Bagheera is giving you excellent advice, as always. And near the end has brought up a great point - if you have been making changes to the sexual situation for 5 years, hasn't he noticed that by now?
But...I will give you my two cents...please prepare yourself...
I think that one thing people in your position need to do, is to look in the mirror and just say to yourself "self, you might have blown this thing".
You see, it is a normal thing for human beings to try to say "but what about when he said or did this or that" when we are accused of something. We try to deflect. We try to rationalize our behavior. We try to attach reasons to our behavior to prove that it was a reaction to someone else's behavior. We grasp at any straw we can in order to not look into ourselves and admit that we may have blown it and have no one to blame but ourselves. It is so painful for humans to do this, that we rarely ever do it.
But...you really need to do that. You need to accept FULLY the consequences of your past actions that caused your husband to withdraw his attraction toward you and then later, withdraw his love for you. You don't need to dwell on negatives or specifics. You just need to take yourself squarely by the shoulders and realize that you may have lost him forever, due to ONLY your own choices and actions.
I know this is difficult and entirely sad and depressing, but if you keep clinging to "but I have changed" or "but what about when he did this or that" you will never really GET IT.
You need to really GET IT in order to really change for the positive. So you basically have to go forward with an attitude like this:
"I get it now - I pushed him away and I may have lost him forever as a result. I cannot blame him or anyone else for my own actions. When I talk to him from here forward, I will do it from a position of someone who is contrite, but not desperate. I will not desperately pursue him. What I WILL do is accept the consequences of my actions and accept that he is withdrawn from me and doesn't feel he loves me anymore. This is the bed I have made and must lie in. HOWEVER, if God gives me another chance to make this work, I will do it right this time. And I know I will do it right, because I already learned how to do it wrong and how to take responsibility for that".
Please really think about what I am saying because you really won't make any progress until you do that.
I know this because during my marriage (am divorced now) I did something essentially similar to what you did. Anyway, by the time I had blown it, I still was expecting my husband to be the one to step up and see and admit HIS mistakes. I was so arrogant and felt so justified in what I had done that had made our marriage suffer. And actually, I probably WAS justified. But what did that matter, if my actions made him shut down from me? And by the time we separated, I couldn't figure out why he wouldn't pursue me and try to make it work again. Well...DUH DanceQueen, you made it clearly obvious to him in the first 10 years of marriage that you never wanted to have sex with him - how can you expect him to want to pursue that?
Anyway, in my arrogance, I never really understood that I had to take full responsiblity for my OWN ACTIONS and forget about his contribution to the failure of my marriage. Otherwise, you cannot learn and grow. You will just be bitter and angry if you keep focused on all the ways we use to deflect ourselves from blame. But the moment you just own it entirely without trying to make excuses, is the moment you can begin to get another chance with him.
As for the sex and trying new things, etc and him saying you appear to be desperate - -
Just totally stop all of that for now, please! You cannot appear desperate, this is the biggest turn off of all. You must appear contrite, responsible for your own feelings/actions, sorry for the fact that he has been hurt, but STRONG in your self-conviction to try to change for the better.
At this point, good sex isn't going to turn him back around toward you. There is a lot more work to do before he turns back around, if he ever does.
I thought for a while that getting divorced was the hardest thing I ever had to do. But I was wrong. The hardest thing I ever had to do actually was when I had to look within and see that I was the only one to blame for my own actions.
But after that painfully hard discovery, I could then truly change for the better. I'm still changing with a lot of hard work behind me now, and am engaged to the love of my life. So it did work out for me after much pain and turmoil - but I'm telling you right now, I could have saved myself a lot of the pain and turmoil had I just laid down my pride and admitted that I put myself in the position I was in. Me and no one else put me there. If I didn't like it, I could only ask myself for answers.
After that - everything get better - slowly but surely.
