I get many letters about missing family members who have moved overseas. Here’s an extract from one that I found deeply encouraging:

“I was diagnosed last month with breast cancer and have been through seven weeks of sheer hell with surgery and drug treatments. Luckily for me it was arrested by the surgery and I effectively have a cure. However, I could never have gone through this ordeal without the deep love and support of my husband from whom I previously believed I had grown apart. He cried with me, drove me around to doctors’ appointments, kept the housekeeping going when I felt rotten. In short I have rediscovered the man I married all those years ago. This diagnosis has brought us closer together than ever before and I now don’t ‘sweat the small stuff’. In fact I wake up every morning grateful to be alive and on the road to a full recovery. I have found pleasure in the little things in life and have come to accept my son and grandkids living overseas. Tell anyone in our position to hang in there it certainly does get better!”

1. His or her solvency (credit score) is more important than if he sends you flowers or she showers you with gifts and compliments.
2. The state of his or her relationship with his or her parents is more important than how he or she dresses or what he or she drives.
3. How he or she treats and respects a former spouse (and children) will tell you exactly how he or she will one day treat you.
4. How he or she handles truth and matters of integrity are unlikely to change. If he or she lies or develops a “cover up” to be with you, the day will come when he or she is “ducking and diving” to get away from you.
5. How he or she behaves in heavy traffic, in a restaurant with poor service, how he or she handles credit, alcohol, and illegal substances, are windows that give glimpses into the “real” person.

“My wife bickers at me all the time. It’s like it’s going on under her breath from early in the morning until late at night. We have been married for 40 years and our children all live overseas and it’s like she blames me that she is not near her children and her grandchildren. We are now both very recently retired and you’d think we’d be glad we reached this stage in life. We are too much together. She says it. I did not feel it until she said it. She is on email all day looking for letters from the children and the grandchildren and sometimes she won’t even go out if she is expecting them to phone. What can I do? Please help.”

This is a fine, yet somewhat exaggerated, example of how careers and children can keep a man and a woman sufficiently apart AND where the apartness facilitates and fosters tolerance of one another.

Take away the careers (and children) and people have to look at each other again and they do not always like what they see. Retirement is new for you both. Stick it out.

Volunteer your services somewhere. Really, it will get better.