Oh gawd, I've been found, lol! The first thing that came to my mind after reading your comment - please keep in mind it was just a mental association, as I don't think of myself being on par with literary giants and the like - was a thing a literary critic once said about Samuel Beckett's play 'Waiting for Godot'. Which was that - allow me to insert a quote here - with this play, Beckett 'has achieved a theoretical impossibility – a play in which nothing happens'. And the literary critic went on to say that because the second act is almost the same as the first with subtle differences, actually Beckett managed to write a play in which nothing happens TWICE!
So, I am quite stoked to receive such a comment. I believe I said it in the past, while replying to comments on different stories, that my characters tend to get a life of their own. I don't find myself capable of 'forcing' them into a turn of plot or choices that don't fit them. In other words, I strive for a certain level of inner realism in how they evolve, interact, change, and reach their eventual happy end.
I get the frustration, I truly do. I gave up on reading a novel written by one of my favorite authors in the whole world, because of the same reason you mention - the not going anywhere part. And when I read someone else's review, which stated how the story is about the main character's family - which we get to know like they're our relatives, that deeply and completely they are portrayed, I realized - like you - that I was thinking I was reading a different story (in this case, I thought I was reading a murder mystery, and I was reading a family saga instead - imagine my shock to read from other reviews that the murder actually never gets solved).
That said, I'm glad to discover a reader who went so deep in analyzing my writing. Another favorite author of mine once said that once we write something - we, writers/authors - and make it public, it stops being ours completely. It begins belonging to the readers, too. I thought it was well said.
Thank you for this in-depth analysis. And if the frustration becomes too strong, remember that the story will have about 55 chapters. You can always come back and read it when it's finished, no hard feelings, I promise.