<human>: Give me the gist of the text in a nutshell

My boyfriend and I have very similar interests and personality, we are the "we can finish each other's sentence" kind of couple. But when we have fights, for some reason it's just so difficult for us to communicate properly.

We both complain about things, though more often than not it's me who has a problem with his attitude/lack of care for something. And he usually instantly gets VERY defensive. Either that or become passive aggressive. i.e.:"Okay, I'm sorry for that then. What do you want me to do? I can't do everything you know? Wouldn't have been a problem if you just do something else." It really aggravates me when after I calmly explains what's bothering me, he seemingly apologizes only to turn it around against me. And that's usually when I lose my cool and start raising my voice, and then he tells me to calm down, and it all goes downhill from there. 

So help me, what can I do to help? I know I should stay calm and all, but in the moment it can be very hard, especially when I'm already agitated and he just doesn't seem to show any understanding and think I'm the one at fault for complaining so much. How can I not lose my cool, and how do I ask him to do the same? 

We have had the conversation multiple times, and we acknowledge that we both have things to work on. But that's also a problem, since we had this conversation for like 10+ times, but every time we fight it just doesn't seem to improve. We've found a temporary solution, where when things start to heat up we stop talking to each other for a while and try to cool down. But this bothers him a lot, because he doesn't like it when things aren't solved immediately. So I'm looking for an alternative solution that'll work for both of us.

Thanks in advance!
<bot>: Boyfriend and I can't communicate properly during fights. He becomes defensive/passive aggressive, which agitates me, then we find ourselves yelling to each other.