Retirement Marriages Have Challenges

Life moves on for all of us. Many are at a place we didn’t plan on or dream about - facing challenges we didn’t anticipate. One of those challenges in finding marital satisfaction during the retirement years. Here are a couple of major challenges to marital satisfaction that retired couples face.

1. Loss of Identity. Men who have spent their lives finding meaning and satisfaction in work are faced with an abrupt change. With this change, there is a loss of purpose, meaning, and structure along with the loss of male friendships in the workplace.

Something close to the core of one’s identity has come to an end. It is a time to reflect on disappointments, put closure on unfulfilled dreams and accept limitations of age, income and circumstances. Usually it is about no longer being needed or useful. This can lead to loss of self-esteem, depression or confusion about how to replace the role of work in one’s life.

This can also happen for career women from the baby boomer generation who have found fulfillment in work and in their collegial work friendships. If they both retire at the same time, then there are two struggling souls impacting on each other. If a man retires first, he may become unhappy when his wife continues to work or engage in other meaningful activities outside the home.

However, for women who have had a major focus on mothering, the emptiness came with the empty nest. They faced this crisis of a major role change earlier and are well on their way to expressing long repressed needs by making a contribution in the workplace or making a greater difference in the community. They enjoy their new freedom and are anxious to express their creative energy outside the home while their husbands are pressuring them to join them in carving out a joint lifestyle.

How does this impact marriage? In Japan, they call it the "retired husband syndrome" with real health consequences for wives affected by retired spouses. In the U.S. it is referred to jokingly as "Twice as much husband and half as much income," or wry references to a "husband underfoot."

Many women don’t experience a change of identity with retirement. They are busy and hope to keep on doing what they have always done - running errands, belonging to social groups, talking on the phone to friends and family, being involved with the grandchildren. Now they feel smothered by a husband at home who may be jealous and resentful of these activities.

Basically, some men have a demanding, "let me take over" attitude toward home as they attempt to find meaning at home by invading territory and roles that have traditionally been the wife’s prerogative. They use a command and control style of communications more suited to the workplace. They nitpick, criticize and blame their wives for perceived mistakes.

They don’t do their share of household chores and expect to be taken care of in the same way they were when they were being productive outside on the home. The lack of fairness in work load at home begins to grate and build resentment and anger.

Wives can be obstinate also in their unwillingness to share the empty nest and domestic duties with her husband who is anxious to be useful and involved with something.

2. Unaccustomed togetherness. Whatever romantic illusions may have been entertained by the prospect of having one’s spouse on a 24/7 basis runs smack dab into the reality that two routines are being forced to merge into one.

Merging separate lives. Some differences in their relationship were successfully avoided by busy work lives and family obligations. The buffers are gone - the conversations about jobs, bills, logistics and children - buffers both partners used to avoiding in-depth discussion of painful differences, unresolved hurts and resentments. At some point they stopped talking, being friends, or enjoying recreational companionship.

By working out a comfortable level of separateness and autonomy through differing schedules and agendas, they didn’t learn to accommodate each other and take each other’s feelings into account. They could live separate lives, not share common interests or activities and skillfully avoid conflict. Retirement ruins all that.

The challenge is coming together, being forced to work on retirement issues as a team, while not really knowing each other nor particularly finding pleasure in each other’s company.

History of marriage problems. If they have a history of unresolved conflict, togetherness will reveal long-standing fissures that can no longer be ignored. Marriage problems that existed before retirement will be even greater marriage problems after retirement. Now there is enough time to start and finish arguments. Money and control arguments are more prevalent.

Bad habits will still be bad habits, only more obvious and annoying on a daily basis. Poor communication will still be poor communication. The couple deals with the myriad of daily decisions with poor problem-solving and negotiation skills. There is a lot more grist for a mill that grinds more than softens or refines.

For all couples this new found togetherness puts their relationship to a test. They have to work out a balance of togetherness and autonomy, individual goals and joint activities, mutual enjoyment and acceptance of separateness.

(This is part one of a two part series. The part two will deal with how to successfully meet the challenges of marriage during retirement years.)