got mad and told me I’m overreacting. He is kinda right I know that but it made it worse for me. I felt like he doesn’t want to listen. Somehow I learned overtime to tell him about my concerns in a calmer way and learned to think longer before opening up. I think it is working.

However my biggest concern is another thing. He got a very specific sense of humor (so do I). It’s kind of dark sometimes and I don’t mind it unless it’s nicely balanced and it’s obvious that it’s ironic.

The thing that bothers me is that sometimes these jokes or as he would call it rage bait is aimed at me. It’s things like: „you’re too stupid to understand”, „you have ugly feet”, „I think about breaking up with you”. Once he held up a pair of scissors and punched them into a mattress and told me „this is what I would do to you”. These are by far the strongest. And listen. I KNOW that these are jokes. When he does them it is obvious to me that he is joking. I don’t think he would EVER hurt me physically. I trust him in that. But hearing those things make me just.. confused? And concerned.

I grew up in a house where there was physical and mental abuse. Maybe I’m a bit too sensitive bc of that?

When I told him that it bothers me he stopped doing some of those things. Every now and then he slips something similiar but when I tell him to stop he stops. He says that it’s kind of like stimming to him and he rage baits bc he loves me.

I generally feel really confused. I love him and I see the good in him. He is so gentle and loving with my pet that I adopted. But I don’t know what to think about these jokes and the fact that when I bring up problems and tell him to apologize he gets defensive. He tells me that I want to put words in his mouth and that I want him to be „obedient” to me. Which is totally not true. I just want to feel that he cares and that my concerns are not crazy.

His point of view is that I always find something wrong or something to fight about and that he dosen’t know what is wrong with me. It’s true we have been having a lot of conversations. That’s bc I never feel fully heard and understood from him and the wounds never properly heal.