Aloha Kim...How I did it was sitting in open meetings of the Al-Anon family Groups
and listening very closely with an open mind.  Almost everyone there had an
experience I could relate to and build a solution upon.  Go to your phone book
and look up the hotline number to Al-Anon and call for meeting times and places then
get there and keep going there for at least 90 days to see if the program will work for
you.

(((((hugs)))))

He might not know how or not know how you want him to do it.  It is a given that
us men don't have a good grip on those things emotional.  We are intellectual and
analyzers.  We may have to learn how to comfort others from the women in our
lives like I did in the room and we do know how to win World War III actually time
has proven that we don't have a good handle on that either do we.

I have learned a lot from the women in the program.  Feelings stuff was like
totally cluedless.

The risky part for you is asking for what you need even from him and no longer assuming that he knows.
He don't so you might just want to ask him for a hug or a "hold me".  I can
do that for my wife but the feelings stuff I gotta read her body language and then
decipher what I think it means and then just jump out there with what I think and
take what comes as a result.  I don't like being wrong but today I don't have to
like it and when I am I get the opportunity to say, "Okay I missed that one let me
in on whats going on."  It's kinda like a cat and mouse game still we get it done.

You don't always have to be the one giving in.  That's an option.

I had a little reaction to your statement, "...like a husband is supposed to?"  As a
husband myself I have in the past come up against my current wife's expectations.
One of the things I felt and saw was that there were and are times when she
attempts to make choices for me from what road I should take to go somewhere to
when she wants her feet massaged to other things.  I am most likely not to do
what she wants when she wants it in favor of my own choices.  I don't do this out
of spite because thats a game. I most often give when I feel giving.  That's me
exercising who I am without the expectations.  I don't do the game of wills anymore and there are times when she gets her "I wants" just recognized and not fulfilled.  I'd like to be treated the same way I treat her and often times I get the belief that she believes she should be in control.   Letting go and letting God sure
does help often huh?

(((((hugs)))))