#1- This is irrelevant to the question of methods to ensure you are being heard. That being said...
#2- Couples need to be able to voice their expectations/needs. Otherwise they are being judged against a yardstick they don't know exists. If he expects crazy-monkey sex twice a day, and I'm giving him regular sex 5 times a week and blowjobs in between, I'm gonna think assume I'm getting an A+ while he's thinking D-. If I know his expectation is twice a day, I can either choose to buckle up, offer the compromise of daily monkey sex, or pull the rip cord. This is not about transferring ownership of/responsibility for another's emotions... this is about communication.
#3- If a boundary is established and agreed to within a relationship, it 100% IS your partner's responsibility to address it. Period. Those are the rules you agreed to mutually play by as a couple. This is part of why we had the dust-up... I thought the boundary was established but it was a grey area to him. So while no one died to make me king, I AM the queen in my relationship (just as my partner is the king) and if either one of us doesn't agree to stay within the boundaries of the kingdom, someone's gonna get banished.
And as far as some of your other comments like "demanding and brittle whiner who wants to blame Him for things he did for perfectly innocent reasons" and my being unreasonable, controlling, and trying to train him to satisfaction... you can stop projecting that

on me. I'm one of the most easy going and flexible girlfriends to have. I have a few unapologetically inflexible boundaries (monogamy, honesty, no addictions, financially responsible) and few stated needs (follow through on commitments, ok with dogs, willing to be an equal partner), but a whole boatload of wants (funny, sexually compatible, etc.). I hardly think THAT constitutes being a brittle whiner/unreasonable. I don't know who did this manipulative stuff to you, Mr. Judgy McJudgerson, but it sure wasn't me.
Thanks to the others that offered suggestions.


Not projecting anything on you.
It wasn't a characterization of anything you said.
It was a characterization of the way Some people are going to respond to anyone making demands that they be or react differently than they do- Few people take critique or correction well.
I'm all for communication. But that was not the actual tenor of the question. It was how can I ensure I am heard? That is phrased self centeredly.
Heard about what? The only time I hear that kind of phrasing, the thing they want to be heard about it a complaint about their "mate".
For example- not long ago a woman I was dating broke up with me via text. She wrote that she apologized for doing it via text, but that she did not want to speak to me over the phone for fear I would talk her out of breaking it off.
I responded via text that I did not know what I had done to cause her injury... but that I would never have done anything with that intention... that I respected her wishes and that I would always remember her as a pure delight to be with. And I wished her the best of luck in finding a guy more to her liking.
She called me anyway... and tried to explain.
She said she wanted to break up with me because I had never taken her out on a Saturday.
That made zero sense to me.
I mentioned I had taken her out on a Sunday, a Tuesday, Wednesday, two Thursdays and two Fridays...
She said, yes, but everyone knows that Saturday is "date night" and that's when all the other couples are out, and she felt that my not taking her out on Saturday meant that either I was ashamed to be seen with her... or I was taking some other woman who meant more to me out on Saturdays.
I pointed out that, for one, I am self employed and that one of the perqs of being self employed is that you don't Have to go out when everyone else is out and you can't even get a table...
and I pointed out that just the previous week I
Had asked her out on a Saturday- but she had declined because she was busy that night.
Now- she hadn't talked to me about any of this... she just broke up with me.
After speaking to me on the phone, she "heard me" and decided that maybe she didn't want to break up after all.
But I had also "heard her"- she had made a lot of assumptions about me that painted me in a bad light in her own mind...
One- that I was the kind of guy who dated more than one woman at a time, even though I had told her that I was only seeing her. Two, that I would have in any way been embarrassed or ashamed to bee seen with her- she was drop dead gorgeous with a smile that was electrifying.
And Three- that she was afraid to break up with me over the phone for fear I would talk her out of it.
And here I had spoken to her on the phone and she had changed her mind.
That right there ruined our chances, because going forward I would feel I had talked her out of breaking up with me against her sincere desire to do so- which I could only assume
Had to be about something
deeper than that we had not yet gone out on a Saturday... I don't want to be the guy in her life that she's with because I
talked her into staying.
OR- she was the kind of woman who would literally be that injured by something so absolutely trivial that she could end what was a promising relationship over it.
the point being that communication is a 2 edged sword.
And just because you talk things out and "hear" one another does not mean that either of you even remotely understand the motivations of one another's actions.
Do we have any right to demand that our mates be different than they are?
Or should we decide to have faith in their good intentions and try and change the way we ourselves react?
With this lovely woman, I can not bring myself to believe that she ever intended to hurt me.
And I know I never did anything with the intention to hurt her.
And yet both of us were hurt... and the explanations we shared that exonerated us both did nothing to make things better.
it was out there in the open that she was distrustful of me.
And that I felt no confidence that I had not talked her out of breaking up with me.
Before that moment- the heat and spark between us was intense. After it... there was a curtain.
I think far more important than telling your mate what they do that is wrong and what you need from them, is for each of us to look at our own reactions and demands and try to figure out whether our own petty issues are anyone's responsibility but ours.
Just because a guy leaves the toilet seat up is no reason to assume he did so in disregard of your feelings.
And when he leaves it down, chances are, it was NOT because he's thinking of your feelings... chances are its because he's trained himself to do it without thinking at all.
All we ever know of our mate is a fiction.
A model we invented to explain their actions to ourselves. But we are blind to the fact that other people do not always do a thing for the same reasons We do.
If they do something that
we would only do in spite- then we decide they can be spiteful...
And so we Changed the fiction of belief we have about our mate.
We always marry a hero... and we always divorce a villain. but they were never really either... and the only thing that changed was what we ourselves chose to believe about them.
We Choose to be upset.
We choose to be hurt.
We choose to lose faith.
Sometimes those choices are valid. Most of the time they are not.
And relationship really sucks when the most consistent experience you have of it is being told how you are wrong for being the person that you are. Especially so if nothing you have ever done was meant to be hurtful.
I think we are not forgiving enough of one another.
I think expectations, though often deserved, can as often be a poison.
What I see all around me is people whose relationships fall apart- and its always because one or both imagine that they Can find someone who would be perfect.
And Perfect is the absolute enemy of the good.