Meanwhile, there seems to be a prevalent assumption here that I'm simply still doing something wrong. I don't know how to convince anyone on that, and ironically I'm not even sure if my wife could either, no matter how close to the truth it might be.
Maybe it's because if you were doing everything right, you'd be getting better results?
DBing is all about "Do what works," at its core. So the corollary to that would be "If it's NOT working, do something different" . . . no?