A) How Retirement Affects Relationships between Couples

Retirement may alter friendships and marriages. Television commercials aimed at retirees often present the image of a white-haired couple holding hands and walking barefoot on an exotic sandy beach, their healthy, trim bodies silhouetted in black against a beautiful setting sun.

The reality for many couples, however, can be quite different. In many cases, retirement may bring feelings of confusion, frustration, anger, depression, and isolation.

In some western cultures, the rate of divorce shows a sharp spike two times during the course of a lifetime. One is in the first seven years of marriage. The other, surprisingly, is just after retirement. Here’s how it can happen.

For the first time in thirty or forty years of married life, some couples find themselves home with each other, twenty-four hours a day. There are no children to distract the empty-nesters, no jobs to take them away for part of the day, and they have nothing particularly planned for retirement other than rest and relaxation. No matter how much these people like each other, this situation can be a recipe for disaster.

Retirement brings new challenges to a relationship. Both parties may have adjusted to a certain amount of time together each day. With retirement, the time spent in each other's company greatly increases. This intensive contact can disturb the equilibrium of the relationship and bring unresolved tensions to the surface.

Both men and women may struggle to adjust to this new situation. If prior to retirement, your partner stayed at home while you worked, she may resent your intrusion on her traditional 'territory', especially if, in an attempt to direct your urge to 'do something', you attempt to impose yourself on her well-established routines.

Tension can also arise out of the increased need for joint decision-making. Whereas, prior to retirement, the routine of work allowed for a relatively clear division of decision-making responsibilities, after retirement, there may be many more decisions that need to be made together. Unless both of you are prepared to listen and be flexible, a shift in decision-making can be a source of conflict.

The key, as with most relationship issues, is communication. Without effective, open communication, including the capacity to compromise and negotiate, the challenges of retirement can place critical strain on a marriage.

Retirement is a segment of life that requires re-invention of one’s goals, expectations, and pursuits. It also requires social readjustments, not just with new external friendship patterns to replace those lost at work, but more importantly, readjustments in behavior and expectations between spouses and partners.

Retirement not only alters your daily routine, but also changes the subtle interpersonal relationships between yourself and those close to you.

B) Handling Family Relationships during Retirement

Retirement has a profound effect on those closest to you. Some seemingly trivial things turn out not to be. In the household,

How will you decide who gets to use the computer?

Will you have lunch together every day?

Will you want to see your adult kids for dinner on Wednesday nights, and if so, do they know it?

What expectations do you have of your family and what do they have of you?

Take the initiative and talk with them about it.

Some retirees feel pressured by family to plan a retirement based on the extended family's needs — such as babysitting grandchildren — rather than their own. Investing in your friendships well before you retire and talking openly with family about your goals can help you avoid an unsatisfying retirement.

Far too often individuals approaching retirement say their biggest concern is that they have spent so much time and energy on their career and planning for their financial future that they have neglected to nurture one of their most valuable assets: Family.

Ask yourself about your relationships with your family. Getting older can become a very lonely business if we do not shore up damaged or even severed ties with family.

Research has proven that while many who retire without a family find creative ways to get the support they need, it is infinitely easier to mend and enhance the family relationships that you already have.

Basically, families are the most efficient economic unit known to modern society. Without governmental safety nets, families are there to help financially. They are also there for the emotional support, love, and even friendship.

The young and old benefit from the emotional sustenance provided by the family unit. A strong and unified family is also in a position to provide necessary love and care for their elderly members. Sadly, this is only true if time has been invested over the years in this economic unit. By taking the time to nurture family, the benefits reaped in later life are myriad.