Originally Posted by
Florence 
This is smoke and mirrors. He says he's working on it because saying he's working on it works on you. He knows that you'll gladly live on his crumbs.
NPD people are not capable of the introspection necessary to make deep personal changes in their lives. You're just his mirror -- and you're only useful to him as long as you're reflecting back nice things about him to him.
Well, the good news is that, while I am hopeful as I am an eternal optimist(very codie behavior, I know), I am finally becoming more of a realist. I know that he may never change, heck his own mother told me that he wasn't going to change because she felt that my AH was just like my father in law. She passed away a few days later unexpectedly and those words turned out to be some of her last to me.
But, I am comfortable where I am right now. I am comfortable taking this time to work on my steps with my sponsor, finding the time for meetings, doing summer school with my son, getting him to his out of state tournaments, organizing my son's summer tutoring schedule, etc. I guess I am OK with where we are at because I'm finding it easy to wait to see if AH will truly take the initiative to change his life. Because AH is on meds for his anxiety he no longer has angry aggressive outbursts and I believe his ADHD meds help him with his inattentiveness and he is now finishing more projects around the house instead of leaving them half done. Things are not perfect in our lives, I don't know if our marriage will survive, I know that we have a lot of work to do, but I also know we can't do that work until AH is in a place of healing for himself. I have a feeling that I will know it when the time comes. For now, waiting is OK, I have come to accept that it really is OK for me and for us.