The man in my life for the last decade --- my love, lover, significant other, best friend --- I've lost him. Not to death. Not to another woman. But to retirement.
While he has left lawyering, I have not. He spends his weekdays reading novels on the couch, doing crosswords at the corner coffee shop, taking spontaneous road trips. I spend my weekdays hatching novel legal strategies and thinking cross words about unappreciative clients. My road trips are to outlying courthouses.
Back in the days when both of us earned our living as lawyers, I occasionally came across articles telling how retirement can affect both people in a committed romantic relationship. Reading the articles did not prepare me for the great sense of loss I now feel.
For the past several years, we have practiced law in the same place. The other members of the office knew him and respected our ability not to let our personal lives affect that at the office. I found his presence comforting and his professional expertise welcome. So successfully did we establish separate personal and professional realms that we rarely discussed office business after hours. Whoever wanted to had to obtain permission from the other person. (Permission was never withheld.)
Then our office lease expired. He decided to close out his law practice rather than stay with the rest of us as we embarked on the daunting task or finding new space that would meet our collective needs.
I, meanwhile, had great difficulty adjusting to the idea of the move. My ambivalence about the office move --- the people, place – made me very emotionally needy. At almost all other times, my significant other has been a wonderful listener and very supportive. However, during the move, I sensed him withdrawing emotionally. That may have been his way of detaching himself from the office, and on that level, I can understand it. However, as his lover, I found that my emotional need to talk about the office situation was not being met. To make things worse, immediately after the move, he became ill for two weeks and didn't want visitors (we don't live together) or care packages.
I was concerned about his health, but I have to admit to resenting his physical and emotional absence during my time of need.
He is now on the mend, and I am becoming accustomed to my new office. He has come by once to say hello to the gang. I was distant to him and found myself thinking that his appearance --- sloppy, it seemed to me --- took away from the professional appearance of our place of business. Was I jealous?
I am unsure of how to relate to him. We do have a history of being able to work through difficult moments, and that may yet occur. In the meantime, I feel on untried soil.
Intellectually, I know that these changes in our lives --- his retirement, my office move, his absence from my professional life --- are opportunities for growth. Right now though, it is too early to tell the long-term impact of these changes on our personal relationship.
Note
The Lawyers' Assistance Program (LAP) is a confidential service providing assessment and referral to a broad range of problems confronting lawyers. These include stress, burnout, depression, career dissatisfaction, alcohol and drug abuse. Contact LAP at (206) 727-8268.
Originally printed in the Washington State Bar News, February 1993.
