I'm so sorry to hear that it's been like that in the marriage and that is a red flag too to me. It makes me think he was not helping bring the best out of you but instead drained you and THAT'S the red flag to me. I thought it was just this bad with the lockdown. But your goal sounds very empowering!

Reading it all together it also makes me feel like your wanting to move to the other state is like you want to start a new life in a new environment because you are trying to find that empowerment? And that is what I mean by how big disagreements in marriage are pointers to deeper needs (this is what I read).



I have read (and tried it a bit myself) that to deal with guys in a relationship when they are like "no" or disinterested and won't do anything, if we leave emotions out of it when bringing up the issue it helps. I don't know if it always works, I saw it sometimes work in a relationship before...

(And I'm not talking about those deep disagreements on major things like your moving to a new state. I'm talking about more "superficial" practical issues like the one you mentioned here about the clutter)

It was overwhelming and terrible to me too and when sometimes I somehow got through to them in the way I described, it was really cool and felt like OH finally this is working with him?!, but it was also like it needed all my emotional control to keep the emotions out of it (because maybe it was trigger stuff for me....pretty sure it was, actually) so I don't know if that on its own is the solution because it was still pretty hard to do. I don't know really. I hope you will find the way to do what you want.