Chuck, I agree with you! It really does come down to developing mutual trust and having both parties meet each other half way. All too often, I read articles from developers demanding that designers do all the heavy lifting to make their lives easier, and too seldom, that developers help designers.

I actually wrote a piece about that a while ago. https://uxdesign.cc/learning-design-can-make-developers-more-valuable-and-better-teammates-6201ef1091f

In case you might think I'm one-sided, I also wrote a piece about how designers need to make friends with browser dev tools https://uxdesign.cc/want-to-kick-ass-as-a-ui-designer-make-friends-with-your-browsers-dev-tools-65cf54391dd9