All your GAL sounds really positive, Dilly. It also sounds good that there's going to be some built in space between you and H for a while.
That conversation to do with the medical sounded hard. You must be really worried about him, and it sounds like you have good reason to be. But it also sounds like you were bossing or infantilising a bit. He will be aware of all this just as you are - he might be in denial, but he's not daft. And he will either drink and work himself to death or he won't. He'll go for his medical or he won't. You making suggestions and trying to manage him into doing it and even shaming him a bit my mentioning the smear test stuff (and I agree with you!) probably won't help - especially if he has issues with his actual mother and will probably push him further away.
I had a similar situation the other day. H was talking to me about a conversation he'd had with someone at work. His boss had told him off - mildly - for being 'shirty' with her. He described what had happened and it sounded exactly like one of our interactions - she was trying to ask him for something, he felt overwhelmed and rather than explaining what was happening or saying no or asking for a compromise, he went on the attack and started criticising her about something else. It's sheer stress on his side and I think his workplace is pretty forgiving of people acting in that sort of way because of stress, but his lack of insight into what was happening was shocking to me. He was furious about it, then had gone back to her in the afternoon and gave a kind of non-apology, 'if you think I was being shirty, then I'm sorry, but...' and it took every molecule of strength in my body to say nothing while he was telling me about it. Perhaps my H needs to hear how his attitude affects people from someone other than his wife. Maybe he won't examine his critical and defensive attitude until he gets some more consequences for it. Perhaps your H needs to hear how he is harming himself from someone other than you. Maybe losing his wife and his children won't be enough - maybe he will actually have to have a heart attack before he looks at himself. Perhaps the best thing for the two of us to do is say nothing a bit more. It doesn't come naturally to me.
