I want to be supportive but feel strongly that our girls need someone to be with them more than we are now. Is being concerned just showing how much of a caveman I am?
There are many people, like you, who become accustomed to frugality and living in conditions they don’t really like in order to become financially stable. When they finally are, they’ve conditioned themselves so heavily to worry about money that they have trouble breaking out of those habits. I’m not sure this is a specific condition, but it’s not uncommon.
You need to give yourself permission to do it, and plan for it so that it doesn’t worry you. I would recommend that you meet with your financial planner and set some goals for what you’d like to do with your money, and then budget and schedule these expenses. For example, if you’re not happy with your apartment, look into what it would cost to upgrade to a place you would enjoy living in, and give yourself a budget and deadline for finding something.
Now is the time to have a conversation about what you both think retirement actually looks like for you, and what you want to do with it. That doesn’t mean you have to come up with a formal plan, but you should both have a sense of what your lives will look like once you are retired. The process of discussing this will help your wife envision the opportunities for you to enjoy retirement together more concretely, and it won’t seem to her like a vast abyss of having nothing to do.