Chrome, this resonated with me too, from the other side. My husband comes from a quite dysfunctional family; his mother was mentally ill (untreated) and his father enabled that and focused all his emotional resources on her to the detriment of the children (especially S., because his mom got even worse after he was born). Not much outright abuse, but LOTS of neglect.
His absolute number one hot button since early in our marriage has been "not being heard". Which I am assuming is closely related to your "not being seen". We had lots of problems because he at times equated me disagreeing with him or refusing to validate his point of view with me "not hearing" him. I have no doubts that there were faults on both sides there ... I didn't understand the depth and complexity of his FOO stuff (and neither did he) .... I was trying to defend my own emotional and/or intellectual ground and I'm sure I was less than tactful on many occasions, in addition to being overly rigid about the "right" point of view. I also have been historically unwilling to render an apology when I didn't think I was wrong; it felt false. We've worked through the vast majority of this over the years. I've learned to acknowlege his POV in a more respectful way; he's learned that I am not dismissing or invalidating him as a person when I disagree or don't want to discuss a matter every time he does. Just recently, he realized that we had been having a lot of arguments where what he *really* wanted was recognition of an emotion of his (hurt, angry, etc) but he didn't approach it that way; he'd just keep pounding away at the logic of the situation and when my logic didn't work the same way, he felt like I was invalidating his *feelings* and would just get angrier. I was clueless about this too. He finally figured out the dynamic on his own, and now when he wants to express that he's angry or whatever, he just says, "I'm angry/hurt/irritated because of thus-and-so" and I can acknowlege and deal with that without having it devolve into a logic/worldview war.
ANYWAY that was sort of a tangent, but what I wanted to acknowlege was that this (not being seen/heard) does seem to cut *really* deep, almost primal. And also .... it's POSSIBLE that your wife really has no idea that the way she interacts with you is triggering these emotions of feeling unseen.
Of course, you know her best, but consider the possibility.
Perhaps you can find a way to express this to her in a way she can wrap her head around (I know it took me awhile) ... and then perhaps you can work together to figure out ways to communicate/interact that will disarm your gut reaction.
Hang in there ....
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
