I am sorry you are struggling.

Personally I believe and thats pretty much my mantra that you cannot change other people. Well yeah like compromise here and there but nothing major. So you either leave or you exercise radical acceptance and don’t agonize over it.

It also helps to have clear deal breakers.

My husband leaves crumbs on a couch, he tries not to but he is clumsy. We watched very intense show last night and were eating cookies and weren’t really paying attention to how we were eating, well my side of the couch is still clean and his is full of crumbs. Annoying? Sure. But not a deal breaker. No biggie. We laugh about it.

But if my husband lit a joint or got wasted or raised his voice at me, id leave him because those are deal breakers among few others. If it’s not deal breaker, then no reason to agonize over it.

It also helps me to put things into perspective. I once was agonizing about some boyfriend and my no nonsense grandma had news on tv, she yelled at me to look at starving people in Somalia, it was really bad and she asked if that’s my life. Of course it wasn’t. I can’t say that putting things in perspective always work, but it could help in some circumstances.

But of course it could be that agonizing over same issue over and over could be due to legitimate diagnosis. OCD? My husband has pretty bad Tourettes accompanied by severe OCD. Not a bogus diagnosis. He was diagnosed at age 20 and rediagnosed several times since. He has to be on meds to function but it’s a low dose. He is afraid that higher dose would make it hard for him to maintain challenging career. So he lives with it. But there are times when he must have whatever is that he needs (typically stuff related to safety), otherwise his Tourettes is through the roof and he feels too unsafe to even leave the house. Then it goes back to normal

If you just cannot let go on that issue you have with your husband, maybe you have OCD?

As about contributing to society during pandemics without leaving the house, well you can take classes online and then use them for something when pandemics are over. There are ton of free classes now too. Not for a degree but you can learn stuff. Check edX website, Harvard offers free classes etc

You can get a job but unless it’s online, it wouldn’t be safe. But some places hire online. My daughter just got a new job simply because it pays better than her previous one and she never had to go to the office at all and won’t go until pandemics are out. They mailed her laptop to her.

Or you can just contribute to society by helping your kids to be successful, which you do anyways. You gave the world three successful kids so you contributed plenty!

Sometimes we just got to live our lives and not worry about contributing.