I know a lot of people living the van life or in cabins or in small houses - with just one other person. None of them are having mental health issues or marital issues. <modsnip>
They had their ways of getting along. People with 5 dogs who live in a van usually live in a campground, not just a van by the side of the road.
Instead, I think RickShawFan's viewpoint is far more relevant (the Safety Third/Comfort Zone mentality).
While "the lifestyle" can be stressful, there are many other lifestyles that are also stressful.
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I'm going to quote Rick's excellent post below - to me, we get to question her decisions on her route through the mountains, we can try and learn from what happened. But to get into the domain of "living in a van with your SO is by its very nature a mental health challenge" is iffy territory.
Some of us have never been happier than living in such challenging situations - we are all different.
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I have snipped the above paragraph from the longer post for focus.
One of my biggest concerns in ED's recent writing is how much she talks herself into doing things she feels very uncomfortable doing, "pushing the limits", going "beyond her comfort zone", persuading herself minute by minute to do something her being is screaming at her, "That's a VERY bad idea".
This is a cliché idea that a person should be deliberately going "beyond their comfort zone", especially when it's not an inch beyond their current limits, but miles.
What seems to be lost on ED is that very often our beings know what's best. There are very intelligent reasons for our beings to call us back from going over the edge; it's called self-preservation. "Going beyond your comfort zone" to walk into wild places with winter coming on, otherwise deserted by COVID, risking hypothermia on a moment-to-moment basis, with high potential for an accident in and of itself.... That's not "going beyond one's comfort zone". It's crazy.
This is my concern, too and I'll say more about why. It's become a kind of widespread philosophy (Suzanne Morphew seems to have expressed similar ideas at one point). I follow base jumping closely...and, well, ALL of them are so far into this mentality that it's crazy. I'm an online "friend" of a wing suiter, someone I actually considered joining in one of her less scary adventures. She, like ED, posts tons of stuff about her exploits (including the death of an SO and the near death of a second SO). I am on various newsfeeds of hers and I do expect to wake up one morning and find out she's gone (but I've been thinking that for almost 10 years!)
Anyway, this woman I reference offers entire classes on "how to get over your terror and do it anyway." The main reason I wanted to visit one of these 3-5 day long sessions was to...look at it anthropologically? It's clearly a new subcultural movement. There are ways to do things safely (and this hike through the Pyrenees should have been well within many people's comfort zone - weather permitting).
My understanding is that the weather was good for ED's hike BUT that she did decide to ascend a peak where altitude issues could complicate matters and judgment. I think she was outfitted for the cold.
She further complicated things by taking 2 dogs (which could certainly up risk where footing was on scree). If she had stayed near trails the entire time, she would have been found by now (I think). I can imagine scenarios where the dogs were off leash and I know that people will risk their lives for dogs.
You are absolutely correct that even a minor accident could have incapacitated her and while I have never been to the Pyrenees, there's similar terrain here in California - and people are not always found by SAR...sometimes until years later. I think she may still be up there, unfound. At any rate, she chose a fairly high risk thing to do and actively combatted that internal alarm system.
It's a trend. I wish someone would write a Vanity Fair or similar article about this whole topic. COVID is allowing people to go far from home, for longer...
