QUESTION: Last year, my husband took early retirement for health reasons. At 52, I am ten years younger and still working.
After the initial euphoria of giving up work, he is now bored and directionless. He’s become quite needy and controlling, which I find increasingly unattractive.
To counteract his boredom, he treats our house like a small military camp, ordering me about. He says he wants to help around the house, but in practice that means doing all the jobs he likes best and leaving me with the chores.
He demands to know who I’m seeing when I go out and is even badgering me to sell my car “because I can pick you up from work”. I’m scared I will lose my independence.
Nearly everything he does annoys me and it’s starting to make for an unhappy home. I feel we need time apart to bring fresh conversation and ideas to our relationship, but how do I get him out of the house?
ANSWER: The marriage vows really ought to be rewritten. After “In Sickness and in Health,” let’s add “And in Retirement”. It tests a relationship just as much as the other two conditions. For most men, it’s a life-changing time, possibly even more than having children.
Goodness knows why people aren’t given instruction in How To Retire, instead of being flung out of the office on a Friday with no guide for coping without work.
Apart from adjusting to an empty diary and an absence of routine, it’s hard for even the most modern man to shift the notion he’s got to be a caveman, out hunting every day.
It’s a huge change for you, too. That old adage “Him hunt, me cook”, is engrained in us women. You’ve got to see your husband in a new light.
The harsh truth is that it’s a light that shows up you’re both getting older and the future is shorter. The way you describe him reminds me of a wind-up toy, all momentum and no direction. He’s got to harness all that energy while acknowledging he can’t just aim it all at you.
He’s had to leave work for reasons he might not have chosen, but he’s still able to make a huge contribution somewhere outside the home. He could have many fulfilling years to come that don’t involve paid employment.
On a practical level, has he considered volunteering? There’s a huge need for bright, organised people in all sorts of spheres. You need to make the prospect sound exciting, though, and not just a way of passing the time.
Approach this with kindness, too. The reason he’s clinging to your timetable - and to you - probably has nothing to do with neediness and suspicion; it’s just that he envies you belonging to something outside the home. Meanwhile, you’re guarding your other life very carefully.
Why aren’t you telling him who you’re seeing every evening, so that he doesn’t have to ask you? Why not give him a list of useful chores, instead of complaining he’s doing the wrong ones?
I don’t think either of you has faced the implications of his ill-health or talked about what happens next. Confronting your new reality is scary, but view it as an opportunity to get to know each other again. Your success as a couple up to this point wasn’t based entirely on your occupations.
Help him see that just because he’s no longer working doesn’t mean you don’t work as a couple any more. Then, when it’s your turn to retire, you’ll be glad he’s been an advance party.
Daily Mail
* Janet Ellis is a novelist, grandmother-of-four and former Blue Peter presenter .