As an alcoholic male, who has been in this situation many times, I can only lend my perspective on how some guys deal with this kind of situation.
My ex wife left me many times and we also engaged in these types of negotiations to convince her to come home. As a guy, I truly did not comprehend the depth of hurt she felt, the true lack of trust she developed over the years, nor the agony she went through when contemplating returning to a situation that drove her to leave in the first place. I firmly believe that alcohol stunts our emotional growth, at least it surely did mine. Whenever I proclaimed the same sentiment, "I don't know how to make you happy anymore," it was true. That's why many men ask to be told what to do, we really don't know what to do, we are lost, but just want things to go back to the way they were, so we can think we've got the situation back under control. Then, in time, the addiction rears its ugly head and we're off and running again, for we have never truly understood the real pain and frustration our addiction has caused. We can sit in the bar and moan, "Oh, my wife left me," and then have another drink. When we want her back, we ask what is it that you want, so that we can complete the "honeydo list" and then we think, well I've done it all, she'll come back to me now. The problem is that as guys, we don't want to really face the hurt we've inflicted upon our loved ones, many women alcoholics are like this as well. But, for this threads sake, we'll stick to the men, of which I am one. We want to fix the car, find the broken part and drive on to the market, without ever learning what makes the car run in the first place. We're lazy when it comes to heart-to-heart discussions, because it means we need to learn what is really in our hearts, and most of the time, we don't even know. We see a problem such as our wives left us, and we want to fix the problem, not fix ourselves, but instead fix the problem as we percieve it, and that's where the problem lies. We don't really know how big the problem is, we just want ot fix it and get back to having our wives with us and move on. It sounds like your husband is there now. He wants to fix the problem, instead of focusing on fixing himself. In the long run, that rarely works.