Hhmm, maybe a response from me here is required but going to share my thoughts again anyway since it is a thread and you are open to discussion.

I don't know the rest of the story behind this comment so I may very well be off base but it actually irked me a little. Like yes of course it is positive to hear a client say they want to change something explicitly but you are in therapy because you want to change things.

He seems to place a lot of the onus on you and your response. I mean yes you are the one in therapy sure so he should be examining that and not himself in your therapy but a personal peeve of mine which doesn't happen in my own therapy is the lack of discussion around how the dynamic works and how two people are interacting within that dynamic all the time.

The two things that jumped out from me when you mention him giving you feedback or correcting you are they are off things that he initially created and then changed. Like the emails. I may be misremembering a bit but he put them out there as a thing you could do and then they started to get a bit much. To me by doing that he is sending you the message implicitly that you are being too much (I'm not saying you are) but verbally then saying you aren't. That would be confusing to me.

I don't know I'm waffling now but if just seems some of the feedback he gives would sting me too but I know it's because of my own trauma and rejection and abandonment issues. Wounds like that can be deep and it is understandable that people respond in certain ways when they are wounded like that. I don't know if him repeating and old wound and then just expecting you to react different because you want to or 'know' you should the way.