What’s tying you down?

Smudgie I know what you mean. Our old boy is now about 19 (possibly older), and although we've always got family who could come in to see to him, I don't like to leave him.

No confidence or self esteem is tying me down. When you lose all your teeth as a child and all your hair as an adult, that does a pretty good job of tying you down.

I wouldn't say that I feel 'tied down' but health issues make travelling (even short distances) difficult for me, so I have become a stop-at-home. I'm quite content with that but I suppose I'm also 'tying down' my DH who doesn't like doing things on his own, we've always done everything together, though at 80 he's not so keen to make long trips now. Neither of us really wants to be bothered with holiday planning, insurance, packing and travel delays now.

We have a dog, but we don't think of him as a tie. If we did go anywhere he would come with us in pet friendly accommodation. He is our shadow and would be devastated to be left in kennels.

Our children are all independent and don't rely on us for help in any way and our parents are long gone.

It is not how I imagined our retirement, and when we first moved here we were very active, but it could be a lot worse. Thankfully we still have each other and we keep ourselves busy. We're happy.

Kate1948 ?

In many ways this is a sad thread. My AC are grown up and all have school age children. My parents died many years ago. I welcome the ties I do have at this point in my life. We can go on holiday quite often but I prefer not to be away for longer than 2 weeks as J miss h to r family so much even though we don’t “ live in each other’s pockets.” Pre covid I did 3/4 days of childcare every week and I couldn’t have been happier. I guess I’m lucky to have the best of both worlds.