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mckell13 said:
On the car ride home I couldn’t help but feel—I want THAT! How do I get it? . . .I said I would miss him if he wasn’t there and that I didn’t think leaving him would make me any happier.

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Why would you miss your husband? What do you "get" from keeping things cozy and the same? Has your husband changed? Was he "interesting" or willing to do things when you first dated/married him that he no longer does?

My husband and I are very companionable. He's sitting out on the porch, less than 10 feet from me at his laptop and me here at mine; we even send e-mails to each other :-) One cat is on my side of the screen door to the porch and the other is free to wander outside through the propped open porch door. We close the screen so the flies don't get into the house but then after we let the cats into the house and close the porch door we then open the screen without first checking for flies so they just fly into the house anyway if there are any! The cats meanwhile drive us batty whining to be on whichever side of the screen door they aren't :-)

But my husband and I are "connected" even at 8-10 feet. If he goes to get his second cup of coffee he'll stop at my chair and get my cup and get me mine too or vice versa. If I read something on the computer I don't understand, we're close enough so. . . oops, here he comes for my coffee cup :-) . . .we're close enough so I can just call out to him and ask questions or make comments. He's "outside" the house (screened porch) so I can ask about the weather or see whether he's wearing his sweater or not.

It's the very small things I think that make our relationship. We are comfortable with ourselves and each other. I just gave my car to our son/daughter-in-law because we're retired and go everywhere together so why do we need two cars? We go to each others family gatherings and are kind of like you and your brother doing so. I'm not close to my stepfamily but we do Christmas dinner at my stepsister's house with 12 of my stepgrandnieces and nephews and their parents, friends, etc. It's just tradition. I know what you mean about the people going through the motions. That and they have "other" lives from mine now for 364 days of the year so I don't feel much connection to them anymore. It feels odd when my two grown stepnieces talk about when they were little and I'd take them someplace. It's the continuity of a relationship that makes it good?

I think you can try to rekindle a relationship with your husband if you want; I don't mean necessarily sexual or anything, just "companionable" if you're going to stay with him? Think of a few "rituals" to start, for yourself at first, but that he wouldn't mind. I always try to bring a "surprise" home to my husband when I'm in a store alone; grocery store, drug store, etc. even if he's just in the car waiting for me to make a quick run in! I see something that reminds me of him or that I know he likes (Circus Peanuts, ugh, I can't stand them :-) and get it. Yesterday a business partner was coming for the day and we didn't have enough food so I ran up to the grocery store but I didn't just get the routine stuff, I got filled donuts (that the two guys devoured :-) and looked forward to Sunday when we're going camping with one son and the two grandbabies; I needed potato chips for the two men but got a huge variety bag which I'll take on the campout too. But my thinking outside the day-to-day stuff helps me probably even more than it helps my husband/our relationship! I enjoy looking for new/interesting things to show others so I bring it into my relationship with my husband and I doubt he minds either, getting presents? :-) When we worked, if I was looking at cards for an occasion for someone else, sometimes I'd find a "love" card that suited my husband and me and would mail it to his work address. LOL. My stepmother once brought home fortune cookies when we ate at a Chinese restaurant and replaced the fortunes with sayings of her own like, "Help, I'm being held captive in a fortune cookie factory!" :-) and put them in my brother's and my lunches the next day for school.

But other people respond to us and what we do in relation to them. Think how you respond to your T (and she to you). You can perhaps get what you want with your husband (since you had "something" to begin with at some time?). It will take time and work but everything good does? Some people like your cousin and my husband and I have something at the beginning and keep it going. But some of that is "luck" in terms of personality. I think anything you want you should go after. That is what life is for, pursuing the things that help you, make you more you and give you satisfaction.