Meant as kindly as possible:
I recommend you grow your spine back and lay down your expectations for remaining with him. Then, strongly reinforce your clearly defined expectations with appropriate consequences.
Right now he holds the relative power in your relationship because he doesn't care and you do. You're chasing him and he's behaving as though you are the one with something to prove, not him. That's really dangerous, unhealthy and unfair for you.
The person who cares less has the power until the other person gets real about the consequences for their partner not so much as trying to meet their needs.
Remember that words are cheap though. So if you say something you'd better mean it and enforce commensurate consequences. If you say you'll leave if they do or don't do "X" and they default to their typical zero-effort, nothing-to-lose type character...you get your ass right up and leave.
My recommendation isn't an untested theory...I had to learn this myself. After many years of being treated a certain way I lost my spine. We were both accustomed to her attitude dictating how, what, when, where, etc., etc., etc. for everything from PDA to sex, where we lived to what was done there, vacation plans to just about everything else (exception being all of my personal business' decisions which I never relinquished -thank God!). Quite frankly I accepted that leaving all of that up to her lead to both of us being dreadfully unhappy and that if I wanted happiness for myself (and her a shot at being happy in certain ways) I needed to grow a spine, law down the law and enforce it. It was a learning experience for me and for her because it was 100% the opposite from the way we had been for about 20 years.
After many months of me being as I needed to be and her resisting, it got better. Not just for sex but it also reaches into my own general sense of self respect and the respect she has for me. We are both happier that I no longer allow her to dictate our sex life and so many other decisions. My discretion, despite her doing me very wrong, is fair, balanced and has empathy. Her discretion relied purely on her own emotions and lacked an ounce of empathy. It makes more sense that both of us rely on my discretion for all matters, sexual or not, and it took months for her to begin to understand that the "same old rules" no longer apply. Because I knew it would take her time to relearn the new us, I was patient but firm in my resolve. I was also patient with myself as it required me accepting a concept which I was not familiar with either.
I recommend you change your relationship dynamic to one that is founded upon a more balanced attitude; possibly yours. If you are fair with yourself and how things have gone you'll be able to say if what the two of you have been doing has worked or not. If it has not worked you must change your own mind over first and then also include plans for if he A) complies, or B) doesn't comply. You can only fix you. Accept that. But you can also chose to perpetuate his attitude or to enforce consequences for him not attempting to change.
The only way to succeed in this is to make some difficult decisions and accept that you'll be paddling upstream. Those moves are very likely to be resisted. The way you address that is very very simple: Poor behavior by him should result in unfavorable consequences for him. If he improves his behavior, you should encourage him to repeat it with whatever type of positive reinforcement you feel will work. He will learn or he won't. Don't allow fear of this change breaking the relationship. The relationship is already broken. The change is a last opportunity for it to heal into something proper and healthy. If it can't heal, is it really worth keeping?
You've my best wishes.
*edit: grammmmmarrrrr' me matey
[This message edited by NotMyFirstRodeo at 6:00 PM, Tuesday, May 3rd]
