We also negotiate activities. I love the ballet. We have season tickets to the Kennedy Center. We meet friends there for dinner and it becomes a nice night out. He’d never do it without me but I think he’s come to appreciate it a bit over time. Next year we’re going on a cruise to the Baltic Sea. I told him he could pick any and all activities in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Talinn if I could pick St Petersburg. I did warn him the Mariinsky and Vaganova school were there.
“We love them, but it would be great to just visit each day and have our own nice, clean space to go home to each night. For retirement, maybe a regular sized lot with a few of those tiny homes would be ideal.”
The she shed trend became a thing a few years back. Those are like tiny houses. 
I don’t ever recall hearing about she sheds until it was a Jeopardy answer, just yesterday.
LOL. D just got me going in Pokemon Go. It was “community day” so she taught me how to play and we went to the local park and had a great time. I’m very late to the game but I love games. Bonus is that it’s exercise based. Trying to get H to at least download it so we can be “friends “…
Our hobbies right now as a couple would be figuring where we want to travel next, cooking (he cooks, I eat) and binge watching favorite shows. We’ve always had fun taking classes together
@Midwest67 — my mom and dad were married 70 years. She had cancer and her “own schedule “ for the last 10 years so each had their own bedroom. Living in different rooms doesn’t mean you don’t love one another.
Everyone needs to do what works best. No judgments.
@doschicos, I’m in for the Ben and Jerry’s club. Right now I’m working on NY Super Fudge Chunk and Americone Dream.
When it comes to how husbands and wives divide hobbies, if they’re happy, I’m happy for them. My husband and I have always done many things independently, we both work a lot, and neither of us has that many hobbies. We do see to be doing a little more together than ever since the kids are mostly out of the nest.
One of my worries is we will pick a retirement place based on doing a lot of things together there, and then one of us will become somewhat incapacitated or worse, die, soon into retirement.
We married because we became best friends who enjoyed doing oodles of things together and 30+ years later we’re still best friends who enjoy doing oodles of things together.
It’s tearing at both of our heartstrings now that we need to each tend to our parents’ needs - perhaps life ending needs - and can’t be there for each other in person.
Our work life is where we have separate niches, but we share a lot of that with each other too. Not the actual work, but how our days went.
I can’t imagine anything better.
My husband would happily join the Ben and Jerry’s club. He can eat a pint in one sitting, generally after dinner while watching TV and sitting on the couch!
Other than bridge, which has been a great addition to our lives as we play duplicate (competitively), go to tournaments, take classes, etc, we don’t have other shared activities that are…frequent. We share a love of travel, theater, a periodic concert, movies, and watching certain shows together. We have season tickets to a speaker series and to the theater.
Dh loves spectator sports so he watches a lot of events on TV and periodically also goes to games. He has season tickets to his alma mater’s football games and it’s rare that he’d ever miss a game. He enjoys wine, wine tasting, fine food, crossword puzzles and reading.
I am more social, volunteer with two organizations, play bridge with other people (dh only plays with me), attend religious services on occasion, walk with friends, go to exercise class 2-3 times a week, meet friends for lunch, am in a book club and recently learned to play mahjong.
Dh says that if I said it was important for me to join him in one of my activities (I’m thinking services, a lecture, etc.) he would but I tend to not really want him to join me if he wouldn’t choose to go on his own. He, on the other hand, prefers me to be with him for most things (other than sporting events, fortunately).
I guess I wish we did more things together that we mutually enjoyed during the day/week. Now that he’s retired, there’s too much sitting around which is why I tend to make plans to get out of the house. And it’s important to me to keep up my other activities/relationships with my friends.
@Creekland even if you two can’t be there with each other, you are there for each other. Very best to both sides of your family.
@HouseChatte Thanks. We definitely appreciate smartphones and the internet. He’s already texted me pictures from his flight. I’m keeping him up on my mom’s status. If we had divorced, she’d have kept him and ditched me. 
They get along great so it really tears him up to leave.
He really is a great guy and we both love the fact that we enjoy doing pretty much everything together - from scuba to mountain hiking (as per our avatar) or puttering around small towns in places we’re exploring. We never “set out” to pick a spouse that way. It just happened from college and our doing things together, including travel, then. He learned to like cats (truly loves them now). I learned to like camping (ditto).
@Midwest67 we also sleep apart and have for almost our entire married life. Like your dh, mine had back issues and so wanted to sleep in a recliner but also was a snorer. He used to be in the living room when the boys were home but now has ds2’s room, and it works out great for us! I am shocked how many people stay sleeping together when snoring, room temp issues and other things create strife.
