When husbands become retirees, "He drives me nuts!"
"I'm going to kill him!", My girlfriend Gaby yells into the phone, and I do not have to ask who, not even why, because I know it.
"What has he done now?" I ask, and if things were not so serious, it would be laughable.
"He destroyed my cell phone card," she says, "he wanted to stuff her into my new cell phone, but it broke down and now all the phone numbers are gone."
"Is he still alive?" I ask.
"He lives and is deeply offended because he just wanted to help me," she moans, "I sent him to the grocery store for the first time, hopefully he'll stay away longer."
The time, from which my girlfriend Gaby, actually a well-balanced woman in her late 40s, became more and more a fury, can be dated exactly.
Everything was fine - until his retirement
It was the day her husband Hans-Rainer, 61, retired early. Until then, both of them had what could be called a well-balanced relationship - she works as a freelance translator; he works as a company doctor in a public agency before Day X. Her 17-year-old twins have the worst puberty horror behind them.
It was a well-oiled family life whose logistics lay in Gaby's competent hands. That she did more than 90 percent of the housework, she found normal, after all, she was at home most of the time, also she could under the pretext "My family needs me" one or the other unpopular translation order and occasionally take a longer coffee break sneak away from a friend.
Both spouses had their freedom, everything was fine. Until Hans-Rainer stood after a glittering farewell party full of good intentions at Gaby ante portas.
Unquestioningly, he reorganized her daily routine
"In the future, we'll divide up the work fifty-fifty," he announced, which irritated her because she had not mentally prepared herself for the new situation. For a man who had at one time a lot of day off. But unfortunately no hobbies or hitherto neglected interests with which he could fill them. Anyone who "ran around" her from morning to night, at least she felt it and suffered under the new picture that the old companion suddenly offered her. She says:
"We are like two dogs marking the same area at the same time, but one where I have the older rights, of course, it bothers me."
If Gaby had determined her days earlier, Hans-Rainer, who had a say, was there now. Wanted to jog with her before breakfast, although she preferred to go to her health club in the evening. On lunch at the usual canteen time, punctually 13 clock, was, although Gaby ate lunch only a yogurt. Afternoon with a piece of cake in the living room waiting for her. As a full-time official unscholarly reorganized their daily routine, saving suggestions included.
The successful man has become a "Pottkieker"
When asked if the two-ply toilet paper was not enough, she rested for the first time.
"How can I get him out of the house?" She asked desperately. "I live like a fairy-tale fairy-tale rabbit. Wherever I appear, my husband is already here!"
A classic example of what I call, something exaggerated, called "married couple stalking" and observed by many of my girlfriends whose husbands do not leave the house in the morning or not.
They no longer bear bear skins, which they put in front of the cave for their loved ones, but they reassemble the blanket on the sofa, and their office was finally tidy and tidy. They disassemble the vacuum cleaner because they want to change the bag, and reassembly always leaves a portion. They want to help and only disturb. At work, still independent citizens of this country, they become "Pottkiekern", as one used to call the retirees who watched their wife while cooking in the pot and not with well-intentioned tips à la "A little more pepper, Marianne!" saved.
"Like an octopus put over my life"
"Klaus retired like an octopus over my life," sighs Marga, 55, another friend, "he wants to be informed about everything, he wants to have a say in everything." He recently mixed up the parents' evening of our 16-year-old son because he wanted to know from the teacher if he was smoking and thus his students a bad role model.I was so embarrassed, I was almost shy of shame. "
"Tyranny of intimacy" called the Hamburg psychologist and couple therapist Oskar Holzberg these marital assaults. "Everything is boiled down to closeness, every touch of distance is experienced as painful, but even for this period of life the thesis holds: the closer, the farther, because forced intimacy leads to strangeness."
It seems strange that men who used to be suit and decision makers and spent a large part of their lives in the professional macrocosm are so stubbornly plunging into the domestic microcosm. Intervene unwittingly in things that have so far completely ignored them.
"Myself is pounding our morning muesli", moans one, "it tastes like crumbled elephant droppings." - "My father is now overseeing the schoolwork of our 13-year-old daughter," sighs the other, "in the last math job she unfortunately had a four minus, because his school knowledge is completely outdated."
And a third person has threatened her 60-year-old early retiree with a divorce if he flatly strokes the blanket she had smoothed out five minutes earlier.
The men lack the social network
What happens in men who suddenly get excited about whether the cutlery in the dishwasher with the top or the handle are put up? A pent-up demand for missed domesticity?
I think there are things that we like to repress women in men. In fact, unlike us, they are not beings who socialize outside the family.
Profession, family, one, two buddies, that's enough for them. Since the buddies are often colleagues, only we remain, even if the profession is eliminated. Therefore, men really do not know where to go when the tight corset is away from meetings, business trips, and borrowed meanings.
They then experience what a colleague of mine calls "the new Puscheligkeit" and thus refers to this affection, the wives gets on their nerves. This "Where are you going, when are you coming back?", This husband, who at best lies on the sofa when you come back, or in the worst case, has arranged the kitchen spices by expiration date.
The utility becomes a needy
Since men rarely engage in navel gazing, let alone delve into the emotional world of their partner, they do not understand that it is beating because it feels like being driven out of their ancestral realm, as did the rubble women 60 years ago POWs returned home, were sent back to home and stove at lightning speed.
Only this time, says Oskar Holzberg, it is exactly the other way around, a change of roles takes place: the man "lightens up" and seeks closeness, the woman "mellows" and feels pressured. "The woman has to endure that her husband, the former provider, is suddenly in a more needy position."
True, it does not make our men more desirable when they suddenly become quasi-housewives brushing our windows streak-free. Of course, we are pleased when they treat us as late-called gourmets with homemade plucked pasta, but not if they block the kitchen for the whole day. That's why we want to escape now, where so much closeness is possible.
Like the most adapted balloons from which the air slowly escapes
Clearly, we understand that most men are by nature determiners and decision makers, and that these noble qualities are now focused exclusively on privacy. And since they can no longer determine whether their company takes the billion-dollar loan from Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, they want to at least decide whether the potatoes may cost two or two fifty euros a kilo.
Without a job, many men are idle, feel like petted balloons, from which the air slowly escapes, so in their uncertainty on the part of their lives that is left and catches them - the family. They come, as the owner of unwavering egos, not even the idea that they could disturb, exhausting, sometimes annoying.
But since people, above all men, are no longer significantly changing beyond the age of 60, Oskar Holzberg suggests: "Do not freeze in the position of reproach, preserve humor, take a deep breath and seek constructive solutions."
And they are often quite simple. My friend Nina has given her husband a Spanish course for the next Majorca vacation, my neighbor made sure that her was elected to the board of their allotment garden club, Gaby is inquired into whether doctors without borders need retirees.
It would also be a good idea to send husbands together with too much daytime leisure time on bike, sailing or tent tours. Retired teachers could provide tutoring, gardeners pluck weeds, journalists write books. Another approach could be to transfer unloved household chores to one's partner. "Honey, now that you have time, how about ironing your shirts yourself?"
