Retired Husband Support Group
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Tue Jan 10, 2012 12:22 pm

First, it's not my attitude, it's his. He's entirely all about himself. Second, he's now a partner at a local pub and spends his Saturday afternoons and all day Sundays there. I spend the weekend cleaning, laundry, grocery because of all that's done through the week. I walk most evenings by myself and now have started yoga. He has a stationary bike he likes to ride in his room sometimes while he watches tv during the day. I know I sound like I'm very critical but he's become a very negative force and it seems like I spend a large portion of my energy striving to not allow him to bring me down.

free skin care · Tue Jan 10, 2012 12:48 pm

It seems that the only solution is to live apart and not have to face your husband with his indifference and his mess. Hiring a cleaning person wouldn't help.

Thu Mar 01, 2012 6:50 pm

Wow...what a great forum! I'm 6 months into retirement with the hub, but unlike a lot of previous posts, I don't even know anymore whether its love or a 37 year habit! We constantly get on each other's nerves. Like the rest, I have it together with outside social and interest groups and he has NOTHING unless he's tagging along with me OR participating in something I planned. He does have a bad back but he also has zero friends, interests or initiative except for watching Seinfeld for the One millionth time! Boring..... And he seems to be getting more slow-witted (which worries me..I saw my father retire and take the slow road to dementia). The best time of day is at 5:30-6:00AM when I get up and have 2 hours before him. He does not make me happy and I don't know whether I'm over thinking the situation and maybe just "lighten up" OR whether there's a really big compatibility problem finally rearing its ugly head. Sad

Mon Mar 05, 2012 6:47 am

Flanlgirl11 wrote:

Wow...what a great forum! I'm 6 months into retirement with the hub, but unlike a lot of previous posts, I don't even know anymore whether its love or a 37 year habit! We constantly get on each other's nerves. Like the rest, I have it together with outside social and interest groups and he has NOTHING unless he's tagging along with me OR participating in something I planned. He does have a bad back but he also has zero friends, interests or initiative except for watching Seinfeld for the One millionth time! Boring..... And he seems to be getting more slow-witted (which worries me..I saw my father retire and take the slow road to dementia). The best time of day is at 5:30-6:00AM when I get up and have 2 hours before him. He does not make me happy and I don't know whether I'm over thinking the situation and maybe just "lighten up" OR whether there's a really big compatibility problem finally rearing its ugly head. Sad

Wow- your situation sounds a lot like mine! Many of the posts are humorous and it seems to me that there is some love and affection left in many of these marriages. But I also wonder if some of us are in the situation that some couples find themselves in where they wake up one day and say "Who ARE you?" I have been married it seems all my life - 42 years in May. My husband is retired 4 years now. And since my most precious favorite 12 year old dog died last July I have been miserable in my own home. At least there was a wagging tail and a happy face around. As I watch my husband's health deteriorate from his 8 hour minimum a day TV habit, sedentary lifestyle, eat like a teenager and swallow a cocktail of prescribed pills - I feel my life slipping away right before my eyes. I am trying to decide what to do about it. After much soul searching I have decided I am ready to move to a sunnier warmer climate, possibly live by myself. We can't change anyone but our own self. Now I just have to get past the fear and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

free skin care · Sun Mar 11, 2012 12:41 pm

Are any of you ladies married to a pack-rat? So annoying - It's incredible the junk DH insists on keeping! We're about to have to rent a storage unit, & at some point whoever wins that auction will be severely disappointed...

Sun Mar 11, 2012 1:00 pm

mogulicious wrote:

Are any of you ladies married to a pack-rat? So annoying - It's incredible the junk DH insists on keeping! We're about to have to rent a storage unit, & at some point whoever wins that auction will be severely disappointed...

