I Have a Very Common Vision for My Retirement. To My Wife, It’s an Insult.

Dear Prudence Maybe she’s jealous. Advice by Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Jenée Desmond-Harris? Sept 02, 20266:00 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Deagreez/iStock/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. Dear Prudence, Last spring, I retired as a school teacher, so this is the first school year I won’t be working. My wife is five years younger and also a teacher, so she “went back to work” last week. My problem is that every day last week, right before she leaves for work, she asks while I am sitting there eating breakfast what I plan on doing that day, or what my plans are for the day. Honestly, I don’t know. Go for a walk? Mow the yard? And if I do have a project, like pulling weeds in the front flower bed, she will say, “Is it going to take you all day to do that?” It would be different if she asked when she got home from work, “What did you do today?” which is still annoying, but then I could give her an answer. This morning, when she asked, I told her I was going to binge-watch “Judge Judy” all day because it was raining. She said, “Really?” and I said, “What difference does it make?” She left in a huff. I don’t know what she is expecting. Does she expect me to be “working” because she still is and needs to know what I am “working” on? Is she jealous that I am retired and she isn’t? I’ve worked five more years than her, and in five years, she will be retired also. Or is it expected of me (as her spouse) to give her a play-by-play script of my plans for the day? I have plenty of hobbies/projects plus the majority of the housework now to keep me busy, so it isn’t like I am sitting around all day watching TV. I just don’t have a set schedule to do these things. —Wife Wants My Retirement Work Schedule Dear Wife Wants My Retirement Work Schedule, It seems like there may be some unspoken assumptions present about what retirement means: You want to putter around at your own pace, which is a very common and reasonable approach. But I’m guessing your wife was assuming or hoping that you would use the hours you once would’ve spent working on weekdays to tackle a large percentage of the tasks (not just housekeeping but maybe shopping and cooking, deeper organizational and home improvement projects, opening mail, running errands) that were previously squeezed into evenings and weekends. I see no indication of this in your letter, but if it’s the case that she has historically handled a larger share of this stuff, she might have been dreaming of the day when you would have tons of free time and would take the lead on the domestic and emotional labor that living in a home requires. Of course, it’s also possible that she is really just jealous! You won’t be able to fix that, but you can stop her nitpicking of your daily schedule by having a conversation about what this phase of your marriage will look like and what she would like you to take on, and what you’re willing to do while still enjoying some leisure. If you’re going to disagree, you should disagree about these big questions and not about how many episodes of “Judge Judy” you plan to watch on a random Tuesday. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Prudence, My wife and I frequently care for a friend’s child, now aged 10, and have done so for several years. It’s generally one day a week, sometimes more. We love this child, but face an uncomfortable issue, which is that while we don’t ask to be paid, it would be nice if the parents offered to cover food and entertainment. They have never offered to do so. He never has pocket money, and it feels petty to ask. We don’t know how to politely suggest this, especially after we’ve covered it for so long. Any advice? —Taken Advantage Of Dear Taken Advantage Of, When it comes to things that are awkward to bring up after they’ve gone unspoken for so long, the key is to pretend that the conversation is not “after so long,” but rather in response to a recent development. Try this: “Wife and I have redone our budget/are tightening our budget/have been trying to review our spending as prices for everything seem to be skyrocketing and we need to trim the amount we’re spending on food and entertainment. So I have to ask if you could cover the food we buy for Aiden and the cost of the pool and snacks we purchase, which usually comes out to about [insert amount] a week. We love him and treasure our time with him, and of course we’re still happy to babysit for no charge. This will just help us do it while staying within our means.” Prudie Wants to Hear From You! Readers often have great suggestions for our letter writers, occasionally disagree with a point Prudie makes, or simply want to provide some additional advice. Each week, Prudie will be replying to some of these comments and suggestions from readers, which will be featured on the site on Fridays for Slate Plus members. Write to us! Or submit a question here. Dear Prudence, I don’t understand why my daughter is doing what she’s doing. She asked for a divorce and claimed to be unhappy for the longest time, but it was a huge shock to everyone, especially the kids. It has been two years. The agreement was that they wouldn’t introduce any new partners to the kids if it wasn’t serious. My daughter dates—a lot. I know because she will expect me at the last minute to take the kids or come over because a 12-year-old is far too young to be an overnight sitter. I never ask her about it because it isn’t my place. Her ex recently introduced someone to the kids. They don’t live together, but it seems to be serious. I know nothing about the girlfriend other than the kids seemed to like her and were excited about gifts she bought them when they went to the zoo: novelty socks, candy, and one small plushie for the youngest. I wanted to melt into the floor as my daughter proceeded to trash talk the gifts and interrogated the kids until the youngest was almost in tears. I told my grandchildren to go outside and play and asked my daughter what the hell she was thinking. She started to rant that her ex needed her “permission” to start dating and needed to stop bringing strange women around, especially “cheap” women. I told her to stop. The kids were excited, and their dad is a good, involved father. He is allowed to move on, and it only harms the kids if she reacts like this. She called me unsupportive, cold, and a bad mother. I reminded her of the time I couldn’t reach her one day. She was six hours late picking up the kids for a weekend I had plans for, and so I let myself in the house and found her asleep with a man she couldn’t even remember the name of. I have never brought it up before, and she called me a liar. I told her I have held my tongue for far too long. Her sex life isn’t my business, but her trying to poison her kids against their father is. She told me I needed to leave, and I told her to talk to someone professionally. Now, she doesn’t talk to me, just texts that she is dropping off the kids with me. I still take them because I worry about my grandchildren. They are acting out and withdrawn and saying things like “daddy is going to replace us.” Part of me wants to reach out to her ex, but that will nuke whatever relationship I have with my daughter. She never told me or even her sister she was unhappy or tried counseling. I love my daughter, but this can’t go on. Help! —Big Red Button Dear Big Red Button, Your stance that divorced parents shouldn’t criticize each other, or each other’s partners, in front of their kids is correct. But—and this is always my advice when mothers of adult women have strong opinions about their daughter’s marriages and parenting—being right doesn’t matter. I’m sure you noticed that when you couldn’t hold your tongue anymore and told her how wrong she was, it didn’t change anything. It didn’t make her stop what she was doing. It didn’t improve your grandkids’ lives. It only caused a rupture between the two of you. So what was the point? You can’t control your daughter and, especially now that she’s feeling defensive, she’s not going to take your advice. Your grandkids are going to have an emotionally immature mom and a lot of blended family-related stress and trauma no matter what you do. Say you’re sorry so you can move past this and they can have a loving grandmother in their lives to balance that out. Classic Prudie My ex and I used IVF to have our son (she had ovarian cancer). We had multiple embryos made, but our marriage dissolved a year after our son was born. The embryos are currently on ice, and legally we both have to consent to their use. I pay for the storage. It was too painful a topic to talk about during the divorce, and neither one of us wanted to speak about the potential children we could have had… Advice Dear Prudence Marriage