I've been married for almost 45 years. It's not been a brilliant marriage, but we've loved and raised two children, done well in our careers, enjoyed reasonably good health and are not strapped for cash.
Apologies for the long rant.
We took early retirement about 7 years ago and spent the first 4 years bringing our shabby house up to date (mostly done by ourselves). We never really discussed what we wanted to do in retirement but I know he always wanted to improve his photography skills, see a bit of the world and have a model railway (he has most of the kit in boxes). None of it has happened, and he doesn't show any interest in making it, or anything else, happen.
He sleeps 10 hours plus a night, so it's late morning before he gets up, so too late to go anywhere interesting. He thinks that driving 10 miles is a long journey, so being in a rural area means even the next town is too far for him.
He has no plans for the rest of his/our life. It is down to me to organise holidays and he tags along. It is down to me to arrange to visit our girls and grandchildren, and he doesn't seem particularly interested in doing anything with them (they are aged 5 and 3) - he sits in a chair and watches them play. He would happily stay at home every day and potter.
His conversation is non-existent. Today I tried to discuss the success or otherwise of comprehensive schools and he seems to have forgotten what they were, calling them Secondary Moderns, and telling me that our daughters went to grammar schools (they didn't). And this is a man who spent years of his life involved in politics, both local and national, and whose career was in Higher Education. The conversation ended with me in tears cos his arguments were factually wrong and he couldn't see that they were. He told me I was being bossy.
The girls have noticed all this too, and basically have stopped including him in conversations involving anything that requires advice or an opinion - they just ask me, and welcome my input. The most they get from him is "I don't know" or worse, incorrect advice, or even worse a badly-told joke instead that they have heard tens of times before.
Before we took early retirement 7 years ago he talked of developing his photography skills, travelling Europe in our caravan, setting up a model railway (he has all the kit in boxes in the loft). But he's made no effort to pursue any of these. I found him a photography class but after a few sessions he declared it wasn't useful to him. I have drawn up plans to convert our garage for a fabulous model railway but he has barely looked at them saying he is "not sure about it". As for travelling Europe, he now thinks a ten-mile journey is long-distance and suddenly has declared that he has always hated driving - this man had a Triumph Spitfire when I met him!
He is slow and plodding at everything now (he never was fast, but it all seems worse), declaring that "it is bad for you to rush about" and "I like taking my time". Meanwhile I am boiling with rage inside. Even his speech is now laboriously slow, and I've noticed friends losing concentration and wandering off before he has finished his point - which is usually not even interesting.
Everyone thinks he is a "nice man", and he is. He wouldn't ever insult anyone or hurt any living thing. But two friends recently told me "He's a lovely man, but heck, he's hard work isn't he?".
He's nearly 71 (I'm 65). Is this what 71-year-olds are supposed to be like and am I being unrealistic expecting him to have enthusiasm for things? I certainly still have plans and enthusiasm, and could cheerfully take myself off alone to do them, but I'd much rather we did it as a couple, or at least know that if I were off doing something, he would be doing his own thing too.
How do I spend the rest of my life with this bore? Can I chivvy him up in some way to be more lively and positive? When people ask how he is, his standard reply is "Oh, not too bad considering". Considering what? He is fit as a flea.
I say he is as fit as a flea. This is another bugbear (and I apologise again for the length of my post). As I said earlier, his hobby involves politics, so you can imagine that with County Council elections in May and the General Election in June, we have been out delivering leaflets every day. Except I have delivered 80% of them myself, either because he was too tired to come with me, or because he was so slow. I must add that I am not fit. I am more than a little in the obese range on the charts, and he is at the bottom end of "overweight". One particular day we were delivering on a modern estate of semis and I devised a route for each of us that would end up back at the car. If either of us got to the car first, we would carry on and meet the other later down the road. So I did my half, and back to the car. I carried on. And on. And on. By now I was worrying that I was sticking a leaflet through a door he had already done. So I phoned him. Yes, he was fine, he was just round the corner. I had delivered 175 leaflets to his 35. When I queried it with him I was told that his arthritis was playing up. What arthritis? Never been mentioned before. But okay, his knee was hurting. A few days later we were doing another round with the same plan but I made sure that his houses had no steps or steep drives. I did 160 with steps and slopes to his 20 on the flat. His response was "Just because you can go like fury doesn't mean I have to do the same". But surely that isn't normal to have done so little? Is it another example of him having no enthusiasm?
Sorry for the long post, I didn't know what to leave out to give you a proper picture.
