Hill, I believe you, and it sounds like you are willing to step up and do what needs to be done. You sound like you are listening. Then main thing you need here is to be truly motivated to change this.

When things start to go awry in your relationship with tgrace, I suggest that you make this your FIRST step: remind yourself that the number one problem in your relationship has been your disrespectful judgments. Remind yourself that you have created an environment that is making it very difficult for your wife to act positively toward you. And then remind yourself that she is trying very hard to act positively, anyway, and she's not going to be able to be consistent in that until you are consistent in eliminating the disrespectful judgments.

Did you hear that, Hill? She cannot be consistent in meeting your ENs until you are consistent in eliminating DJs. She just cannot do that, no matter how much she wants to.

Your brain and your reason can latch onto this fact and make the plan to get your ENs met by eliminating DJs. But your emotion cannot. So you are going to have to overpower your emotions, repeatedly, with this piece of logical reasoning.

Your emotions are going to point you to certain "tools" to try to get what you need. Almost every one of those "tools" is a DJ and is really a weapon used against your wife. If your passion is in the driver's seat and not your logic, you are going to crash this relationship.

It is going to take awhile. In the meantime, your wife is here, and she is asking questions and listening and following the advice given. You are incredibly lucky, Hill. It is going to take awhile.

You have got to get both ends of this program going. Meet emotional needs and eliminate love busters. Dr. Harley says there should be no tolerance in marriage for selfish demands, disrespectful judgments, and angry outbursts. Not that they should be minimized, they should be eliminated! You can do this, and it starts with adopting a personal attitude of zero tolerance toward these behaviors from yourself.