No Worries is a fortnightly column exploring the ever-evolving and ever-confusing world of modern relationships. Whether it’s with a judgy parent, a friend being weird, a toxic ex, or an insufferable colleague, relationships are not easy. DM us on Instagram (we'll keep it anonymous) or ask for a friend—your guide Cheryl-Ann Couto is here to help.
Q.
I’m a 47-year-old man, married for 17 years, no kids. I run a web design firm and have always worked from home. In December, after my wife’s high-pressure marketing job started to affect her health, she decided to take a step back and move into a freelance consulting role. Since then, we’ve found ourselves in a weird space. For starters, her previous job came with a lot of travel. Weekends were for meeting friends and family, and on weekdays, we would barely make it through the highlights of the day before we turned in. All of which is to say that we weren’t used to spending much time together, just the two of us.
Now, it suddenly feels like we don’t know how to be around each other. I’m used to a solitary routine; in fact, I love it. My wife, finally free from the tyranny of her corporate job, at first tried Netflixing through her days. But now, six months in, she’s been getting a little antsy with all the time at hand. She is constantly asking us to do things together—step out for midweek lunches, watch movies late at night, entertain at home during the week—but I’m not ready to step back from work yet. And I hate to admit it because I love her, but it’s annoying to have someone in my space all the time. It’s like we have no time off from each other. Is it reasonable to draw some boundaries? It’s started to take a toll on us, to the point where we’re snapping at each other for things all the time. All I want is my routine back, but I don’t know how to tell her without making her feel bad. Help!
A.
Dear I-love-my-wife-but-not-like-that,
I think what we may have here is a molehill, but with real potential to become a very tall, craggy mountain unless you tread delicately.
Your wife is obviously a monster. Midweek lunches? Late night movies together? Entertaining at home during the week—fine, I can’t carry on the sarcasm here, that last one is genuinely horrible. Your wife is clearly going through some things since quitting her nightmare job. Very normal things, I might add. The end of a toxic era is still the end of an era. If anything, your wife is spiralling in the most wholesome way possible.
Which brings me to your feelings: also very normal! After years of spending very little time just the two of you—and letting grow in that place a cosy, idyllic individual routine full of space and solitude and lucrative web design—having to yield it suddenly because she’s having a change is very inconvenient. You can be understanding and empathetic to the seismic transition she’s going through and still find her constant presence and insistence on spending time together annoying and disruptive.
I said molehill before because this part of the situation is fairly common and easily resolved, by you telling her you love her but to knock it off, and her telling you to eat steel wool, both of you sulking for a bit and then forgetting all about it to prepare for the dinner party she agreed to move to the weekend. But that requires an ease and intimacy springing from a solid sense of us-ness, and I think that’s the mountainous part of the situation—and possibly the deeper source of your anxiety.
In the long period of leading highly individuated lives, your ability to play like a team is rusty. The broad strokes of family time, social life, work commitments, yes, but you’ve become unfamiliar with the dailiness of each other’s lives—you know, the peccadilloes and the peeves, and the way the idea of a midweek lunch can send one of you into the stratosphere.
A real reacquaintance is in order—not just for this moment of transition, but for the long haul too, in case the economy stops plummeting for one second and we’re all forced to stop hustling and start living. But I regret to inform you that that’s going to involve compromise.
So yes, tell your wife how you really feel about this new phase of your lives, but maybe over a surprise midweek lunch to soften the blow (your boss won’t mind, he’ll be out with his wife). Put in place some mutually-agreed-upon rituals for daily facetime and connection. Pre-work coffee in the kitchen? Post-work walks around the neighbourhood, sharing stories of your worst clients? A nightly episode of something to look at your phones to, together? Pure romance. Take turns to have the house all to yourselves as well, anytime the conscious coupling gets too much. Which it will, at the start. But most important of all, allow her to toss it all out the window from time to time and embrace the chaos. This may be the highest form of love.
Your wife hasn’t thrown in the towel on work, only on a 9-to-5. Soon enough she’ll be dividing all this non-stop attention and availability with devising the next phase of her professional life. And you’ll be able to recover some more of the old, cherished routine. Whether it will come as a relief to you or make you wistful depends on the work both of you put in now. Take courage; in the words of a meme I saw the other day and couldn’t find again, it’s going to be okay, but it’s going to be different.
