This is an opinion column

My husband calls them “the lost boys,” those retired men who follow along behind their wives at the big box stores, carrying the list and loading the heavy stuff into the cart. He is well past retirement age, but doesn’t ever want to cross that line for fear he’ll just sit there and watch the leaves change with the season.

This is not likely to happen. He has burning interests, like volunteering to teach British poetry, cooking delicious meals, watching Alabama football, and hiking up Monte Sano Mountain listening to Proust or another of his favorite writers.

But at a certain age, one member of the couple will retire, or at least work at home most of the time, and the other has to deal with it. We’ve been lucky enough to deal with it easily, since our old house has upstairs and downstairs space that each of us can claim. I joke that the reason we get along so well is that we don’t live together much of the time. We share the kitchen and the bedroom, and everything else is his or hers.

A few years ago, a friend of mine said she bristled each time her newly retired husband came into what she thought of as her space. She’d turn around, and there he was. She said it was like having a grand piano in her kitchen. What was it doing there?

One way to share space easily during the retirement years is to like each other in the first place. Imagine staring across the room for 30, 40, or 50 years at someone you might not choose if you had to choose all over again.