OK... I am prepared to be told I am naive or even stupid. I've posted before about my experiences and have been told something along those lines. However, you asked about other people's experiences and these are mine. I don't think that they are totally similar to yours, but I also hope that they are, in the end, vaguely positive and hopeful. I am a name-changer, btw, but have used this name before on similar threads.
My dh has always been volatile and prone to angry outbursts. In the 16 years we've been together, he has hit me I guess about 5 or 6 times. Always in the throes of a row. Always linked with me becoming what he terms 'hysterical' [now there's a nice word with misogynist roots, eh?]. Different root causes each time - same end result. Only once in front of the dcs. Usually late at night. Dh does drink, but doesn't get drunk, so alcohol may exacerbate the situation but doesn't cause it.
The last time dh hit me was a year ago. My dcs are getting older (though they weren't in the house on this occasion) and I was worried that, as they got older, his anger would turn on them. I am not scared for myself - he never attacked me in a protracted way, always just one (hard) slap (hard enough to knock me down and certainly hard enough to silence me) - but am scared that my children would one day provoke him in the same way that I do. I told him that I was not prepared to live with the fear of getting hit again myself and/or of him turning on the children, and that I couldn't stay with him unless he showed me that he was prepared to do something about his problems with controlling his anger.
Tbh, for a while he did nothing, or at least nothing obvious. He did look up some info on the net and increased the amount of exercise he was taking, but there was no obvious change in his personality. I issued him with an ultimatum at the end of last summer, when he had been particularly hard on one of the dcs (not physically hard - just particularly intolerant, iykwim). I told him that just reading about anger on the net was not enough and that he needed to do something if he wanted our marriage to survive.
Finally, he realised I was serious and he saw his GP who referred him to what I believe was a community mental health nurse based in the practice. (I know she described herself as a nurse, not a counsellor.) This was a huge step for dh - admitting he had a real problem and actually doing something about it. He was quite resistant to the nurse's suggestions about the possible causes of his behaviour at first and really pooh-poohed her suggestions. BUT... he really opened up about his problem and talked openly about it to both me and his mum (his dad was exactly the same, apparently). The nurse recommended this book, which he also initially pooh-poohed but then admitted to having found useful. It has been a slow process, but there has been a definite change in him, and I am really willing to believe now that he won't hit me or the dcs in future. I have seen how much better able he is now to contain his anger and to channel it into more productive activities. He gets much less worked up about things, and even when we have rowed he has been able not only to calm himself down, but also to apologise to me and (miracle!) to admit to having been in the wrong. Overall, too, he just seems happier.
I cannot say 100% that he will never hit me again. When he has done it before it has always come out of the blue and never as part of a regular pattern of behaviour. However, I am willing to trust him and to believe him when he says that he will not. I feel that our marriage is stronger now than ever and I am hopeful for the future.
I don't know what is the right thing for you to do maybeitwillbeok. Only you can decide that. But I wanted to tell you my story. If your dh wants to make this work, he will need to work at it, and he will have to actively admit to having a problem with which he needs help. For my dh that was the hard part - everything else got easier from there on. (((Hugs))) to you, and to everyone on this thread who has suffered dv. I hope it will be OK for you (and for me).