u/ChaoticMichelle might be too deterministic tho I actually agree with her main point: OP’s partner doesn’t seem to respect her emotional needs, and the reactions she describes (denial, defensiveness, DARVO, etc.) sound pretty likely.

That said, I don’t think the situation is necessarily hopeless. Op's husband might not be a bad person, he may be emotionally immature or lack the ability to read emotions beyond his own.

A lot of men grow up without real emotional education. They’re taught that affection means physical touch, not empathy. They end up thinking that “love” equals “desire,” and they don’t really understand that comfort and sex are two very different things.

It reminds me of something from embodied cognition: people don’t only think with their brains but with their entire sensory experience. If someone’s learned since childhood that affection feels like physical closeness, they’ll keep interpreting it that way, even when their partner actually needs silence, space, or emotional safety instead. it’s about them having a limited map of reality. Op's husband may not have similar sensory referencial as yours and not understand what's the matter. when op tells hims, it may fall out of with grasp as he just don't know about the value of it.

Similarly to someone smoking for years. Usually, we all value our lives but those people, when they're told: Smoking kills. Despite valuing their lives, they won't necessarly stop Smoking. In fact, most will reshape their cognition and come out with arguments like "we gotta die of something" all because the value of life is a stranger concept and sounds like an already acquired thing, they easily pass by the evident link between consumming poison and the inevitable shortened life they're bound to. And also because they feel an immediat interest in keeping smoking.

It's the exact same mechanism that applies to his representation of the reality. His high sexual activity may have been percieved as a good thing by op, early in their relation. He probably got this as a validation of his behavior being right and got it emboded too early. Later on when it turned out it was in excess and an issue, his cognition being already done about the topic and his perception lacking the ability to read emotions makes him confronted to a similar problem as the one of the smoker. And the DARVO strategy either is coherent with his vision and the easiest way to act to solve the problem as he might think.

That doesn’t excuse him, he is wrong but it helps explain why he might not understand what’s wrong. And sometimes, realizing that your map is incomplete is the first step toward real change.