Okay Eddie you are NOT my husband!!! His issues are way different to yours. I can relate completely to your childhood issues. My mother wad unable to show affection or love towards myself or my brother. Only as an adult did I recognise that when she lost a little girl at 2 yrs old when my brother and I were born she was afraid to love us in case she lost us too.
The only person she truly loved was my father and he died when I was 10 leaving her to cope without much money. She really shut down emotionally then and made our lives hell. I don't think she ever realised she was both emotionally and physically abusive towards us I tried to talk to her a little about it before she died and was told that her life would have been so much easier if I'd never been born. That made me feel really good about myself actually I think I always knew she felt that way.
I learned early on how to switch off emotions eg. I decided when she would punish me by smacking NOT crying drove her crazy so I wouldn't cry. Still don't cry at least not very often. I can vividly remember being 13 or 14 and her raising her hand to hit me and telling her if she did I would hit her back that if she couldn't beat me verbally she shouldn't beat me physically. She never hit me again!! Actually I think she respected me more for standing up to her I was the one that wouldn't allow her to control me.
I can understand how hard it can be to let yourself really become close to someone you love because you are then giving the power to that person to hurt you the way your mother did. I can see from your POV that NOT being in love with another woman you can open up more easily trouble is you're then taking something away from the relationship you could be having with your wife. I can see where my childhood has affected my own R with my H I don't find it easy to receive affection I guess I'm always waiting for it to be withdrawn. My H knows I hate the word slut as that was my mothers favourite insult when growing up I was quote "a filthy little slut" this was for leaving a pair of trousers and a top on my bedroom chair. He used this word on me and I just laughed and said it doesn't hurt coming from him and I knew I shouldn't have told him. He never used that word again to me. It only hurts if you let it.
My self esteem was never damaged by my mothers behaviour but I would agree with you that it has made it very difficult to confront relationship problems. I tend to withdraw as a form of self preservation I guess. My H on the other hand looks elsewhere rather than talk to me he decides he's in love with someone else and either has a PA or EA so I withdraw even more and trust even less. Vicious circle which I have decided has to end. I've stopped saying I'm O.K if I'm not I've started explaining more how I really feel and what I would like from our marriage.
One of our mutual friends went through a divorce and I tended to be the one to be supporting emotionally but my H was aware of our talks so not an A. As soon as he was stronger emotionally we went back to mutual friends. I can see that if he had become dependant on me it could have been a problem.
Hope you can find a way to connect with your wife and don't allow an emotionally abusive childhood destroy the possibility of a great future.
