My 72-Year-Old Husband Is Acting Like a Teenager

The dishwasher, like my work area, was always my domain, and I am as protective of my space as I was in shielding our daughter from playground bullies. Now the dishwasher has also become a source of contention. It’s the most common household disagreement, even arising in couples therapy. Now that Steve is home for three meals a day, I’ve begun criticizing how he loads the dishes. The dishwasher is supposed to save 10 days of labor a year, so why am I wasting time arguing with him on whose method is better? I’ve started silently restacking his large bowls from the top, where the glasses go, to the bottom, where I believe they belong. I’ve stopped complaining.

We’re learning how to cohab again.

Steve has embraced the luxury of sleeping as late as he wants — and he deserves it after all those 50-hour work weeks. He rouses at 10 a.m. I’ll be on my second cup of coffee, fretting about deadlines for graded papers, while he lounges through breakfast as if on vacation.

A permanent one.

“Why do you have to chew so loud?” I ask, not adding that he sounds like a goat.

“I live here, too,” he says.

I refrain from asking how a grown man can still be in his bathrobe at noon.

“We’re out of bananas,” he interrupts me again.

“I’m working,” I remind him.

“Sorry.” Five minutes later: “I’m leaving for the grocery store.”

“Just leave,” I beg. Fully distracted now, I make a list of boundaries.

He has eagerly taken on chores I used to do, from laundry to grocery shopping. Yet sometimes I wish I could turn him off the way I use the “do not disturb” function on my computer.

He’s started going to weekly Friday restaurant lunches with his closest friend, and I relish the quiet the way I used to when our daughter was away at sleepovers. But he has the nerve to text me photos of his sumptuous entrees while I’m subsisting on stale crackers and cheese.

I feel jealous of his freedom, even though I love my work and my students. I grow annoyed every time he interrupts me even when he sees me typing away. (So much for boundaries). Other times, he regresses to a toddler, and I’m the young mother trying to corral him out of the house for a joint errand or appointment. He dawdles as if he has no purpose other than to exist, while I’m holding the door open, waiting, waiting.

Sometimes he encourages me to relax more, to be less type A about deadlines and join him for that unending breakfast. It’s as if he’s asking me out on a date. We do the morning crossword together. Steve knows all the car and history clues, while I pinpoint the literature ones. I’m reminded of how much I used to wish he were home more, how lonely I felt during his business trips — even though I enjoyed being single again, but just for one week.

Now I’m relieved when he leaves on Fridays so I can have my queendom gloriously to myself again.

I did appreciate his retirement after one of my late-night teaching sessions at the university. When I arrived home after 8 p.m., he was sautéing vegetables into a pasta sauce for dinner.

He still lapses and interrupts my work, then apologizes. It’s because he likes my company; maybe he is making up for all those years he missed as a workaholic. He still can’t load the dishwasher to my satisfaction, nor fold the newspaper crossword in the way I prefer. And he still can’t find the mustard.

Every so often I remind him of the boundaries. And we won’t have to renegotiate them again until I retire.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.