I'm sorry, you're struggling dulciana: I really do think it can be tricky adjusting to a partner's sudden retirement, many people experience this. It takes time to adjust to the changes and new patterns of living.
I don't get the anxiety but I do experience the noise overload. Like Lizab's, we are a noisy, highly sociable family and I grew up in a large, loud, extremely sociable household so it's not that I don't have a lifetimes experience of it. However, after the kids left home things did become much quieter and I think you get used to it. When they are back, whilst delightful, I can find the noise exhausting. Their friends have always gravitated here: there is music in every room, loud animated conversations (to a non English speaker they'd sound like arguments), we're all confident and assertive so debates can rage long and hard! Brexit was a nightmare here as was the Trump horror story.
Like Sparkle's husband, I'm afraid I'm the one who doesn't come up for air, I talk... a lot! So it's not that I'm a quiet person but I find that if there are too many noise sources, i.e. Radio 4 in the background, music being played, political debates, youtube bursts of noise, very loud television noise, I feel a noise overload, like a brain overload, it's coming from too many directions to cope with.
If you are seeing each other more during the days could you disappear into a good book in a quiet space in the evenings? Give yourself some peace and quiet and 'you' time. Explain to hubby that you'll sit in another room as you find the tv or music distracting whilst reading? It might alleviate the wretched anxiety if you can escape and control how you spend your evenings and at what volume!! x
