The most valuable thing I learned from a counselor was that if you are in a relationship with someone, and you tell them what you need and what you want (reasonable requests, of course) and they do not give it to you, it is because they do not want to. If that person is of normal intelligence, functions in the day to day world, their reluctance or inability to do something is not because they do not understand or you didn’t explain it right. They just don’t want to do it.

It’s the simplest thing in the world, and the hardest to accept.

When you tell him how you feel and what you need to feel better in this relationship, and he says “I understand,” but does nothing, that’s because that’s all he wants to do.