Posting again w edit: What are your honest thoughts on my long-distance marriage and my husband’s feelings toward me?

I (24F) have been married to my husband (31M) for one year. It was an arranged marriage, but we both agreed to it willingly and happily. Before marriage, we only talked online for about 6 months and never met in person. After marriage, we spent only 7 days together before returning to a long-distance marriage, and we’ve now been apart for over a year.

The biggest issue in my marriage is that my husband openly says that I love him more than he loves me. He says he does love me, but “not that much.” He also says that the kind of love, affection, and emotional reassurance a spouse should receive should ideally come naturally and freely, and he agrees that my desire for those things as a a wife is completely justified. However, he says he just can’t naturally feel or express that kind of love in our case right now. He believes that once we start living together, things will get better, but he says he can’t fake feelings that don’t come naturally.. for now

He has also told me that I’m not really his physical type. He says he could have married someone more attractive but chose me because character matters more than beauty. He says he accepted me for my personality and character rather than physical attraction. I struggle with this because it makes me feel like, in his eyes, I’m not attractive enough to be genuinely desired romantically.

To be fair to him, he doesn’t randomly insult my appearance. He only brings up attractiveness when we’re discussing relationships and attraction in a factual or practical way. He believes physical beauty matters in the real world, and honestly, I do agree that he is objectively more attractive than I am. He says beauty is temporary and character is more important, but I still struggle with the fact that he didn’t choose me primarily because of physical attraction.

What hurts me the most is that he had previous girlfriends and admits that he was much more romantic, expressive, flirtatious, and physically affectionate with them. He says he’s simply not that person anymore.

In our entire year of long-distance marriage:
• He has NEVER initiated flirting, romance, or sexual conversations.
• He rarely tells me he misses me, desires me, loves me deeply, or can’t wait to see me unless I say it first.
• He says that when he repeats those things, it’s often just to make me happy.
• i’m always the one trying to keep the romance alive.
• Even when I send intimate photos, he only responds with emojis, we NEVER had any sexual and romatic convo
• When I’m upset or crying because of him, he doesn’t comfort me emotionally the way I expect a husband to.
• If I’m angry, he doesn’t chase me or try to make me feel better because he believes my reactions are often illogical.
• During arguments, he has called me “mental” and “psycho.”

When I told him these things hurt my respect as his wife, he said I should first build enough self-respect and achievements that I don’t care what anyone, including my husband, calls me.

The hardest part for me is that I don’t feel loved, desired, valued, or respected enough as a wife. I feel like I have to earn something that I thought should come naturally in marriage.

However, I also want to be completely fair to him:
• He went against family resistance to marry me.
• He accepted a long-distance marriage even • though he never wanted one.
• He has remained loyal and committed.
• He supports me financially.
• He is helping me build a future in the US and wants me to pursue a master’s degree there.
• He spends hours talking to me, sometimes even during his work-from-home hours.
• He regularly sends me gifts on birthdays, Valentine’s Day, anniversaries, and other special occasions.
• He has spent countless hours over the past year trying to explain and reassure me about my insecurities.
• He encourages me to build my own identity, confidence, career, and life outside of him.
• He believes love is shown through commitment, loyalty, sacrifice, responsibility, and providing for a future together.
• He says he still chose me despite having other options because he valued my character.
• He agrees that my desire to be loved and valued as a wife is justified, but says he can’t force those feelings and hopes they will grow naturally once we live together.

We are planning to meet internationally in a couple of months (possibly Maldives or Singapore), although I’m the one pushing more for meeting because I miss him more.

The confusing part is that during the 7 days we spent together after marriage, he was actually very affectionate, romantic, flirty, and physically loving. That version of him completely disappeared once we returned to long distance.

Another issue is that when I repeatedly bring up feeling unloved, he says it’s the same conversation over and over again. He says he has already explained himself thousands of times and cannot keep explaining the same thing forever. When this happens, he hangs up. If I continue calling him repeatedly from different platforms because I’m hurt and desperate for reassurance, he sometimes blocks me for a couple of days to avoid the conflict.

I don’t think he’s a bad person. In many ways, he has sacrificed a lot for me and continues to support me. But emotionally, I feel like I’m grieving a marriage that never really existed.

People who have experience with marriage, arranged marriage, or long-distance relationships:

how would you interpret my husband’s feelings and behavior? Is this emotional incompatibility, the effect of long distance, a difference in love languages, or something else entirely?