I'm glad you and green are feeling more positive. You may not be 100% happy in your marriages but they do seem stable. Your husbands are reliable. You are lucky.
(I have had a really rough time. Maybe sometimes I am guilty of projecting what happened to me onto other people's relationships. I think I have come to terms with it but it is really hard ever fully to come to terms with something like that.
I do have some regrets about the way I handled things with dd's father. It was a very stressful time and I was very enotional. Knowing what I do now, I realise that it was pointless to try and communicate with him in the way that I did. But he is a very strange man and so I am confident that nothing I could have done would have prevented what happened and there is no way I could have lived with him, long-term. It was a huge mistake to ever get involved with him and I can't quite forgive myself for that.
From what I have worked out, he seems to want to make people do things to prove their love, then once he had achieved that, he loses interest. In my case, it was to have a baby with him. In another case, it was for someone to sell their flat, give up their job and move half way across the country. In another case, he had an affair with a married woman, got her to lave her husband and then dumped her. !!!!)
But perhaps my story will have served to make you realise that things could be a lot worse. As I said, I don't think your situation is much like mine. Your husband is honest but distant. He finds it difficult to show affection, appears cold.
From what we read in the self-help books, when a man is more right-brain, he takes requests for communication as reproaches and criticism. You in turn feel hurt and frustrated at his reaction and things get worse. I think you and many of the posters are right that if you do your best to be pretty and cheerful and affectionate and relaxed, he is more likely to open up with you because he will feel happier that you are happier. It seems a bit unfair that you have to see things their way all the time but, yes it is a bit like with children, they have fragile egos.
I don't think Green should 'get over herself' because we should all try to be as happy as we can be, including in our relationships. If you are really unhappy, leave, because you only live once. As a Mumsnetter reading your thread, I suppose it is a bit frustrating and I want to say: 'there's nothing serious wrong with your relationship but, if you are unhappy, DO something!!' But it must be so easy during that hectic time with small children to lose the romance and the connection between you. And so difficult to reestablish things sometimes. That doesn't mean that a marriage is doomed.
I suppose the moral is that it is not possible to find 100% of what you need in one person and you shouldn't expect to. It makes more sense to have friends who you can talk to who provide the missing bits and, as some other posters have said, to find comfort in other things or activities - beautiful flowers, fluffy towels, long walks, whatever pleases you and makes you happy in life.
Your last posts sound more hopeful. Good luck and best wishes.