I'm glad you're taking care of yourself Alison. Trying to work out how to be compassionate for your H and how much slack to cut him due to stressful job stuff is difficult when these impinge on you getting your needs met. It certainly was always an issue in my marriage, and I allowed far too much terrible behaviour by excusing my H all the time. He's tired, he's stressed about X or Y, he needs a holiday, etc. They might have been true but it was always something. As a good friend said 'it's always been all about him'. And my H is a terrible blamer too, which meant he was never asking for his needs to be met either, not a healthy place.
I agree that MC could be useful, there's only so much you can do by working on yourself and asking for your needs to be met. Things don't sound very positive right now
