Hate to tell you, but MC is correct about having to change your ingrained thought patterns and reactions. Your description of doing the dishes because of some belief that you have to do it to pacify your husband sounds very much like how my husband and I used to deal with each other. We spent a lot of energy trying prevent things that hadn't even happened yet, things that we imagined in our heads but weren't really the reality of what was going on.

When I stopped doing that to myself, and made the choice to do things for myself, and let my husband's reactions be his own reactions, life got so much less internally stressful. That's what your husband is already doing. He's decided your reactions are your own reactions; he can't "fix" that for you. And rather than get upset every time you are upset, he's stopped engaging in that dance with you because it really is fruitless.

I was basically in your husband's shoes; my husband was the emotional one. I chose to stop reacting to his upsettedness, to stop playing into that dance. It wasn't that I was not being supportive; I was simply choosing to take care of myself because I realized nothing I did or said was going to "fix" his reactions anyway -- all it did was prolong the upsettedness for him and stress me out. So, I stopped. And like you, he didn't like that. He wanted me to change. The problem with that is that he had no power to make me change, and I wasn't particularly inclined to do so; the fact of the matter was that I had done nothing BUT change for him for 20 years to the point that I had lost myself. For the first time in our marriage, I started being true to myself -- still supportive of my husband but not engaging in that dysfunctional dance we had gotten to habitually used to over 20 years. I changed, just not the way he thought I should.

But you know what, when he realized I was putting the responsibility for my emotions and reactions on me, and I was leaving the responsibility for his reactions and emotions to him, when he realized I was done with that dance, he started making his own changes in his own reactions and emotions. He started being true to himself too.

We finally became true to ourselves as individuals. Our communication became more honest and less emotionally-laden and less emotionally manipulative of each other. We are now in our 30th year of marriage, and the last 10 years have been the calmest, most respectful, most communicative years for us because we take personal responsibility ONLY for ourselves; we stopped trying to "fix" each other and "change" each other and became authentic individuals in our marriage. We are both MUCH happier and our marriage has never been stronger.

Do we still annoy each other? Heck yes! But now that annoyance is more amusing than really a gripe. We can love and tolerate each other's quirks without letting them get to us. They're just little things in scheme of things.