There is a glimpse of my real H... doing things for me without being asked
OK, now we have something else sussed out that you can add to your relationship tool belt. If you've read the "Five Love languages" by Gary Chapman, you'd recognize what your H is doing as categorized as "Acts of Service". By doing things for someone, this is perhaps how your H shows love. This is how he understands love. And if someone does the same for him, that is. do little acts of service for him, he takes that as being loving toward him, even if the giver doesn't feel that way about what they're doing. Get it?
So, this doesn't mean start planning three things a week you're going to do for him, but it does mean that in addition to everything else you know you have to do, keep an eye for those sometime opportunities where you can do something for him without it seeming forced or pursuing, and you very might well be putting additional love units into his love bank.
In the past when H has opted not to go with me somewhere or do something that I want him to do, I would get pouty and act like a child. This time, I opened the invitation, he declined and I shrugged it off as no problem.
Ah, doesn't that feel better too, grasshopper?
I am learning that progress happens at different rates of speed at different times.
That's so true. There's "slow" and "slower". Then there's "old man driving a car", followed by "snail crawl" and finally there's the speed most of us find in our sitches: "glaciers move faster than this".
