In this post, your wife mentioned a negotiation where you involved outside people as "tie breakers" in making a marital decision:
As for my being unwilling to make any effort...
These things I know: In any disagreement, CRex needs to involve an outside person as a "tie-breaker." This person's decision is golden, regardless of who the person is or whether they agree with him or with me. When asked why this other (whoever) person has more credibility than me, even when I was saying the exact same thing, his responses included: he's a pastor, he's a trained counselor, he was previously D'd, she raised teenagers already, he's objective, he's a man, etc.) The point is, I will never be any of those things, so I will never be able to compete for credibility in his eyes.
3 weeks ago, we had our conflict about our son's education. CRex involved my bro and SIL as the tie-breaker. It ended with him accusing me of being irrational.
What I did: I recognized his intense need to handle it his way. I recognized his need to always involve a third party as a "tie-breaker." I removed myself from the entire scenario and let him handle it his way. This removes me as the middleman, along with all the irrelevant conversation, and lets him go directly to his source. I've adopted this approach in to all decisions and it has addressed quite a few issues, including his compliant that I'm too controlling and that we talk too much/long.
This I know: My H is very conflict-averse.
2.5 weeks ago, H was complaining about the state of our M. I said I felt like my approach was a good one and that it addressed a number of issues. I said if we're going to do something, then we need to devote our time to it and hash it out until it's resolved because I'm tired of going over it and over it and starting over again. He agreed and we gave it some time that night, then a short time the next evening before I left for school. When I got home from school, he was avoiding me. Whereas I would have normally pursued him, I felt relieved. I didn't want to deal with it either. Contrary to what my H claims, I don't like rehashing all this. So I adopted his approach of avoidance. For 10 days we did this. I thought it was working great. We did our own thing, there was no conflict, I thought it was good. The problems this addressed were my criticism, control, "barking,"long discussions, my out-negotiating him, rehashing the past, etc.
A week ago, he came home from a weekend trip to Fla playing golf with family. I picked him up from the airport as he asked. I was still doing the avoidance approach that had seemed to be working before he left. A little later, being clearly agitated, he complained again about the state of our M. He brought up again for the nth time in months the HNHN program, saying it was what we needed to do. I declined yet again, because we've already done it, I still remember it, I even still have the workbook from the first time. He complained that I'm not willing to work on things, that I don't make any suggestions.
So I took into consideration his need for third-party validation as well as his need for limited time, and I suggested this site. I hand-held him through the process of setting up a profile and how to maneuver the site, showed him where the post button is, etc.
In the last couple days, I've read the suggestion about limiting the amount of time. At the first occurrence of a conversation, I took my phone with me and set the timer for 40 minutes. It didn't go well. When the time was up, I put an end to the discussion, then decided I would back up the duration to 20 minutes next time, since apparently 40 minutes was still too long. The next 20-minute session blew up at 9 minutes. The next one was under 2 minutes.
One of the recent posts suggested that we not talk. I'm completely on board with that suggestion, because it seemed to be working so well a couple weeks ago. I tried to approach the topic with CRex, timer in hand, only asking him one question (also a suggestion, to stop asking questions) as to whether he had read the post. That was the conversation that blew up at 9 minutes (really only 6 minutes, because I started the timer as soon as I asked him to talk but we didn't start right away.)
If this is "unwilling to work on things," then he needs to file immediately and put me out of my misery.