Hi Coly! Thanks for the visit to my thread and the kind comments. I do love puttering around and building things. Haven't done much with boats lately but I am almost done building a Christmas tree stand out of some scrap lumber and bits and bobs. This year I get a "real tree".
The reason I had suggested you read back in your thread is that there have been a few recent things combined with what you've said over time that seem to gel for me into a picture. I may well be completely wrong though and you are closer to this than I am by a long shot.
From what you've described as your upbringing, your "family of origin" is close, perhaps a bit noisy and very supportive. The sort of family where you can pop around for a cuppa and chat pretty much any time and where you and your sisters know the names and birthdays of everyone.
On your H's side, they seem a lot more distant from each other. Content to lead independent lives and not leaning on others much, being fairly complete in themselves as individuals.
I believe that when two people fall in love that one of the things that they do conciously or unconciously is to "mirror" the person that they love. This mirroring can become part of their identity and you end up with blended family traditions and lifestyles. From the outside - and again I may be way off here - I wonder if your H tried for a long time to mirror the closeness that you showed him, until he couldn't any more. It almost seems like he's reverted to his own original family's mode of relationship where he leads an independent life only interacting with you and your D occasionally and he's fine with that. Because he thinks that's "normal". You don't and I believe that. Most people in our Western cultures don't either I would think.
This might explain why when you try to pull him back into the noisy, happy "normal" of your life that he pulls away.
What you are seeing may not be any sort of "mid-life crisis". It may just be him being the him that he naturally is. I don't know if you are still seeing an IC but this might be a topic to discuss with them. I'm certainly not an expert. It was because this is just my perspective that I was vague in my previous post. I didn't want to colour your thinking with my opinions.
I certainly don't know what advice to give to you beyond what I usually say of being proud of who you are and being true to yourself. And a hug ((Coly23))
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
