I keep running into a situation with my wife where neither of us has much of a tolerance for criticism, it seems that we're both too sensitive to it, but it seems to leave us at a place where there's no easy way to tell the other person what's bothering you. One example is this, I told her that I thought the most important thing in our relationship was to be kind to each other and not fight, especially about things that seem so damn trivial to me. She told me that she has no way to communicate to me when she's dissatisfied with something without depressing me. She gets extremely defensive when I ask her to stop doing something that bothers me, she takes it very personally and seems to internalize it as evidence that she's not a good wife and mother, so I'm afraid to say anything. She seems to have such an extensive list of things to complain about regarding me that I throw up my hands and say "Why did you ever marry me if there are so many things wrong with me?". And then we're both on the defensive and nothing gets resolved. It's compounded over time by the common roblem that she never mentioned any of these things before we were committed to the relationship, and I assumed that because she didn't mention them that they weren't problems. Then she changed her behavior and I felt liked I'd been tricked or set-up or something. (sigh)

One of the things you both might want to consider is reading and/or listening to the audio version of Boundaries in Marriage by Townsend and Cloud so that you both understand a bit more about what each of you are responsible for. Sounds like you both are feeling like you are responsible for the other's feelings and that is where the defensiveness comes in. Once you two can understand that part, I think you could help each other much with the principles laid out here.