He was discharged and came home Friday afternoon. I spoke to one of his carers about my feelings on the matter - I was worried that little or no progress had been made, and of course coming home meant access to computer, phone, internet, and - the main issue - the girl again.

The person  spoke to assured me that:
1. He will continue to be followed, now by a mobile team that comes and visits etc etc. He will be seeing the district psych people, who are recommended, as opposed to his previous psychiatrist, who the local government had recommended AGAINST using.
2. Under clear questioning, he had admitted where his 'warm feelings' lie (with me), though he had said enjoys talking with the girl online as she gets him better than I do / is going through similar things.

In addition, he has been started on a new medicine and his old one is being slowly reduced in dose, so he comes off it. It will take roughly 2 months to reach its full working ability, so we have to wait and see. 60% chance.

Since he came home, he hasn't talked to me that much. He still sits on the computer and chats, I think, but I have been ignoring it/him while it happens, because what else can I do? Get upset? Do I have grounds for that? Do I want to get upset? What I want is to be able to trust him. At the moment, I know that he does need someone to talk to, so I let him be. I wait for him to initiate interaction when I come home, rather than interrupting his computer time. Sometimes he is exercising or playing PS3 or something else instead. Those times I try to be involved and show interest in the activity.

He helped me lots yesterday, packing things in our room. I tried not to make demands, because history shows I stress him with the way that I ask him. He was willing to pack things, sort through piles of papers and look for things to throw away, working more than I asked and continuing after I expected him to stop. That was really positive.

That about me making demands and such... During the last two weeks, I have had time and opportunities to think and talk about my way of communicating and interacting socially. It has been eye-opening, in the kind of way, where I finally accepted my shortcomings and made a conscious decision to work on improving myself.

At work, my colleagues and I worked out our personality types: the Myers Briggs concept of Extrovert vs. Introvert, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling and Judgement vs. Perception. Turns out I am extrovert, sensing, thinking and judgement - the last two very strongly so. And my husband just turns out to be everything I'm not. Boy did that help me understand our social interactions better, for example why we stress each other so much - I'm very into having things organized, and he is very into flexibility and spontaneity (which also means, leaving things to the last minute, argh!).

Having a good talk with my mother and also with my husband's good mate have also helped me to understand my way of socially interacting, and where it can be improved. I have realized that I criticize people as a reaction of feeling criticized myself and having a relatively low self-esteem. The exact same thing is true of my husband, so you can surely guess the direction things take when we are stuck in a cycle of criticism of ourselves and each other - doooooownhill and fast!

As for my listening skills, they are pretty bad. My trick of letting my mouth run a couple of seconds in front of my brain? Not good. And I am ironically in the habit of not speaking my mind. All this (ALL of it) makes it rather unwelcoming to come talk with me. I cannot say that I am like this all the time, but if I am like this some of the time, it is all too many times too many :P

Now that I am acutely aware of my areas for improvement, and of the things that drive my critical nature, the decision has been made to change. Thing is, since husband got home, I have noticed myself reacting to him in the old (bad) way, that is, criticizing and being impatient. It is only when he reacts back to my reaction that I realize I've handled myself and the situation badly. So I apologize and then try to do a better job of explaining how I feel.  In the words of the Pantene shampoo advert, "It won't happen overnight, but it will happen."

We're making progress. That's my story and I'm sticking by it.