How to Compromise When Your Partner Is a Homebody and You Love Travel
As with most partner trade-offs, it begins with understanding, empathy, and finding some middle-ground
Remember when you were a child and couldn't wait until you were a "grown-up" so you didn't have to answer to anybody, like parents or teachers, and could do whatever you wanted? Do you recall when you realized how wrong you were about adulting? Retirement, for me, had similar misconceptions.
I retired last year, and my wife of 40 years retired six months later. Now is the time to enjoy life, do some home projects, learn new recipes, pursue health goals, take classes, learn new languages, play pickleball, and explore the world. Or so I imagined.
So far, retirement has been a mixed bag of blessings and challenges, much like transitioning from a child to an adult. Two weeks after I retired, my dad, 89, became ill. After several biopsies of his bile duct, his doctors eventually confirmed he had cancer.
Dad passed away within six months, leaving my 90-year-old mom alone in Wisconsin. We live in Illinois — 2 hours away. My mom was entirely dependent on my father. She was scared and felt abandoned and helpless.
