Fornalau - I have read this post, and all the responses and determined there are too many to quote that I wholeheartedly agree with, so instead I will try to summarize here.
My WH, especially post-A, when we had these real conversations, and when I started seeing him for who he really was, sounds very much like your WH in that he came from (what someone said) was a desert wasteland of a childhood in terms of love and caring and affection. My WH's parents, although not rich by any means (both my WH and I alone, nevertheless combined, out earn them by a significant amount), were rich for their geographical area. EVERYTHING was about money. Not in that hyper-pretentious way - they didn't have fancy cars, or fancy clothes or anything like that - but that success...life success...was wholly based on financial terms. In order to be a good person a man must be a good provider - be it for himself or his kids. WH and his parents are not close, and his dad (entirely the opposite of my own), was almost in absent father in the mental sense of the word - he was physically present but had zero closeness with his kids. WH and his brother were seen as little employees (they had a very successful farm in the area and WH and his brother had to work on the farm from like the age of 5 and were paid for their work). WH and his brother were "spoiled" in my mind as they were allowed to spend their earned money freely on video games, ATVs, and other stuff that as a child I would have only dreamed about having (although I don't even think my dreams were so big) - but WH was left largely alone aside from family dinners, especially in regards to his father. To me it seems dry and sad, hence the desert wasteland comment being so accurate. There were also beatings and a lot of very religious-based extreme views he and his brother were forced into swallowing (WH did and his brother didn't which made his brother's childhood a lot more physically miserable) that accompanied most of their treatment BUT money was the more important of them all, followed by a comparison of yourself to others, especially when it was perceived that someone had more than you but didn't deserve it. The ultimate victim mentality - look out for yourself, not just because you should be, but because others were always there to take from you. Blah blah blah.
This, IMO, created the mental health issues my WH DOES indeed suffer from. He has pretty severe depression. He also suffered from pretty serious instances of depersonalization and derealization, which luckily for him, has in recent years been treated very successfully via EMDR (he can't take meds due to his work). He has officially been diagnosed with GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) and clinical (major) depression. The aftermath of the A, and his own sabotage of our relationship and his employment made him WANT to figure out what is wrong with him. He's been in IC for 3.5 years now in earnest and he has made great strides.
In your situation, so many of the things your WH said about you and your kids could have come from my WH's mouth 7 years ago - he just never said them out loud completely. He has a child from a relationship when he was pretty young (he and his child's mother never married) and he had said a few things in relations to his daughter that sound like your WS. My WH's daughter (now a young adult) always lived with her mother a 3+ hour flight from WH (there is zero work for him - or just about anyone else where they are - so being there was never an option for him). He had visitation and never missed any of it, but he is not close, and he made several comments about not really wanting to do the work to bridge the gap with her in the past that gave me pause - but, sadly not enough to think that may be a problem. Only since my WH started therapy and working though is own issues has he been able to open that part of himself up more. He is more engaged with his daughter now, of his own doing, and it's slow going but clearly different.
I think that part of him was closed, in large part, because he didn't even know "how to do it" - not really. He had no examples of it as a child, and he didn't think it was necessary. I could go on and on about the parallels...but I think for your purposes the issue really is that your WH is aware on some level he has these issues, but what has happened and your comments now don't seem to want him to change that. I know in WH's case the "caring" about things more deeply (or as it turns out, deeply at all) has been a process. One I could not have managed to make happen on my own, no matter what I said or did.
