I let him replace the air filter because it seemed really important to him
My husband deals with stress in a lot of odd ways. Sometimes, he gets really quiet and doesn’t say much for a few days. Other times, he tinkers with an old car in the garage that he swears will be up and running one day. Now that we’ve been married for 15 years, it’s easy for me to pick up on his stress and the habits that follow. This past month has been busy for him at work and he’s been missing a lot of time at home with our kids. I know he wishes he could be there for everything and so do the kids, but sometimes work has to come first. Last night though, I found him doing something really odd. I was fast asleep and I woke up to a bang and some rustling. My first instinct was to tell my husband, but he wasn’t in bed. I went downstairs and found him coming in from the garage with a pack of air filters. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me that he was taking the old air filter out and replacing it with a new one. I asked him why he was doing it in the middle of the night and he responded by telling me he woke up in a panic because he forgot to change the air filter and he was afraid our HVAC system would stop running efficiently. I let him replace the air filter because it seemed really important to him. Once he was done, I insisted that he come to bed and assured him that our HVAC system would run perfectly fine now that there was a clean air filter.