OMG are you kidding?? Heck yes!! I am married to a major pack-rat. The other day I found he had accumulated not 2, not 6, but NINE thermoses. I said we only need one or two, can you pick out the ones you don't want so that I can get rid of the rest? He went psycho on me - he was so mad I literally left the house and went away for a few hours by myself. When I came back he had picked out TWO that he didn't want and put the rest on the top shelf of a cupboard I had JUST CLEANED OUT. And yes, we have 3 sheds full, a garage full, a basement full AND a shed off property that he is paying monthly rent on and IT is FULL also. All I can think of are my poor kids and how they are going to be drowning in junk when we die. If he dies first I'm going to rent a dumpster and throw 99% of it in the trash. If I don't go insane first, that is. Whew! Sorry for the rant - as you can tell this is a touchy subject over in my neck of the woods!!

free skin care · Sun Mar 11, 2012 1:07 pm

Caged Bird I feel your PAIN!

Sun Mar 11, 2012 3:23 pm

Thank you for your kind reply. I know I sound a little crazy but I'm really not! Just trying to make sense out of my life - like why am I in this marriage??

free skin care · Sun Mar 11, 2012 3:54 pm

I feel for you all, while a good marriage and happy retirement sounds lovely, seeing these posts make me happy I divorced my ex, I could have shot him for things he did while working, if he had retired and we were together somebody would have been six feet under or in the booby hatch! Shock

free skin care · Sun Mar 18, 2012 7:53 pm

Be pro-active. Consider what your life would be like without him (or her).

Get a:
financial planner
life coach or counselor
lawyer
realtor

Get:
your ducks in a row
your life in gear
your bliss back

Check out online realty sites for houses, condos, apartments, whatever, in areas you would like to live and visit them in person just for fun.

Buff up your resume and get references so you can segue into a new job/life/locale seamlessly and naturally. Big life changes are soul-killers and stress-makers but if you do it easy peasy and have a good time doing it you'll be happier in the long run.

You'll thank me later. Wink

free skin care · Sun Mar 18, 2012 8:04 pm

caged bird wrote:

OMG are you kidding?? Heck yes!! I am married to a major pack-rat. The other day I found he had accumulated not 2, not 6, but NINE thermoses. I said we only need one or two, can you pick out the ones you don't want so that I can get rid of the rest? He went psycho on me - he was so mad I literally left the house and went away for a few hours by myself. When I came back he had picked out TWO that he didn't want and put the rest on the top shelf of a cupboard I had JUST CLEANED OUT. And yes, we have 3 sheds full, a garage full, a basement full AND a shed off property that he is paying monthly rent on and IT is FULL also. All I can think of are my poor kids and how they are going to be drowning in junk when we die. If he dies first I'm going to rent a dumpster and throw 99% of it in the trash. If I don't go insane first, that is. Whew! Sorry for the rant - as you can tell this is a touchy subject over in my neck of the woods!!

Caged bird thats exactly what we did with my mother's house ... TWICE! major hoarder. We cleaned out SIX DUMPSTERS FULL when she was in hospital and then again after she passed. RIP.

Clutter is suffocating - I dont know how they can live like that! Like a wall of "Stuff" insulating them from the world. Inability to make decisions about what is important enough to keep. Fear of never having Enough. And on and on ... You cant fight it. As soon as we would clear stuff out, my mom would hoard more! There was a critical mass she had to maintain!

free skin care · Sat Mar 24, 2012 10:53 am

I'm the hoarder in the relationship. Embarassed

Drives my boyfriend nuts. Thankfully I work a lot so I can't do a whole lot of damage.

Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:20 pm

i am delighted i found this place! my husband, who was on thin ice to begin with, has been out of work since october 11. omg. he does NOTHING; i mean NOTHING but sit on the computer downstairs, shifts it to outside or the garage, and back again. if anyone DARE to ask: what are your PLANS he hits the roof. he has none! he wants to just grow roots and watch TruTV until he kills me.
i'm 57 and back in school furthering and stretching that degree one more time for my 3rd act and i'll be damned if i'm dragging HIM along. 3 years; not that much invested. WHAT a mushroom. the upside i guess? i've discovered plays, symphonies, museums; all sorts of places to GO. and? it's MY HOUSE. grrrr...

