Marriage and Retirement

ups Perhaps instead of sitting down and telling your DH what you want, which might result in him feeling threatened by your new assertiveness, you could try a collaborative approach.
Ask him if he would like to do a SWOT analysis with you.
What this means is that together you look at what your situation might be when he has retired, and work out:
The Strengths - what might be the good things
The Weaknesses - what might be difficult
The Opportunities - what you might be able to do that you can’t do now
The Threats - what could happen that might be to your disadvantage or detriment.

This is a non-confrontational approach and you might be surprised at what you learn about each other’s feelings.
Good luck.

I am always at a loss when subjects like this come-up. If someone has lived in an unsatisfactory relationship like this for decades, it is going to be very hard for their partner, who has also been in the relationship for decades and is, no doubt, happy with it, to be suddenly confronted with the knowledge that the worm has turned.

The puzzle is why the dissatisfied one ever let a relationship like this go on for so long in this way. Surely in the first flush of a marriage, when partners are at their most malleable, is the time to ensure that the partnership operates on an equal basis.

I come from a military family and where we were stationed and how often we moved, was not even in the hands of my father, but the Ministry of Defence, who made the decisions on postings. It neither stopped my parents having a relationship of absolute equality, nor my mother following, if not a career, certainly a satisfactory working life.

Surely, when you marry you take into account what demands or restrictions your spouse's occupation may place on you. I married someone whose work frequently took him away from home at very short notice for indefinite periods of time. I knew from the start that I would need to accommodate this and effectively become the family 'chief executive' running home and family. Sometimes, I was virtually a single parent. I still managed to work and have a good career.