Dear Prudence,
My wife and I recently downsized to a 55-plus community after our youngest moved to Europe. I still work part-time for my company and my wife has always been a homemaker. We always talked about what we would see or do once the kids left the nest—except now my wife refuses to do anything! We have a community garden, language and art lessons, so many social clubs you can shake a stick at it and hit one you never heard of, and a community center that has something going every night. I’ve joined a podcast, taken a leather making course, and taken up swimming. My wife sits at home in her PJs and plays a farming simulation on her iPad. She will not take any action to make friends no matter how I encourage her and if I drag her out for couples’ night, she barely speaks and looks bored.
She complains she misses the kids and our old friends, but when I tried to arrange a visit with our oldest friends, she didn’t want them to come because the house was a mess and she wasn’t feeling up to it. At this, I said she needed to see her doctor and we would get a part-time house cleaner. My wife actually cried and shouted at me that I was insulting her! I said I wasn’t but that there was something very wrong with her. Even when we are staying home, we don’t even talk. We sit in front of the TV eating frozen dinners because my wife isn’t “up” to cooking and doesn’t want me to do it.
I feel trapped. We had plans for our life and my wife was so excited when we moved here, and now it feels like a life sentence in solitary. Our 40-year anniversary is coming up, and everything I suggest, like going on a family trip to visit our child overseas, gets a halfhearted shrug. I am at a loss what to do, but I can’t spend the rest of my life living like this.