SOLVED. Science Fiction - Astronauts return to future Earth. [s]

[Jonathan]

I read a book/perhaps short story as a kid in late 80s or early 90s...
2 astronauts return to earth after exploring at close to the speed of light, and many years have passed, the evolved society is completely foreign to them and they have difficulty reintegrating. Males in the new society drink some kind of medicine that reduces their violent and masculine tendencies, making crime and violence virtually nonexistent. SPOILER?


Toward the end I remember the astronauts, frustrated with the lack of physical competition in society, drive out to the country and use boxing gloves to spar. A girl / love interest sees them and is frightened and drives off, and the astronauts realize they can never be happy or exist in society as it has evolved, and decide to return to space. I remember them being in the spaceport and the time announcement rings out as "28:00" or something like that, and the protagonist realizes he is so archaic that "even the way they tell time is different."

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Have been trying to remember the title for years.

[Angela]

Return From the Stars by Stanisław Lem?

From Kirkus: "First published in 1961, and not much like any of Lem's recent work. Astronaut Hal Bregg returns from a pioneering ten-year flight to Fomalhaut, to find that by Einsteinian time-logic 127 years have elapsed on Earth. Stumbling through the unintelligible wonders of the new world, he learns that violent impulses are now automatically erased from all minds in infancy. With them have disappeared any capacity for conscious physical risk and any disposition to value risky endeavors; despite the immense technical achievements of the new civilization (e.g., gravitation engineering), all thoughts of space flight have long been abandoned and the return of the Fomalhaut survivors is regarded with a tolerant indifference worse than hostility. The plot is slight; the real focus is the competing claims of Earth and space past, present, and future. The writing is leisurely and elaborate, with a lot of gorgeous descriptive set-pieces. One can see the elements of some favorite Lem paradoxes here, but they are treated with a sort of unhurried romanticism that may come as a surprise to admirers of his more astringent fables. Atypical work from a master, but carried off with characteristic panache. (Kirkus Reviews, May 1 , 1980)"

[Jonathan]

That's it!! Thank you very much! This has been nagging at me for a very long time :)