you need time alone OP.
im not a devoted Christian, nor even a practicing one but recently I’ve been looking at Christian retreat places to go somewhere alone locally that can offer me some respite from the every day stress of family life. Somewhere peaceful, calm, a garden where I am not needed by anyone. There can be no doubt that being “on” all the time in the presence of someone else’s energy is just too much, even family, especially when you have reached burnout stage.
I even found a place where you can go from 10am-4pm for £25 and have a room. Try ChatGPT. You can also book a room overnight. No praying required! Just peace and food.
but honestly OP, you are heading towards burnout from the description of your life. It’s unsustainable and chronic stress is so damaging for your health.
At the moment you’re adapting around your husband and even his friend. His friends needs are currently being put above yours. How have you reached a place where your needs are so low on the priority index of your family life that you’re being signed off work but you can’t ask him to leave?
To an outsider this sounds very negligent of your husband to have deprioritised your needs so badly. You’re getting signed off work. But you can’t even relax in your own home. This is ridiculous. Nobody is looking after you. Nobody is considering your needs. And you’re being taught by the current environment to subjugate your needs to everyone else’s.
Even when someone is long-term unwell like your husband, it doesn’t mean that you are unaffected or that you need to fill the vacuum which just adds so much stress to your life that it becomes untenable. How is that a partnership? Other support structures need to be created or this is not going to work out.
Going out and spending long periods out is not the same as being able to recuperate and process and have downtime in your own home. There is no substitute for this other than going on holiday to somewhere where all your needs are met and everything is done for you. You need a complete break.
From what I have seen many men will put themselves first every time and you need to lay down very hard boundaries to make sure that your needs to get met or else you will just be swallowed up in their selfishness.
I think you need to sit your husband and his friend down and have a Frank conversation that your mental health and physical health is in decline and you desperately need space and time to recover.
Ask the friend to leave within 24 hours or less due to the emergency nature of what is going on. It doesn’t matter if your husband doesn’t understand. His lack of understanding has led to your crisis that you are currently in. The friend can come another time. If he’s a good friend he’ll understand. And at this point it really doesn’t matter.
It’s extremely hard to go from being passive to assertive, but if you don’t, I worry what the long-term consequences and even short-term consequence will be for you.
If you stay at home, create a fixed time boundary where you say to your husband I am going to this part of the house, be that your bedroom, the lounge or some part of the house where you say I don’t want to be disturbed unless it’s an absolute emergency for the next four hours. Can you do this religiously every day? You need to make physical breathing space for yourself that involves no one else in my humble opinion. You need space to just exist, be yourself and stop carrying everything for everyone else.
personally though I’d just want to get away from someone whose energy is so unatuned to my needs. He sounds awful OP. You can leave you know. You don’t have to stay with someone who won’t ever understand. I found it was a waste of my time. I could have explained until all the oxygen was used on this planet but the truth of it was he didn’t want to understand nor ever would because his needs were met and he was happy with life as it was so I sacrificed myself and had a breakdown. Don’t be me. I’m finally free now and life is so much better 🥰