Their relationship was on the outs at the beginning of s3. Frank wasn't broken by power but just had some momentary weird frustration that isn't that explainable. Claire didn't get broken by power; instead she felt like she didn't have power. We weren't shown the struggle so much as we were told to assume it.
It would have been really cool if the writers had written a story about how power breaks you. I'm not convinced this story is that. Granted the writers didn't create any coherent theme, so that makes it a little more open to interpretation, I guess.
I put an 8/10 rating in the original post of this thread b/c I didn't want to spoil it for anyone. That said, I didn't like Season 3. Perhaps it can be saved by a great S4, but the main problem I had was Frank & Claire's transformations into different characters altogether. That was completely unexpected and boring as hell to watch imo. It's wasn't like the gradual "Breaking Bad" character transformation of Walter White that was leading to an expected conclusion... the HoC transformations of the main characters was off-kilter and bad TV from this viewer's perspective... about as difficult to watch as the Underwood/Meechum steam in S2, which was interesting and already in-character (S1 library episode).
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