I've been reading another thread about retired husbands who manage and I'm feeling very sad and afraid at how much worse my marriage is becoming since retirement.
He was very miserable at first until I got him into the U3A and now he's on the committee, does the newsletter, runs a book group, runs a martial arts group of a kind, goes to music appreciation, goes to a badminton group, attends a meditation group, has just volunteered for several hours a week at a local museum, likes to go cycling, does a lot of jobs around the house, endlessly goes shopping without consulting me and would be happy to do all the cooking if I let him.
It sounds ridiculous doesn't it and he STILL wants to manage me. I was doing some vacuuming recently and he told me 'how much better it was' using a brush attachment with demonstration! He often appears when I'm doing something and starts 'helping' which might mean picking up an instruction leaflet and instructing me or it might be suggesting a different way of doing what I'm doing.
I was driving us somewhere recently (he usually does all the driving) and he launched into totally unnecessary directions which was annoying because I knew where I was going.
I could go on and on. If I complain about anything, he denies and gets defensive. The array of activities I've described he minimises as nothing or 'only' once a month.
He does housework, does all his own washing, will hang mine up if he sees it wet, he gardens, he's also writing a book and teaching himself the piano. He is a published author. He reads all the time and is fixated with X or it's alternative app, he's very politically knowledgeable but again, he would deny this.
Since we retired in 2016/17, I've got more and more upset. He does come from a successful family, Oxford types but I can now see how the parental generation and wider family are either successful or feel like failures or are, frankly, balmy!
I'm feeling upset writing this. I feel that I can't go on, that I am of no importance or have a role in life beyond having produced three children.
We were having a few days away and, not for the first time, a row developed from a series of disagreements from the past. I had a difficult childhood and tend to be agreeable and am having to learn much too late in life how to say no and how to know what I want in the first place. I am sure that my confidence has been damaged as well as my mental and physical health.
I have left several times for short periods but don't have that many close friends or relatives. He's always full of apologies and how he doesn't mean things he's said or done and I've misunderstood him and he refuses to discuss separation or agrees and then avoids.
I'm sorry this is so long, I feel like an idiot, a stupid woman, what I've described sounds hard to live with, doesn't it??
