I'm a bit curious, because I don't actually get a read from the letter on if the husband works a lot and they always have conflicting schedules, or if the husband works both unpredictably and not enough to really take up his time, so he's more primed to be bored and feel like he needs social input from the LW. In which case, maybe he needs a hobby or to spend more time with other friends. Like, how much of his need to spend that specific time with the LW is just that he's like, built up more of a store of loneliness/social recharging?

For me, this resonates with long-term partnership where I worked more, on a more consistent schedule, and with more emotional investment in my work than my partner, so my partner had a lot of time to be bored and think about things we should do together and when I did have time off would assume that was time for us to do things together, whereas I felt like a) I already spent a large proportion of my free time with said partner, even if it wasn't a lot of time, and b) that I was tired and didn't want to do any of the things my partner wanted us to do together. (Which does not speak well to my work-life balance! And on the other hand, I admit, I got used to just assuming that my partner would be free and want to spend time with me the times I did want to hang out, because that was usually the case.)