How do you get past wanting what you can't have or can't be?

I’m going to try very hard to be concise and not whiny. We’ll see how that goes.

I am married to a man who does not give compliments. Ever. He’ll do it for employees at work because he has to tell them they have done something well. Or when he’s in a social situation where he feels obligated. (“That chicken was good,” or things like that.) I’ve talked to his mom about it and she said his dad is the same way and that she just learned to live with it. I asked her how and she said it just sort of happened over time. Yay. Big help.

I tried to talk to him about it way in the past, but have always backed down in the discussion because I feel like I’m being a whiner. He will say nice things about some things that I cook, but that’s it. And he does thank me when I do stuff for him, so I don’t think that he takes me for granted. In ten years, he has told me one time that I looked nice. That was at his brother’s wedding (and I was wearing make-up six inches thick) and his comment was, “You look nice.” That’s it. Ever. Unless I’m supposed to count the two times that he has said that an outfit looked nice. Not that it looked nice on me, just that it looked nice.

I’ve lost 70 pounds, and while I’ve got at least 30 more to go, he has never said one word about what I’ve done. Although I have a theory about that, so I’m not quite as ticked about that one. I just spent an unholy amount of money on make-up at the Bobbi Brown counter, learned how to use it, and nothing from him. I’ve achieved a 3.9 GPA and am close to graduating – nothing. Not one word.

So here’s the question: How do I get over needing to hear him say something nice about me? I don’t know if it’s fair to try to have the conversation with him again. (Although it has been a long time.) I do know that it’s unfair to ask him to change this when I’ve known that this is something he doesn’t do. I didn’t marry him to try to change him. I need to change me and my expectations. I know why, now I need to know how. I am never going to be thin enough, pretty enough or smart enough for him to find it in himself to say anything nice, so how do I get past this?

For the record: Yes, I have a therapist who is trying to help me work on my self-esteem. Yes, I know that this is my issue and not his. He is who he is. What I need here are strategies of how to do this that don’t involve self-affirmation exercises. My apologies if this sounds like whining. I’m really just trying to figure out how to quite being upset about it.