I relate a lot to your post.
I’m very newly retired and while I have a daughter, I don’t feel like a SAHM. I have a PhD in an engineering field and after years as a successful researcher/engineer I rose through the ranks as a tenured professor. Although,I was at a teaching University so after more than a decade of teaching the same classes by the end my job became very easy and required minimal time. In theory it was my dream job, and I had tons of free time after the years of working my way up, pay was great for the time required,, but the environment became so toxic that I just couldn’t stand it any longer. Perhaps having exhausted any new potential opportunities (at the ceiling unless I went into admin which I had no desire to do) contributed to my dissatisfaction, but it was also a horrible working environment.
I told my parents and friends that I was taking a year off, and they have all been basically supportive of that as they all knew how burnt out I was. I figure that at the end of the year I’ll just tell them that I’m taking another year off lol, but I guess eventually I’ll have to tell them. My father especially will really not understand unless I just say that my husband is supporting me. Which, my husband is working and covering the daily bills (we may have to pull from investments for large expenses), but the reason we can do this is bc of all of the work, planning and investing that I’ve done. Eg., we are set up so that he too can retire in two years or so (although he likes his job and may not want to).It feels crappy to have my professional identity replaced with “a woman being supported by her hard working dh,” so I feel like I also totally relate to you there.
