I'm impressed with how many examples of trying something different you tried, and how well you noticed the responses... I especially liked how you noticed how he become "surly and suspicious". That's a great expample of them testing whether this change is for real, or just a ploy. It shows to me that you've hit upon something they really would like to see different, but they don't trust that they aren't being conned, so you have to press ahead and show them it's a for-real change.
How do you keep it up? Well, you already answered that. You discovered that after pretending to be..... you discovered you had become..... So, the thing is do a little bit less pretending, and a little bit more becoming. I mean that. Just a little. Then a little more. We have to learn to USE baby steps ourselves, for ourselves, as much or more than we have to recognize them in our spouse.
After all, we are not doing all this improvement for them, but for us. Heck, they have already proven to be unreliable, ready to run at the drop of a hat. Why waste all this improvement on just them, Right???
