Here is something I have learned over a lifetime of watching people closely. Happiness shows up during our seasons of growth. It is almost that predictable. Look back at the most satisfying stretches of your own life. I would bet you were busy. You were hustling toward a goal, or in the middle of a period of tremendous learning, stretching into something you had never done before.
Decline Doesn't Feel Good, and It Shows
The reverse holds just as firmly. When our skills, strength, and resources are declining, when we have stagnated or slid back into old behaviors and lost ground we had already won, we simply do not feel good. About half of my clients come to me for relationship problems, and here is a pattern I see over and over. When one partner is stagnant or regressing, contempt tends to rise in the other. It is a curious thing to witness. You stop growing, and suddenly your significant other does not seem interested in you anymore. Sometimes they even treat you with something close to resentment, and they often cannot explain why.
No Matter the Problem, Fix Yourself First
And no matter what the presenting issue is, the solution is almost always the same. Fix yourself. Got cheated on? Work on you. Partner is an addict? Work on you. Spouse has an anger problem? Work on you. The person you love keeps hurting you? You already guessed it. Work on you. To be clear, that is not about accepting abuse or excusing anyone else's behavior. It is about taking ownership of the one life you can actually control, which is yours.
If you are not growing, you are not happy. And if you are not happy, the people closest to you can feel it before you say a single word. The person they fell in love with was a person who was growing, alive, stretching, building something. You are in control of your own happiness, and that means you have to keep learning, stretching, working, and getting after it.
Growth might mean reading. It might mean physical activity, or tapping into your creativity, or deepening your spiritual practice. It might mean learning a new skill or going after a better job. Whatever form it takes for you, start growing again, and watch how much else quietly changes around you.