Wow. I've gotta admit I cannot relate to any of this. I worked my ass off for 20 years of work and a small business, I think I did a great job. My wife worked her ass off for 20 years of taking care of a house and 3 kids, she definitely did a great job. We were both careful with spending. The kids got older and became much less work, and when she did that "well, I guess I'm supposed to go back to work now" talk I said no need to if she didn't want to (I don't know why someone would want to...) because we were on track to FI pretty soon anyway, and that her going back to work would only speed that up by a year or two and that its not like the kids are work-free in middle & high school, and she was happy with that response.... Now that we've hit our number she now pushes me to RE (I've GREATLY slowed down, working much fewer hours and from home only and am definitely getting closer to being done).
She laughs at my wasting time watching baseball, bowling with my son, playing guitar and tinkering with projects around the house, which I assume she'll continue to do. I'll laugh at her doing puzzles, napping on the porch, hanging out with her sister, and getting involved in community politics, which I assume I'll continue to do. We'll enjoy a couple/few hours a days together either just us or at kid stuff, and the occasional trips together which hopefully now can be more than occasional.
I throw out there the things I like to eat and sometimes they get made. She keeps a honey-do list going with no dates from which I complete the things that look interesting and ignore those that don't (sure I'll remodel the downstairs half-bath, that would be kind of interesting ...but there's no way I'm refinishing the hardwood floors throughout the house, what a pain and a mess). I'm not saying there were never times someone felt they were doing more work, but I think 99.9% of the time we each thought the other was doing their best when times were tough, and more than enough when things were easy. We would encourage each other sometimes to do some volunteer type thing...but that was always b/c the other was involved and just thought it would be fun to be involved together.
I guess I really don't get what would lead a spouse to pushing the other to be productive at something that did not directly help the family itself. I want and push my kids to be 'productive', but why would I have those feelings toward my spouse, am I afraid my wife is gonna "grow up" to be lazy, have trouble finding purpose and be unsuccessful in life? ;-)