All Together, All the Time    

It sounds like a dream — after years of frenetic, overly-busy schedules, a couple finally gets to spend time together, without the pressure of work commitments. But for too many couples, those golden retirement years bring new frictions and tensions, as husbands struggle to find their place in a new and unfamiliar role, and wives struggle to respect and communicate with men they no longer recognize

“All of my friends are petrified of their husbands retiring,” Raizel, a 70-year-old teacher and mother of five, confides to me. “They’ve never made their husbands lunch in their lives, and they don’t want to start now. My husband’s seventy-three, but he’s not retiring, Baruch Hashem. I’m not letting him”

The little secret that everyone wants to talk about (but no one wants to put their name to) is that while women during the newlywed and childrearing years crave quality time with their husbands and dream of those rare date nights and vacations, decades down the line, when their husbands retire from work, the same women find themselves afraid of having their husbands home and underfoot 24-7.

“My husband has really been at a loss since retirement,” says Dina, a 67-year-old Bais Yaakov teacher. “He’s been a lawyer for over forty years, and it wasn’t his choice to retire. One day at work they came over to him and said, ‘What kind of cake do you want at your retirement party in the spring?’ and that’s how they let him know they were letting him go. His work was a huge part of his identity, and ever since his retirement he’s been floundering.”

Rivka, a frum therapist and writer, believes the problem comes down to gender differences; she says that there are innate differences between men and women that make it acceptable for a woman to be unemployed as long as she’s taking care of the home, but it’s not acceptable for a man. These ideas are so controversial in secular society that Rivka didn’t want her real name attached to them.