nasty loop

One of my defining tendencies is doing what I can to figure out what doesn't seem to be working & to put my mind on ways to turn that around.  This has been true from birth, so it is not a quality I've cultivated.  My friends - and especially John - will testify that I'm always looking for things that need tweaking. 

I can say without hesitation that the problems that loomed mega large in my life when I married John have been identified, acknowledged & worked on.  It is my nature.  

My challenge is that a) it can be extremely irksome to others when the situation involves them; b) it can feel extremely one-sided, like I am working on making things better while others just want to not even see what strikes me as dysfunction; c) what do I do when it seems that I've paid attention to things gumming up relationship & others don't, not because they don't care (which is how it feels) but because they just don't see things the same brutal way that I do.  

It drives my siblings nuts.  John can't stop the things he's done since the early days of our courtship, 29+ years ago, because they don't register;  ditto the distress I feel when he does the same thing in exactly the same way.  And I am left either getting into great distress, which is what I did, or recognizing the trigger & not letting it get to me, which works for the first ten minutes & then I get seriously irked because he's being insensitive, uncaring, oblivious to the pain it causes me AND he isn't getting any backlash, which feels profoundly unfair.  

It feels like the nastiest sort of loop - John answers a straight-forward question with a conditioned answer that is neither yes nor no, which irks the daylights out of me because come on man just answer the question, which lurches into me thinking about how grossly insensitive he is to the fact that his wibbly wobbly answers leave me hanging, which at one point created a distressed out backlash from me until I realized that a) it only hurt me because b) my unhappiness just didn't register with him other than irritation that I was upset, so why show my upset since it only makes it worse & doesn't end in a good outcome from him.  

Whew!  It does seem grossly unfair that the best response for both of us & our relationship is for me to suck it up without disrespecting my own hurt, which feels like it works for him at my loss.  Working on working through that.  Relationships are challenging, but worth it.