I don't think you can "draw a line"... it's a flow thing, a case-by-case thing.
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Personally I don't think compliments are compliments if they are fished for.
I think this is too categorical a statement. Yeah, as I said, spontaneous compliments are nice, but it's unrealistic to think that your partner will always know/notice when a compliment is particularly important to you.
I'm just saying that if you're wearing something special, or cooked something special, or performed at work/choir/sports particularly well, and for some reason, it didn't show up on your spouse's radar, there's nothing wrong with asking.
What if he went out fishing and caught the biggest fish of his life and you don't care about fishing... and he had to prompt you that this was something important... would it mean less if you said, "Now that I know how important this is to you, of course! Congratulations on the biggest [name fish] you ever caught!" (This is exactly the situation between me and my late H, who caught the biggest redfish of his life about four months before he died. I have the picture of him and the fish framed on the living room wall.)
Or are you only talking about compliments on appearance?
