: I am a very active 66-year-old woman. I hate being idle. My mostly amazing husband doesn’t mind idle time.
This would be OK, except he resents my constant coming and going. After retiring from a stressful corporate job, I have two part-time jobs — one that takes about eight hours during the week and the other four hours on the weekend. I also enjoy fitness, riding horses, playing with our grandson and socializing during the day.
In the evening, I rarely go out with friends, as we are both happy at home cooking and enjoying TV. I let my husband know years ago that I would hardly be home when I retired. He doesn’t understand my daytime activities and doesn’t share my interests.
We’ve fought about this and he gets very upset. I could never be happy at home every day; that is what makes him happy. I love him and don’t want to cause him hurt, but after 24 years together I’m wondering if we are incompatible.
He won’t go to couples counseling and I’m not sure what, if anything, I should do. Your thoughts? You seem to define “idleness” as a pejorative, and I wonder if you send your husband some signals (unconscious and overt) that you don’t approve of the way he is spending his time. During your busy corporate career, I’m assuming you spent more time away from home than you do now – but your husband may have assumed your choices would change appreciably once you left that job.
I recently read a study profiling several couples newly in retirement, and in .