Who else has ever wanted to tell your husband/wife/partner to fuck all the way off? I doubt I’m the only one. Maybe it’s the year of our Lord 2024, truly the year of the woman. Maybe it’s retirement. Too much time together. But I don’t think so.
I think it has more to do with naive, rose-colored expectations of what a marriage would look like.
Did anyone else grow up under the impression that love was liking all of the same things and doing everything together? Granted, you could be bored out of your ever-lovin’ mind (of course we pushed that down), but if you went everywhere and did everything together, that meant you were in love.
When I first started dating Cory I distinctly remember we had plans to watch a movie one evening, and he asked if he could cancel. His best friend wanted to play racquetball, and they hadn’t really hung out together since the friend had gotten married. My first reaction was to feel a little hurt, but I soon realized that this was healthy; this was sustainable; this was a relief if this could be how relationships worked. It also confirmed that Cory was the kind of person I wanted to be with. Someone who valued their friends and who was capable of being direct and honest with me.
And it was good–no great–that we didn’t do every damn thing together, because we didn’t have any of the same interests. At all. Our backgrounds were radically different. My dad died before my 4th birthday. My mom remarried, and we moved numerous times, eventually landing on an isolated–no TV, no phone– 62-acre goat farm in Illinois. I attended a very small fundamentalist Christian school where I studied hard and got As. I never drank or did drugs. In my spare time I read or traveled.
Cory grew up in a nuclear family in Iowa City, Iowa. He lived in the same home on Spruce Street and went to school with the same kids from kindergarten through high school. He played sports. He worked as a shuttle driver at a car dealership. He bowled, hunted, fished, drank and played softball for fun.
What drew me to Cory was who he was as a person–smart, kind, thoughtful, easygoing, extroverted, happy go lucky, trusting, solid–how he made me laugh, and how everyone who knew him adored him. They still do. And he’s still that same wonderful person. He balances out my anxious, overthinking, deeply damaged, introverted self in ways I didn’t realize I needed until I met him.
Fast forward to today. We live in a 727 s.f. condo with two cats. Neither of us works outside of our home. If you would have asked me 30 years ago if I ever could have done this, I would have said, “Hell, no.”
So how did we get here? When we moved to Portland we lived in a 1450 s.f. Three bedroom, two bath Ranch style home in the burbs with a beautiful backyard and a patio. He worked nights. At first I worked mornings; eventually, between multiple part-time jobs, I worked almost full time. I remember being congratulated on our anniversary, and joking that the secret to a happy marriage was that he worked nights, so I only really saw him on weekends. I was only half joking.
As the kids got older and our eldest headed off to college, Cory switched from nights to days, and it was exactly the kind of adjustment you might imagine. Both to our bank account–you get paid a shift differential to work nights–and to becoming reacquainted. Cory’s first evening home he sat down on the couch after dinner and asked, “So what do we do?” I looked at him and responded, “It’s not nearly as exciting as you might have been led to believe.” And I turned on Grey’s Anatomy.
When we made the decision to downsize and move to Portland from the suburbs it was a BFD for many reasons, mostly because we knew we’d be living in a smaller space. Six months later, I brought up the topic again, because although I was throwing out household items with reckless abandon, Cory just kept putting off sorting through any of his things. So we had a come to Jesus. As we often do. We ended up doubling down on our decision to move, and he began downsizing in earnest. A year later, we lived downtown. Cory still worked full time at the hospital. And I worked with clients from my home office. So, despite the close quarters at home, we were apart all day.
Even during the pandemic, when most folks experienced their first exposure to a ton of together time…we didn’t have that. The hospital didn’t shut down; and Cory didn’t miss a day of work.
After 26 years, he left Providence and took a job where he was able to work from home two days a week, which meant I could count on him being out of the house Monday, Tuesday and Thursdays.
As you all know, in June he retired, and he was home full time. People ask me all of the time how it’s going, and I say good or whatever, but it’s definitely been an adjustment. I’m an introvert; I need my alone time. He’s always here. Well, not always, but there’s not a day of the week-let alone three–when I can count on him being gone. I can’t count on when he will be gone.
Looking back I never learned, growing up, how to have a healthy relationship, (does anyone?) so for 30+ years I’ve been winging it. We’ve had a handful of fights. Mostly, though, if we disagree, we just bicker. Or I should say, “I bicker.” I’m not proud of it.
When I’m unhappy with Cory, it’s because I’ve expected that he’d anticipate my needs or magically know what needed to be done, and he’d just do it. Silly, right? And yet I can honestly say that we were together for 4 years before I realized this. And it’s not like realizing it and doing something about it happened overnight, but I’ve gotten better over the years about asking for what I need/want.
There’s also the part where, because he’s worked full time at a very stressful job for the past couple of years, I’ve taken on all things household. Add to that the purchase of the condo. It’s a lot.
So he retired and it has felt to me like I’ve continued to do all of the things. Too much labor. Seen and unseen. Since I realized this, I’ve been offloading to him.
Making the transition to retirement can’t be easy for him, either, especially, since I’m handing him all kinds of work, and he’s having to learn new things. Of course it doesn’t help that I’m critical of how he does these things. I see this and am trying to stop.
Last week we went to Porque No and I made an ask: I need one morning a week when I know for sure that you’ll be out of the house for three hours. Can you do that? Of course. Jesus! Why hadn’t I done this sooner?!
And why do I feel bad–almost guilty–about asking for this time? I don’t know. But it probably has something to do with the naive childhood expectations we started with.
So he’s at the gym as I write this, and yes, it’s so much easier. Now I’m thinking I need to ask for another day.
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