Dear BMB readers. I have an abusive husband and I'm tired of my marriage!

I'm 29yrs and my husband and I have been married for 10 years, we have three boys together, 2, 5 and 9. Our marriage has been bad for a few years now. I have done everything I know to try to improve it, but nothing helps. My husband is very critical and abusive. We rarely talk unless we are forced to make a decision mostly about the kids. And that's scary because we disagree on everything and it ends up as a fight. If I do attempt to have a conversation about some general subject, he wants to know, "What's your point?" So I avoid conversation if at all possible. Every little thing is an ordeal. I have tried negotiation, but without cooperation I am unable to succeed. He has absolutely no respect for me and when he gets angry he mocks me, yells or gives me ultimatums. It's just not worth it. Our sex life became terrible after our 2nd boy. During our first year of marriage he told me that I wasn't worth sleeping with and over the years has been very insulting to me about sex. I have read books to try to improve my physical attraction but he won't talk to me about it. He just says to use my imagination. I believe that is his way of keeping me guessing and feeling inadequate. When we make love I feel angry or depressed, but I do it as a way of grasping for any kind of intimacy I can get. I work very hard to look nice for him, and others tell me I am very attractive. But he uses very insulting words to describe my appearance. He hit me several times in our marriage in front of the kids and goes only as far as he thinks he can to intimidate me. This to a great extent has given me a low self esteem because he treats me like crap. He has tons of girlfriends, barely comes home often and even when he does he acts like a scarecrow when he is around. No matter how much I could take, my children don't need to be living in that situation. He use to be loving and charming when we were still dating, as a matter of fact he was my first but all of a sudden he changed into what I would describe as an animal. He takes good care of the children's welfare but barely shows me love, I just feel like someone who just has kids for him and nothing more. I think he has a lot of insecurities and tries to make himself feel superior by making me feel worthless. I learned to deal with some of this in counseling, but how long can someone be expected to hold up in a marriage with someone like that? I've told him I am willing to do anything if we could only try to make our marriage pleasant. At times he will agree, but he never follows through. I have given up my dreams of a good marriage one by one until I have very little hope left. I am starting to get depressed and depression only makes things worse. I feel so trapped. I do not believe in divorce, and even if I did, I would still have to deal with him about the children. It would be trading one set of problems for another. I am reluctant to return to my parents, I feel they are getting frustrated about the whole situation anyway. People have advised me to divorce my husband, and I keep wanting to figure out a way to save my marriage because I don't have what it takes to keep it up alone anymore. It seems to be a dead end situation. I grew up believing that marriage was a very special relationship between a man and a woman and I looked forward to it, but I don't think I will ever be able to have that experience. Please advise me people! I think I'm going to have a mental breakdown soon.