One of the things that happens when you retire is that you and your partner are together a lot more hours of the day. For me this is going to be a massive issue.
My husband and I have been married for more than 35 years. For our entire marriage he has been a self-employed writer. He works from home, and has had the house to himself (once the kids he inherited as teenagers left home) all day, every day.
He is a serious introvert, and he truly appreciated not having anyone – even the family he loves – in his space; not just in his office, a room I have not been inside in years, but in the entire building.
Now I am going to be home every day, in his house, breathing his air. It’s going to take some getting used to.
We already have some pieces in place. He has his own office in a converted garage with outside doors and no direct connection to the house. You have to go outside and unlock the office to gain access to his lair.
Yes, this is his actual door. Note that I have not yet vanished.
I also have my own office. It’s a smaller space in a shop building we added a few years ago when our previous shop space succumbed to a winter wind storm. (Yes, Oregon has severe winds on the coast. They’d be hurricanes if they’d just get organized, but fortunately they do not.)
When we were developing the plans we carved out a corner for an office with additional attention paid to plans to use it as a recording studio, in case we decided to try our hands at audio production. The office has a door, and a sign over it. The sign was a gift from my husband when I wrote two novels based on the ALIAS television series, and mimics the sign on the disguised door to the heroes’ secret headquarters.
Not to be outdone, I also have a "Beware of the Parrot" plaque, a nod to Bluebeard, the foul-mouthed parrot in my Haunted Gift Shop Mystery series.
Both offices are basically invitation-only, and we aren’t inclined to invite people in very often, though that is primarily a function of who we are as creatives. Your mileage may vary.
I realize not everyone has the luxury of that much space, but whether you have a dedicated space (a topic for another time) or not, you still need to talk about how you want to spend your time. The important thing is to preserve whatever distance you need to create, and the retirement of either you or your non-creative partner is going to affect that distance.
When your partner retires, they might want you to spend more time with them. Really, isn’t that why they are your partner in the first place? The same applies when you retire. You want to spend more time with them. In fact, this is probably something you see as a benefit of retirement.
But who decides how much time? What kind of time? What to do with that time?
And there is the issue. When you are in a committed relationship, who controls your time?
This likely isn't a new question. You have always struggled with the need for time to create. But while you may have reached some kind of accommodation while one or both of you had outside jobs, expectations may change when you leave that outside job.
So what do you do?
You do what (I hope) you have always done. You communicate. Be honest with your partner about what your hopes for retirement are. How much time you want, or need, to be happy and creative. How much space you need to be by yourself and allow your creativity to blossom.
For some of you this is going to be a tough discussion. You've come to this stage with a series of compromises that left neither of you particularly happy.
It's good to have a goal!
Maybe you've had to steal time from early mornings, or weekends, or late nights to create, and you or your partner hopes that will change, but you have never said so clearly and directly.
Maybe one or the other of you has harbored hopes that your creative endeavors were just stress relief and you wouldn't need that time once the outside job went away.
Maybe you never had the hard conversation about what your creative time means to you, how important it is to how you want to live your life.
Let me offer an example of what that conversation might look like.
I came to writing later in life. I did not admit my creative nature, sublimating it in acceptable female pursuits like sewing, needlework, and baking, or take what I wrote at all seriously until I was nearly fifty. On the other hand my husband was always a creative person, primarily expressing that in writing (he's also a decent sketch artist, a scratch-build modeler, a photographer and a videographer, as well as an accomplished mimic who is very good at broadcast voices and dramatic readings).
Early in our life together I was trying to make sense of how we might structure our life together. It was, after all, the first time I had tried to figure out how to live with a creative person.
At one point I asked him, quite seriously, what he wanted to do with his life. (Pro Tip: This might be a good question to ask before you move in together. Whatever, it seems to have worked out.)
He answered without hesitation, "I want to tell stories."
He didn't modify or limit his response by specifying how he wanted to tell those stories; he just wanted to be a story-teller in whatever fashion he could.
That answer has been the bedrock of our life. How do we make room for him - and now for me - to tell our stories.
It takes time and space to do that, and it's taken a long time for us to find the balance that makes it possible, but we do it because it is important. It has taken some serious and sometimes painful conversations and negotiations, occasionally involving, ahem, enhanced volume.
It has also taken the most difficult piece, complete honesty. Tell your partner what you really want, what you need, and ask them to do the same.
Find the balance between those two that works for your relationship. That point may change over time, I know ours has, so keep checking back with your partner.
Compromise and balance in the face of changes. Really, that's at the heart of any long-term relationship.
I hope you find yours.