How to Deal With a Spouse Who Just Retired

A Survival Guide for the Person Whose House Just Got a Lot More Crowded
By Nate Quigley

Everyone keeps congratulating you. Your spouse retired, and friends keep squeezing your arm and saying how wonderful, all that time together, you must be thrilled. Meanwhile a small honest voice inside you keeps asking the question you cannot say at parties: what is this person going to do all day, and how much of it is going to happen near me?

This book is that voice's lawyer.

How to Deal With a Spouse Who Just Retired is a genuinely funny survival guide for the other half of retirement, the half nobody throws a party for. The supervising of the dishwasher. The alphabetized spices you never asked for. The 11:40 lunch inquiry, daily, like a municipal siren. It is all real, it is all documented, and there is even a medical name for what it does to you. Underneath the jokes is real machinery: the boundaries, treaties, and gentle pushes that turn a permanent houseguest back into a partner.

Inside, you'll learn:

• A field guide to the newly retired: the Foreman, the Reorganizer, and the lunch siren
• Why the supervision reflex follows them home, and the two moves that retire it
• Consent before conquest: the rule that saves your junk drawer and your sanity
• Retired husband syndrome: the real research that proves you are not imagining this
• Getting your Tuesday back without guilt, and why your sacrifice delays their recovery
• Seeds over arrangements: how to help them build a life without becoming their manager
• The second marriage: designing the together-and-apart ratio on purpose
• The Cohabitation Cheat Sheet: the whole accord on one page

Every chapter ends with The Peace Treaty: the terms, minus the jokes.

You were promised golden years. You were delivered a houseguest. Here is the diplomacy.

Pairs with its companion volume, How to Retire Without Losing Your Mind, written for the houseguest in question. Leave it on the recliner. They will think they found it themselves.