So an issue has recently cropped up in my main/nesting relationship, and I've come to realize that it is probably going to be happening regularly, and I would like to start getting ahead of it now.

My partner went to visit his other partner (LDR, 8ish hour drive away) for a week and a half. While he's gone on what seems very much like a vacation, I'm home working (and my work is crazy) plus doing the full amount of house cleaning, pet care, etc.

He gets back, and he is sad and misses his partner, which I totally, totally, totally get and I am 100% fine with. He's also withdrawn from me, which is really hard because we haven't seen each other for nearly two weeks, I'm not dating anybody seriously right now so I haven't seen anybody and even if I WAS dating someone, between work insanity, house care, and pet care, I wouldn't have seen much of them. I am pretty wiped out and was really looking forward to some cuddling and intimacy and he is not up to more than watching an episode of a show together at night for more than half a week after he gets home.

So I give him his space, and the 2nd or 3rd day that he's home (I forget one and I wish I would have called him on this in the moment, but I didn't), he says something about feeling sad and overwhelmed and needing to take the weekend to decompress and game and just chill out and be sad. I also end up reminding him repeatedly about his half the chores, because he's been gone and is out of practice with them.

Anyways, the thing I should have called him on is that while I respect his sadness and missing his other partner, I have been doing ALL OF THE THINGS for the past week and a half while he's been not working, not doing cat care, and helping tidy and work on metamours small 1 bedroom apartment (contrasted with our 3 story, 3k sq ft house). So sure, be sad, but like, do your goddamn chores without me reminding you.

Additionally, he (as usual, this is an ongoing theme) buries his sadness in gaming, so while he's too sad to hang out with me, I'm listening to him chat/joke/talk with a bunch of people that he games with. And yes, that does feel shitty, because it feels like he mainly needs a break from ME, the person he hasn't seen in a week & a half. THEN, he does the thing where he stays up way too late gaming (3-4am) multiple nights in a row, and then starts feeling exhausted and shitty during the day from staying up too late, which means he feels even less social. Meanwhile, I am doing my half of the chores, reminding him to do his half of the chores, and come Monday, I am back to my regular nutso work hours (he is a freelancer and his work is just starting to recover from Covid).

Around yesterday (Tuesday), he started to feel more social with me again, and reached out, but I was fried with work and honestly, the part where he's home yet detached from me for like five days BUT chatting with other people (and had a date with a local partner on Monday night)? I'm not interested anymore. I'm managing myself, my negative feelings, my tiredness, my work, my half of the chores AND seeing him come home from a great trip and proceed to have more fun with pretty much everybody who isn't me. Now I feel resentful and like the thing he gets around to...eventually.

We have had a reoccurring theme in our relationship the past few years where I am either getting burned out OR he is getting depressed and one of us stops reaching out. The other eventually can't keep reaching/staying open and also stops reaching out, and then we're at this sort of unhappy détente where both parties feel like the other one should be the one to reach out.

If he is going to be visiting his other partner more often (and it sounds like he is going to start visiting between once a month and once every other month as much as possible), then I think we need to work on how things go when he gets home.

So I am curious to know if other people in a similar situation have handled it, how do things go when the traveling partner gets home? Are they sad and distant? How do you cope with that? If they don't really remember to do their half of the household chores when they get home, does that frustrate you if you're the one at home doing then and if so, how do you handle that?

Before he left for this trip, it felt like we'd FINALLY gotten on to good footing and into a good rhythm where we were connected again and both putting in the effort. That is largely disrupted now, and the main thing that I worry about is that juuuuust when we get it into a good place again, he'll go on his next trip and then come home and be distant/forgetful about his responsibilities and I'm going to get even more detached and frustrated.

I'd love to hear how others handle this!