Quote: My pain, frustration & anger has, I am sure, caused me to be short with him, show more frustration & so on. I don't want to be this way. So, how do you change that? Why does my happiness seem to come from his approval/wanting/needing me?
This is precisely the kind of thing that alanon helps with. If it's a priority, you'll make time. What if your H said, "yeah, I need to do this or that to improve our SL, but I don't have time" I used to go to the meetings a little late so I didn't have to introduce myself, and leave before they said the Lord's Prayer... so it only turned out to be about 45 minutes I was there. I never said one word out loud, but I got something out of every single meeting.
The idea isn't to GAL (get a life) to show him that you can get along without him. The idea is to focus on YOUR WORK so that he can identify and do HIS WORK.
Think of this... if you focus on him all the time, what pleases him, how to get him to notice you, how to get what you want from him, how to fix him, who is there for you? The answer: no one. When we focus too much on the other person, we abandon ourselves.
And besides, it's like teaching a pig to dance-- it doesn't work, and it annoys the pig.