free skin care · Sun Mar 25, 2012 6:17 am

We are not retired, but I do think about these things because when my husband was not working, he is very lazy & no motivation.
I will not tolerate any form of lack of hygiene. Otherwise, he does need professional help. That is a clear sign of things getting a lot worse.
Serious talk is needed & it better improve that very second!
I have observed with family members and friends who are retired, slacked off with grooming. I think that is the worst mistake ever. Wearing the same clothes every day, not showering, not styling your hair and keeping up with your skin care regime & for women, not wearing any makeup and you already look dead. The body odor is awful! If it takes half a day to do the simple normal daily things to groom yourself, don't skip it and just do it. My in-law get her hair done once a week and does not wash in-between. Her scent is horrible and she refuses to acknowledge that it is needed and very necessary. I don't care how little hair you have.

Reading everyone's post here has opened up my eyes to possibilities what may come. I sure hope the negative won't happen to us.

He normally does the dishes. He loves to sleep in. I know I will be working many more years before I retire, so I was thinking of having him meet me for lunch on daily basis when I'm at work. This would keep him busy and get him out of our home. I could give him a cleaning task once a week and tell him he has one week to get it done. Something like sweeping the floors. In the summer, it would be easier to ask him to water the flowers.
When ever he comes home from work, I do try to extend my hearing to listen to his footsteps coming up our door. My heart still beat hard even though he can be difficult at times. I am still in love with him. We both want to buy a boat and that is our focus. We want to live in a smaller environment so that we are more motivated to go out then stay inside. I think it would be best that we both work part-time after retirement and take long weekends off together. I don't get sick of him following me everywhere I go and it works both ways, so this won't be an issue. But when he was not working, he was such a drag and so rude. He wouldn't go for walks with me, but now, after a couple of years of nagging, he will go with me and do what I like to do, and he appears to be so much more happy now. We love to do bird watching and it was all of a sudden he forgot what he loved to do and I reminded him again.

As for clutter, I can't stand it, but my husband like to keep a lot of things. But if I decide to through things out, I can see it in his face that he is happier, as I am also. I prefer more bare and simple furniture. It is less stressful.

I hope I never wake-up one day and say "Who are you?" I hope there is a way to avoid that happening to us.

Wed Apr 03, 2013 8:13 am

I was wondering if I'm the only one going nuts with a retired hubby Rolling Eyes

. He really is a sweeet man but since he's phlegmatic, he just never did communicate very well and now it's much worse. I'm just getting really frustrated about the whole thing Confused

free skin care · Wed Apr 03, 2013 12:11 pm

countrycookie wrote:

I was wondering if I'm the only one going nuts with a retired hubby Rolling Eyes

.

LOL! Welcome to the club, and the forum.. Have no fear, you are NOT alone.

God Blessed me with a gem of a husband, so if I'm being honest, my only major beef is that I miss a little of my "alone" time.

Fri Jul 05, 2013 6:53 am

So glad I found this group! I see almost everyone has a lot of the same issues I have. My husband and I went to visit his 82 year old mom yesterday. He hasn't had a bath in 10 days and does not wear deodorant. She had to make an excuse to get away from being downwind of him. I'm so embarrassed. Any ideas about how to get him to bathe without offending him? I'm holding my breath, using scented candles, air freshener, and incense.

free skin care · Fri Jul 05, 2013 8:09 am

Leenie wrote:

So glad I found this group! I see almost everyone has a lot of the same issues I have. My husband and I went to visit his 82 year old mom yesterday. He hasn't had a bath in 10 days and does not wear deodorant. She had to make an excuse to get away from being downwind of him. I'm so embarrassed. Any ideas about how to get him to bathe without offending him? I'm holding my breath, using scented candles, air freshener, and incense.

Maybe he has mental problems - inattention to personal hygiene can be a red flag.

