I know that. But if I ask and he says that he is happy, and if I look really closely at how he seems and I never see any signs of him being unhappy (he has been sad at times of course, when there have been deaths in the family and so on).... I have to believe that. Most of all I have to believe what he tells me.

And I'm sorry, but you are saying "what if he wants things to be different too" - I tried to say that I don't want things to be different, because different could only be worse. I have no version of different that includes things being better.