I want to start out this post with something I said here at RJsCorner about seven years ago:

I must admit that I am probably more adventurous than many seniors.  I enjoy constant stimulation. I enjoy planning and doing things that I have never done before. To sit around the house day after day is very boring to me. My senior years certainly give me an opportunity to do some adventurous things. Unfortunately, like many other seniors I imagine, I am married to a spouse who doesn’t share my sense of adventure. She is much more inclined to spend her day around the house. She says she enjoys the “simple” things.

Living for the past twenty-five years together has been an interesting experience. Our differences in personality, she is yin and I am yang, have made for some rather provocative times. I have mellowed a little over the years and she has shown a slightly more adventurous spirit but according to my definition of adventurous not to any significant degree. So, here I am wanting to travel and enjoy new things in my senior years and here she is just wanting to stay at home and do pretty much the same thing from one day to the next. I’m not sure how to resolve these differences?  Do I dare suggest that we both do what we went (she stays home and I travel)? I just don’t know.  

As we have grown older we have grown further apart on what gives us joy.  We are still committed to each other but now recognize that different things make us happy.  I am convinced that she will be happy doing the same thing day after day until her last day on this earth.  That’s OK if that is what she wants.  But what about me? When I wrote the words above I didn’t have an answer to that question.

But about three years ago I did dare to suggest that she could stay home while I traveled alone. At first, she was not too happy about my suggestion but did finally accepted the fact that that was the only way that we both get what we want out of the life we have left.

Prior to this discussion, I had spent three years turning my 1992 work truck with a cap on back into a micro-RV of sorts.  I told her while I was building it that this was my “boat in the basement” project and that I was doing it just for the fun of it.  Of course, I was not totally truthful in that regard. I always dreamed of using it.

Coming to a quick end here, I have spent the last three years now alone on the road. I have done sixteen road trips so far and plan another six this year. I am happy and she is now resolved to be content with my being gone once in a while. I tell her “You got me 95% of the time, I just want to be on my own once in awhile.

I wonder how many other seniors face this situation? I know the statistics of senior divorces has grown significantly in the last couple decades. I wonder if that is one of the reasons?