Firstly welcome, I am sorry that you find yourself here but I am pleased to 'meet' you. I can really relate to your experience and your husbands coldness towards you. I am 29 and my (now) exh is 28 and behaved in exactly the same way as your h. Please don't let my divorced status discourage you, my exh and I are now on good terms and it was my decision to get divorced due to various circumstances.
When my exh first left he was extremely cold towards me. I found it very confusing and hurtful. I thought it was my fault, although I couldn't work out what I had done. I later found out that the reasons for his coldness were mainly guilt and confusion. He still cared deeply for me but could not reconcile that with his actions, the coldness was just a coping mechanism to justify his actions. Try not to take it personally.
I managed to turn his coldness around though and it took of patience and the most important ingrediant, self control. He was terrified that I was going to talk about the relationship and emotionally charged things. So I know it goes against everything you want to do but you have to stop all relationship talks. My exh and I actually bonded over the sale of our house, that was when we started meeting and going for dinner etc again as I was self controlled and showed only positive emotion.
They feel an intense amount of guilt, more than they can really handle so to get things back to a point where you can talk again you need to minimize that guilt.
What I did that worked - stopped all relationship talks - was upbeat and 'happy' in his presence and showed only positive emotions. - stopped all the begging, pleading and I love you's.
My exh now is actively the one who wants to stay in touch with me, he emails me (I am travelling abroad) every month or less. This was a guy who would not speak to me, not text or email, or telephone. He really was a stubborn case, so you can do this.
This board is a great source of support. Post on others threads, even if you feel shy to, and you will build up a great support network for yourself that I could not have got through this without.
I'll pop back and check on you but in the meantime if you have any questions, or situations that arise, post them here and we will try and help.
