4: Your MARRIAGE may profit from a little less togetherness
After surviving decades of married life, you thought retirement would be like a second honeymoon. No more early-morning alarm bells or long commutes to spoil the mood. But guess again. Retirement often creates friction between married couples, weakening even the strongest ties.
When couples think about their golden years, they concentrate on finances or long-delayed travel plans. What they often neglect to prepare for is how to handle so much togetherness. Between meetings with the boss and shuttling the kids to softball practice, many working couples don't have much alone time. It's a luxury that they eagerly anticipate with work and children in the rearview mirror. Despite the tension they create, jobs and kids actually help couples by giving them a daily routine. Getting rid of that structure throws marrieds into a vast territory with no guidebook.
So when decades of the daily grind suddenly screech to a halt, husbands and wives start to see each other in a new light. "There's a chance to grow apart when you're focused on the day to day," says Daniel Kadlec, coauthor of The Power Years: A User's Guide to the Rest of Your Life. After couples retire, many "look at each other and say, 'What are we doing?'" he says.
That has created a trend known as "gray divorce." With Americans staying healthier longer, the retirement years are stretched out, giving couples even more time together. Many refuse to settle for retirement with marital discord. The divorce rate among Americans older than 65 grew from 6.7 percent in March 2000 to 8 percent four years later, according to U.S. census figures.
No escape. Experts say the constant togetherness exacerbates existing problems, bringing long-running tensions bubbling to the top. The closeness means more chances for daily battles with no office escape. Many people think retirement is going to be easy, and it shocks them to find bumps, says Clare Hushbeck, an economist with AARP.
But that doesn't mean all hope is lost. There are plenty of options to making sure retirement doesn't drive a wedge between husband and wife.
Sharing hobbies is one way that helps couples forge new bonds, as Warren and Sheila Strauss of Jacksonville, Ore., have found. When Warren, 65, retired from teaching high school in 1989, Sheila, 62, says she felt smothered by having him around all the time. Sheila stopped her fiction writing, because her husband would interrupt her work flow with comments, "even when I put a skull and crossbones on the door." It was also hard for her to have Warren keep tabs on her daily schedule. "Sometimes you feel like the house isn't your own," says Sheila. So the couple took up painting and making stained glass, which they do together in the same room. Sheila says it's a creative outlet they share that doesn't put her at odds with Warren.
Gradual or staggered retirement is another way to ease into the new lifestyle, giving couples time to settle into life without work. Judy Bordwell says retirement threw her and her husband, Pete, for a loop after the school where she was a social worker offered her early retirement six years ago. With Pete still working as a Chicago television sports producer, the housekeeping system that the Evanston, Ill., couple had for decades suddenly went out the window. At first, Judy had trouble adjusting to doing more of the chores and being at home, but then Pete took up cooking to help out in the kitchen, and she took classes to fill her time. Judy says that her leaving work first "sort of paved the way for" Pete when he retired four years later. Retirement "did take some getting used to," she says. But now it "presents a lot of creative time for couples to enjoy."
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