Letting my guard down: I don't know really. Especially as R talks are kind of out of the equation! I need to discuss this with my IC.
My fears: being abandoned (though that has always happened). Fear of him actually deciding he wants to leave for good. Fear of being in a friendship sort of marriage without intimacy (either emotional or sexual).
Specific changes: spending more time together, going on holiday together, having sex. Those would be good for starters, and wouldn't even require him moving back in. Maybe at some stage I need to say 'I would really like it if we could meet up more often and have you stay over once a week, but I still want to respect your need for space. How can we compromise on seeing each other more but still let you cope with work?'
And yes the retirement thing is very strange. He doesn't discuss the future at all except for a cycling weekend he's doing in May with colleagues and my long weekend I'm doing with friends in October, yet he talks about not being at work in a few years time. Maybe he figures that if we get divorced then he'll have to work at least another extra 5 years but he would be so lonely that he'd need to work anyway. I don't know, it's very odd. You might be right he's not afraid of losing me, but I don't want to trigger his fear of abandonment right now because it could result in him making a hasty decision to push me away forever. But he's also quite a decisive person who hates not planning for the future, so this limbo must be really hard for him!
