For me, it wasn't demanding that he come home as much as the way that she did it. And what I keep coming back to is, had Alice always been a reasonable, pleasant-enough person until Ioan began this "pulling away" and then his obvious cooling brought out the nasty, vindictive, histrionic side, I could forgive/understand/empathasize. But from what we can tell, from the beginning (eg. check out the proposal story Ioan told on late-night tv), Alice has been dreadful. This story on its own might be understandable -- the world was shutting down and she was in North America where the impact of Covid had been felt for many months while Australia had been a paradise of freedom and good health -- but taken with all the other stories of Alice belittling, over-reacting, threatening and humiliating, it's illustrative of who Alice is at her core.