We actually had a taste of what retirement could be like last fall when we were in Hong Kong. DH was a visiting professor with very few responsibilities. They really didn’t want him working in the lab! (You’re too important to get your hands dirty!) In two and a half months he gave two lectures and attended a mostly once a week lab meeting. There were some other meetings involving a collaborative project, but that was really it. We were in what was essentially a hotel room. There were times when it felt like way too much togetherness, but it mostly worked out really well. We had a great time when we were sightseeing and/or hiking. I took some painting and cooking classes. What I missed most was not having any real way to plug into the local community.
It’s funny how we all have different things that bother us both individually and as a couple. So many people mention not caring for sleeping in the same room as their spouse due to snoring, TV, whatever. For me, the sleeping isn’t the issue - neither of us snore, thrash around, there’s no TV in the bedroom, it’s peaceful. So I don’t have any objection to sharing a room for sleeping, instead the issue arise in the sharing space for being awake. Maybe I have a high need for alone time, but I like some alone time. And I would really enjoy having some of my own living/working/hanging out space that is mine alone. It’s not about disliking my spouse or any other people, I’d just enjoy physical space that is set up exactly how I want it, that I don’t feel like I’m choosing between living with mess or being the maid… that’s just stress free.
“Next year we’re going on a cruise to the Baltic Sea. I told him he could pick any and all activities in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Talinn if I could pick St Petersburg. I did warn him the Mariinsky and Vaganova school were there.”
@eyemamom We took that Baltic Sea cruise eighteen months ago. I’m sure you have already researched it, but St. Petersburg is the one place where you either have to go on one of the cruise’s excursions, or you had to have applied for a visa many months ahead of time so that you can explore other areas.
Talinn was our favorite stop!
We have a big house and can easily get away from each other. I’m not sure how I would feel if we were in a small space. My husband has all sorts of partially completed projects all over the place- replacing parts in computers, rebuilding bicycles, repairing electronics etc. It’s annoying, but I can avoid it all. My clutter is mainly confined to my clothes and shoes!
I envision a temperature problem when I retire. My husband is very environmentally conscious (I am more normal level of concern) and keeps the place freezing in the winter and hot as H3LL in the summer (until I get home from work). I am reasonable about temperatures, but our house is ridiculous, and then he is SO proud of our low utility bills! We have solar panels and an electric car. That’s all great, but you have to be at a tolerable temperature, in my opinion.
We have the great outdoors year round and H is often puttering outside—the yard of his countless projects. It works well for both of us. I have my computer in the living room where I do a lot for my nonprofit. I also virtually and in person attend a lot of meetings.
We both play Pokémon Go (an online game played with our respective phones). We’ve met sone nice new friends while playing.
We enjoy dining out and travel together. We travel to my meetings & conferences several times/year. Sometimes some of my travel is reimbursed.
I just have to confess that if my husband had a complaint about me it would probably be that I have clutter all around the house. He however, thinks clean means tidy, where I think mold and anything with an expiration date before maybe last year are pretty disgusting. We share chores, and don’t have a housekeeper, so this maybe a bigger problem when we have more time in the house.
It has been so interesting reading all of the responses. DH and I are sending the youngest off to college this August. While the younger two may come home during breaks or after graduating, this will be the first time to be home alone. I met him when I had a preschooler.
He used to worry that we didn’t have a shared hobby. We share enough activities, views, and values that so far it’s working. 20 years and counting.
He lives for sports and music. I love to read, do home projects, and shop. We both enjoy going out to eat, traveling, and walking, especially near water. We plan to get kayaks and a hot tub. We also both need to get in better shape.
We are making a pre-retirement move and plan to buy a house that we can age into long term, with space for the kids and/or guests.
We don’t entertain much now but I hope to make some friends in our new location that we can hang out with for casual get togethers. We used to do that early on but never found the right group after we moved away.
My parents are retired tennis players and have fully embraced the pickleball craze. I hope that we both stay healthy and alive to be able to age together.
I’m an introvert and my husband is an extrovert. We do many things together, but we each do things on our own too. I think what you and your spouse are doing sounds reasonable.
I think it helps to try to find a balance. Has your friend tried saying she’ll go to his next hobby event if he’ll attend a festival with her? Unless there’s an underlying medical issue that makes your spouse never want to leave the couch, it seems a little selfish to insist on always following the interests of one spouse. It sounds like that’s what might be happening with your friend. If she’s been trying to compromise and he’s not budging then maybe it would help them to see a counselor.
I’m glad someone brought up the separate bedrooms because I was surprised at how many in our friend group have separate rooms. To me, that makes sense on so many levels. We use our guest room for that purpose, and I use it often as DH’s snoring started interrupting my sleep a few years ago, and one of us will use it when one has to get up significantly earlier than the other. Sometimes, if I get up in the middle of the night and can’t get right back to sleep, I’ll read in the guest room until I’m tired and will either finish out the night there or quietly slip back into our bed. We’ve always viewed bedrooms as sanctuaries for peace and sleep, so no TVs or distractions there, but sometimes the sleeping habits and needs of the mate are distraction enough to make separate rooms a great solution.