I think couples' therapy is the answer here. He needs to hear it from someone in authority that his behaviour isn't helpful; neither is it appropriate. In my own experience, no amount of pleading, telling, or putting my foot down was going to change my then husband's behaviour. He needed to hear it from someone else that he was basically being a dufus. How I managed to convince him to go to therapy I do not entirely know how. I DO know that he honestly thought he was doing everything right and that it was him the counselor was going to side with. What a shocker then to him when that didn't happen. He went expecting me to get a lecture about laying off nagging him. Instead he got an earful.