[Treasur]

I find myself agreeing with Zartheit that you might be standing a bit closer than you intend to do in your observation, although we all get how difficult it is to do in a situation like this. Essentially, from over here in the very cheap seats, it sounds as if your h is basically ‘camping out’ at your house, physically present but not much more. Probably not even as engaged as a friendly visitor let alone a partner in your family and domestic life? And as we LBS know all too well, there’s a tendency in that kind of situation to look for signs and confirmations, to assume we know things we can’t, to fill in the gaps. Partly bc living like this is hard, partly bc our nervous system sees it a bit like living around an unexploded bomb or dangerous dog imho. Even if our brains don’t want to think that way, the lizard bits of our brains FEEL that way. With all the effects that come with it.

That was a pretty long list of symptoms and speculation about where your h might be at. I’d suggest gently that you might find it more useful to replace him as a symptom focus and turn your eye to you. What are YOUR symptoms right now? Where do you feel you are at? You mused on whether cortisol and prolonged stress might account for some of your exhaustion…again jmo, but yes that’s possible. You might find it really helpful to read up about that - Bessel van der Kolk is good on this stuff, but there are others who explain more about how our autonomic nervous system works under significant prolonged stress. You might find it helpful to reflect on what kind of exhausted you are, what makes you feel 5% better or 5% worse. To look at your current basics around sleep, food and exercise. To experiment with things like yoga or mediation or walking if you don’t already do these things. To keep a simple journal to help you observe your progress and challenges. To set a goal, maybe just a single simple word that represents how you’d LIKE to feel, what ‘not exhausted’ means to you and how you know where you are from day to day. In short, to throw away the paragraph about your marital ‘camper’ and replace it with one about you 😜

A bit of you may be feeling that if you don’t observe him, how will you know what is going on and if he is reconnecting or not. Again, humbly, I’d suggest two things….that if he is reconnecting, you can trust yourself to feel that bc it will be consistent and obvious and different. It really is ok to trust yourself, to trust your gut instinct about when a quacking thing is a duck or not. You’re smart and you’ve been at this for a while now….you can trust you. Even though it’s true that most LBS lose that confidence for a little while…but it’s ok to reclaim it.

And that, unless you have him locked in a shed for 24 hours a day, your observations of him drinking or his mindset or activities or ow are all based on limited data and outwith your control pretty much anyway, so it’s a bit of a cheese less tunnel. So, not very useful to you imho. He will do or not do, choose or not choose x or y based on how he currently sees himself and the world, based on what currently works best for him or not. He will change - or not - based on much the same, so leave him to figure it out. You get to decide what is acceptable in your home and in your life, that’s what boundaries are for, but you don’t get to control everything else or what others think or feel or do. Even if that’s a bit frustrating. 😝