How to make a person brave?

callisto - have you seen a therapist for yourself? This step helped me to delineate my thinking as well as my plan. I worked on a letter. I hadn't been able to complete a sentence to my husband without interruption in around 3 years. I edited the letter over a 6 week period. One evening, before I was to go spend the night at a friend's house for her birthday - I said I needed to read him something, it was only one page, but I wanted him to let me read the whole thing before we discuss it. He managed to. He "almost" tried to interrupt once but when I looked up at him, he fell silent and I continued. I posted my letter on the forum (but don't know which thread - will try to locate that for you).
After I read it, we talked (& he cried - I cried some as well). Right in the letter, I assured him that I know he loves me and I still love him too - but that a brotherly love is not marriage. He asked me to not sleep in the guest room that night, so I slept in the bed (just about as far away in the same bed as we had been for years). The next day, we spoke some in the morning and then I went to the friend's. The following day, got back home and he had gotten over some of the control issues and the most intense pains - acted like a gentleman prepared to accept my decisions. That day I moved to guest room and within 6 weeks moved out of the house.
At one point on the night I read the letter, he came and sat on the floor in front of me - he was pleading and I was stoic. He pulled back a bit and looked at me and said "You're like someone I don't even know - I hardly recognize you" (or something to that effect). I knew it was rhetoric so held my comments, more or less. That was pretty much MY point. Here I am, living in the same house with a man who claims to love me but it's been so long since we "really checked in" with each other that he doesn't even KNOW me so how could he love me? Or what about me did he love? He loved his idea of me. (if that - that is actually being generous)
Individual therapy could hopefully help you with clarity. I don't know if you have the time you need for it due to being found out. But - I hope you do.

I waited over 30 years, until any love I had for my wife was extinguished. I don't recommend my strategy. I'd recommend GrantGeek's advice instead.

Crocodile tears.

Everything you said was true for me too!
I didn't do couples counseling because when I asked him to go he refused that too.
It was realizing the emotional and mental abuse that made me detach.
That upset him and eventually turned to verbal abuse, he would say "you disgust me". I could never say those words to anyone. That's when I realized he really did not love me. I also realized the person he became I would not even want to be friends with him. I would not have divorced if I was not able to support myself and my kids so I got legal advice, figured out how things would go and now my life is happier and better.

I was "terrified" at the prospect of leaving my ILIASM deal.
-
Getting legal advice about how a divorce would shake out for me allayed some of that fear. At that stage I'd moved to "shit frightened".
-
Constructing an exit strategy, and knocking it in to do-able shape washed some more of the fear away. I was only "scared as fuck" at this point.
-
Shoring up my support network to help me through what was to come helped too. Moved me to "scared".
-
Figuring out how to assist my kids transition through such an event also assisted my mindset. "Very apprehensive" would describe it.
-
However, some more months went by and my deadline (early January 2010) got closer and closer as I "got ready" going over my plan endlessly, refining it, tuning it up. Still in a "Very apprehensive" state.
Out of the blue on 26th October 2009, one word in an otherwise innocuous conversation tipped the whole thing arse over head, and I was out. There and then, 3 months ahead of schedule.
My initial mindspace then was actually "Elation".
That morphed in to a steely determination to start carving out a new life.
-
Preparation, preparation, preparation.
For me, every stage of it helped me deal with and manage the fear.
It didn't eradicate it, but it did get it down to manageable levels.

With your current situation, you have to be brave. You don't have a good choice of staying. He doesn't give you what you need, and you found it elsewhere. He is afraid to lose you. You've done all you can to change him but he has to want to change. The realization of losing you will change him. And it may not be enough to hold on to you. I was in a similar position 3 yrs ago feeling unloved and unhappy, and I was torn with leaving my wife and kids. The emotional part of choosing to leave loved ones was painful. I left the practical part, my exit plan, simply.  

This is where I got.  I realized that pitying him is no substitute for the romantic connection I wanted.  He had all the control but not one tendency to cherish me.  I am not a possession.  I will not be played like a damn puppet - my fears manipulated by him for his purposes, to suit his ends.  In Marxist theory - he was the owner class and I was the means of production.  Screw that (or - there was not enough of screwing that, actually, to keep this worker bee happy).  I unionized - with my self and my spirit - and walked.  No picket line, no negotiation.  The factory (marriage) had to shut down because this proletarian quit allowing the ruling class to take advantage of me.