If he's no crazier than usual, you might suggest (or *enforce* as the case may dictate) a spray on body solution of TREHALOSE (a disaccharide natural sweetener found in any health food store) mixed with distilled water and a preservative. Of course regular showers would be ideal. This sounds like those FEBREEZE college days ... Read on please:

“In this application, we examined the suppressive effect of trehalose on human body odor. The typical odor of a senior layer (odor from seniors) increases with age, especially 55 years or older. This odor contains unsaturated aldehydes such as 2-nonenal and 2-octenal. These aldehydes are produced by the degradation of unsaturated fatty acid (palmitoleic acid) in aged people’s skin. The subjects (55 years or older) were selected from our company. After a shower, their body was sprayed with a 2 % trehalose solution. They put on new underwear after the spray. Twenty hours later, the unsaturated aldehydes were sampled from the used underwear shown in this system using DNPH-column. The trapped aldehydes were eluted from this column and were analyzed by gas chromatography. The results showed a decrease of about 70 % in odor from seniors due to the action of trehalose (Fig. 7). This result indicates that trehalose has a suppressive effect on the formation of the odor released by the seniors’ bodies. The same results came out with the oxidation of fatty acid. Therefore, the application of trehalose for cosmetic fields is expected.”
http://orgprepdaily.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/trehalose/

You can also use 1% trehalose in your DIY formulas as its a great humectant too! So your stinky old goat will smell better and have soft skin to boot!

Good luck with it!

Fri Jul 05, 2013 10:55 am

Thank you for the info fawnie. Will be checking it out. He's only 61 yrs old. There's not much excuse for his lack of hygiene except laziness. I work, he doesn't. All he does is go to dump, mow, and get the mail. The rest is up to me. He will absolutely will not talk about it. If I bring it up, he shuts down and doesn't talk to me for days. Your assessment of mental problems may be true. He's on 2 anti depressants and one anti anxiety. He was on hepatits c treatment and now believes he is so fragile. brb he's coming now

free skin care · Fri Jul 05, 2013 12:36 pm

Can you call his doctor and explain the situation? Something is definitely going on inside his head and he is holding you hostage to his bad attitude. I assume you love him and want him to be at peace (so that YOU can have some peace!), otherwise I would say ignore him until he gets with the program and bathes.

My sympathies really! He sounds severely depressed and anxious and the meds dont appear to be doing much.

Fri Jul 05, 2013 12:47 pm

I have contacted the Dr. They know what is going on too. They are the ones who added the second anti depressant. I am trying very hard to get him to talk to me without being defensive or offended.
If he is embarrassed, he won't talk about it. We've only been married for 7 years.

free skin care · Fri Jul 05, 2013 4:16 pm

Oh thats so sweet Leenie! You're practically newlyweds, but 7 years is when reality sets in ...

Not to be nosy but did the prescribing Dr say when s/he wanted to re-evaluate the DH on his meds? I know it takes a while for them to take effect but if its been a while (6-8wks) and no change has happened or change is for the worst, maybe time to re-eval. Just my 2¢ - Im sure you already know this. Just concerned here. Stay centered yourself Leenie. Take time away from the situation.

free skin care · Fri Jul 05, 2013 7:18 pm

Leenie - if I can be totally blunt - you need someone other than yourself to tell him he stinks! When my husband was in danger of polluting the earth's atmosphere, I got his sister to address the problem - worked like a charm.

Sat Jul 06, 2013 10:08 am

I can't find anyone who will tell him he stinks. His family is totally behind him and would never tell him. He whines to his 82 yr old mommy on a regular basis and she lectures me (I don't need to tell you that I wish she would BUTT out). I am stuck with this one. I am hoping the Drs. at the VA will tell him he stinks. They already know of all this. I don't have much faith in antidepressants at this point. If someone broke into the house, he wouldn't be able to defend himself. The anti depressants have removed his "fight or flight" instincts. I would love to have an intervention with all his Drs. involved. BTW, 12 days without a bath...I'm ready to hurl.

free skin care · Sat Jul 06, 2013 10:43 am

You have my sympathies Leenie...I'm think you should not hide your response...go ahead and gag and if he asks why...say "I'm sorry but your body odor is making me sick to my stomach".

He must want to be left alone and uses the strong odor to keep people away.

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