The husband retired from his job and the company gave him a retirement party.

Because of the large amount of gift money he received he wanted to write thank you cards to each company building's employees.

Cards were purchased and he settled down to write something in the cards while watching tv in the evening. He asked the wife for help. Because she was watching a program she was a bit short in her reply and suggested that he practice writing something on scrap paper. He didn't like that response. So she finally looked at what he was doing - he had written a couple words and started to print the third word (which was the point where he asked her to help).

She ended up writing a complete sentence "Thank you for your contributions to my retirement gift". He then took the three cards and wrote the sentence in each - without showing his work to the wife (The wife believes now this his way of hiding his hurt and anger.)

The husband felt bad enough about the difficulty he had that, in a little while, he brought the subject up for discussion. He said he hasn't had to write things out for quite a few years. He relies now on typing text in Facebook comments and emails. He pointed out those places identify words that might be misspelled at which time he will either use the suggested spelling or ask the wife how to spell it correctly.

This was so difficult to talk about that his voice cracked.

It's so difficult to acknowledge that you can't do something - that you don't have a skill that  hampers your abilities to accomplish a task!

So the wife talked about how everyone has different skills and together married people can fill the gaps of each others skills. She pointed out how clean the house is now that he is retired!! And all the good work he is doing to fix up their retirement home.

This has been just one glimpse into the world of our marriage.