This post is the second in a series. Read Part 1.

For decades, neurosurgery dominated the majority of my waking days and many, many nights. I stepped away from that world a few years ago. What follows is a continued exploration of what I believe are some universal emotional complexities of retirement and some strategies to deal with them.

Throughout our careers, we tend to hold onto an antiquated image of our life partners. We see them as the people they were before we submerged into our work universes, perhaps for decades. When we finally emerge, we expect them to persist as that person. We expect to pick up with them right where we left off. The problem is that time hasn’t stopped for them. They have had their own independent careers, challenges, and life experiences. They may have developed vastly different interests, friendships, activities, and causes from us. We and our significant others are now presented with the chilling challenge of determining whether we are still right for each other.

Strategies: Ideally, we and our significant others intertwine throughout our lives, evolving and growing together. This takes intentionality, creativity, and prioritization. We must make time for each other and spend that time wisely. The more we make an effort to get home for meals, to schedule activities with each other, to put down our smartphones, to step away from the TV, to play, to experience, to engage, to talk, to hash things out together, the less we become strangers.

When we submerge into our careers, our children are indeed children. Or, they may mysteriously appear along the way. But again, we tend........

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