A while back, I posted this.
tl;dr: It actually turned out to be kind of moot because his employer is now trying to enforce RTO once a week. So we're back in VA. But that didn't happen until several months later, by which point we'd already hashed it out.
Both of us were feeling unheard and, TBH I wasn't in the best place mentally because of stress related to an ongoing project at my job that took up almost all of last year. There were also some issues with my access to ADHD medication and the dose needed to be increased. I was drinking 6-8 cans of sugar-free Red Bull a day to self-medicate, which worsened an already vicious cycle.
I think what finally got him to understand where I was coming from was when I lost my insurance due to my COBRA eligibility expiring last November. I'd seen it coming for months, and had been looking for a job since May. The insurance I would've been offered through my job at the time had a very high deductible, was expensive, and covered less. Even the best individual options on the exchange in KY are barely better than nothing, let alone compared to the insurance I had.
The cratering of the job market in big tech added to an already difficult challenge. After all, the thinking goes, if there's available talent in more "desirable" locations, why bother taking a chance on someone in the boonies? I wanted to stay in big tech not just for the paycheck, but mostly because my skills are pretty niche and I didn't want to have to learn things in which I had no interest just to get a job at a company that pays 50-60% less and thinks that they're doing me a favor by "allowing" me to work from home twice a week.
I got an offer in November, but with a January start date, so there was still a gap in coverage. My savings were able to pay for everything out of pocket, including the $400 generic version of one of my meds. But it obviously caused a lot of stress. Seeing my efforts to avoid that and still having to stress out over something that he said would "turn out fine" clued him in a little bit and got him to realize that maybe I wasn't catastrophizing.
This job pays a little less, but is much less stressful and is a good opportunity to work in an area in which I have little experience. It's at a nonprofit, so my skills are being used for good, which is nice.
With regard to our dynamic, I needed to own my reluctance to engage with anyone outside the house. I started volunteering at the local animal shelter, which helped a lot more than I ever thought it would. Both of us started small group workout classes at a small gym, so that also nudged me a bit more out of my shell. By the time he got the word about RTO, I'd become a bit attached to where we were (plus, I'd taken that job thinking that we were in KY for the long haul), so I was sad to leave.
He did try to find something else, and ran into a problem similar to what I'd encountered: low salaries for his level and type of experience and limited upward career prospects. I didn't and would never wish that on him, but I think he better understands that I wasn't being picky or acting in bad faith when deciding where to apply and where to interview.
