While this might sound disheartening, all is not doom, at least not forever. The evidence is that eventually husbands become less demanding of their wives’ time. After they’ve been retired for a while, they adapt to the lifestyle and learn to either establish their own personal interests, or just accept that their wives have their own lifestyles. Of course, there is also the possibility that husbands become less demanding of their wives time and attention because the wives have succumbed to the pressure and made adjustments to their own lives, giving up a lunch here, an activity there. In all likelihood it’s probably a combination of the two – husbands expect less and wives give more. But maybe that’s not so bad, because after all, compromise is what good relationships are all about.
Still, if you run into these problems, get to work on them right away. Talk to each other — establish the ground rules to ensure a peaceful co-existence. Talking out the issues as soon as they become noticeable will save you a lot of grief, because problems that fester can only get worse and harder to fix over time.
