Well, you answered the question I originally posed (you did not misunderstand)... do you think that your complaints bother him. You answered no. I question whether that's true because he was clearly responding to the compliments. A person doesn't respond to one without responding to the other, I don't think. When my H receives criticism, he normally shuts down. I never realized that before, I took it as ignoring me. But he obviously was drawing up inside of himself for "protection." He always responded well to compliments. Unfortunately, I think others take advantage of him as they realized that. But that's a whole other issue.
He clearly took your compliments as some sort of signal that you wanted affection. He's missed the connection part. That's a frequent issue with couples, isn't it? Some have sex in order to get the connection, some need the connection before the sex. Mostly, I think each person in the couple differs on this. They've figured out a compromise. We haven't. Sigh.
