I'm going to skip the second post and just talk to the first one.
Required reading:
The Man Who Didn't Believe in Love from Miguel Ruiz
It sounds like you might be trying to put your star in his hands. If you make him responsible for your happiness with the relationship, there will be unhappiness. You need to decide if all the good things that he does for you make up for what you perceive to be shortfalls in the relationship. The worst thing that you can bring to a relationship is the hope of the other person changing to meet your needs, it undermines the foundation of respect for the other person's right to live life according to their own level of comfort. And I say this from the position of having been guilty of this exact thing.
As a man, here's my male opinion on the matter. I can understand very well where your man is coming from when he says he is more reserved than in the past. See, society as a whole teaches us (in a wide variety of ways) that in order to be a man, we must be stoic, strong, immovable rocks amidst the turbulent ocean that is the craziness of life. Men are discouraged in a lot of ways from expressing emotions other than 'manly' ones - happiness or anger - and that definitely encompasses speaking about them openly for that matter. The thing is, even though we (men) tend to appear often emotionless or lacking in emotion, we're still very much feeling them. Most of us simply never took the time to learn how to express them fully, because society discourages it and we're likely to receive criticism from our peers about being overly dramatic crybabies.
As a man, let me also state that nothing, and I mean nothing, can break down a man into a shell of himself more than the pain of being abandoned by a long term partner who he loves. It's an evolutionary biological response that is hardwired into men's brains across tens of thousands of years of reproduction. The loss of a partner meant that the man's genes would not be propagated throughout future generations, and whether we understand this or not, we (men) are built with an extremely strong drive to guarantee the continued success of our genetic composition amidst a competitive and hostile environment, where up until quite recently, death was always lurking around the corner and the only way to guarantee the survival of our genes was to reproduce as much as possible. This genetic 'survival competition' is the subtle foundation of racism, the foundation of tribal warfare, and also the foundation of a man's pain at the rejection from a long term partner. It is a very powerful force, indeed! And it punishes us quite severely when relationships break apart.
Various studies have been done on the subject of infidelity that back up this statement. When asked whether an individual would be more hurt by emotional infidelity or physical infidelity, women tended to be more hurt by emotional infidelity whereas men tended to be more hurt by physical infidelity. And that reflects the different roles in society that men and women have historically played - an emotional connection with another woman represents a threat to the sanctity of a woman's relationship with her man, and that is why she would be more hurt by emotional infidelity. A physical connection with another man represents a threat to that man's genetic survival, which is why men are more hurt by physical infidelity. It all comes down to biology.
Coming from the position of being broken down by a failed marriage, I can
unequivocally state that I am already beyond the extreme with regard to caution in letting myself be vulnerable to another woman. The thing about being hurt is that it naturally makes you more cautious. Personally, I abhor the phrase "I love you." I can't stand it. That doesn't mean I don't feel love for a person, but I've heard that phrase spoken through lying teeth far too much to place any value in it. A great deal of men aren't likely to tell a person that they love them, they're far more likely to
show them through some kind of action of appreciation. Buying them flowers, washing the dishes, making a surprise dinner, going out to a fancy restaurant, giving a back massage. It's how we were taught growing up, we didn't talk about our feelings, we acted them out. For a lot of men, especially ones who have been burned in the past, words are like clouds in the sky - intangible, and passing just as quickly. It's the unnecessary gestures a man makes that measures his appreciation.
So to summarize this long-winded post, let me just state that coming from a man's point of view, I wouldn't want a partner to expect me to be their primary source of emotional fulfillment, because I don't want a partner to be
my primary source of emotional fulfillment. It's my job to make myself happy, not anybody else's, and I can't make myself responsible for somebody else's happiness. If I find that some aspect of a relationship is undesirable, I have to make a decision as to whether the good outweighs the bad, or the bad outweighs the good, and act accordingly.