Couldn't relate to 80% of what that couple's doing (dictating who your spouse can be friends with? Ack!), but this one part has been true of my husband:
It seems like it's never enough and your criticism is endless sometimes, and I feel no matter what I do you are going to come down on me, which really inspires me to do nothing so I can at least avoid some abuse, and....
That's pretty much what hubby said once when he was stressing at work (the project he'd spent tens of thousands of the company's money on wasn't coming together the way he wanted it to - although it did shortly thereafter :) ). I have said much the same to him as well - but in both cases, we realized it's more our impression of where the spouse is at than reality. In both cases, what we considered criticism was unspoken - we were indulging in mind reading - so either one of us saying we felt this way meant that we found out we were wrong. We were both projecting on our partner what we were actually thinking - he was feeling he'd failed and figured I was angry at him about it, when really I didn't think he'd failed at all.
Learning communication skills may not mean you talk any more than before - but it often means you quit miscommunicating. If a woman complains because her husband doesn't talk to her enough, and she actually wants him to chatter with her when he's not a chatterer, more communication skills aren't going to solve that problem.
Yep, I agree. The thing was a parody, of course. But it's not too far off the mark. I do think women in long term relationships exert more infleunce on their men, than men do on their women, on balance.
Forbidding friends? All my married friends have had their better halves 'nix' people from their lives. They did so. I don't entirely blame them.