YOU WANT PEACE IN THE HOME, RENEGOTIATE YOUR ROLE

I mentioned in a earlier, post, communicating with each other about roles and how to fill in the spaces in each other’s lives is crucial to making a smooth transition into the Second Half. In an amusing article, “‘Honey, I'm Home! - For Good: The Transition to Retirement,” Kirk Bloir illuminates the situation by quoting a couple’s reaction to their new circumstances:

"At first it was great having George around all of the time, but now he's into everything. He's rearranged my cupboards, moved the linens from one closet to the other, and has started giving me his own Hints from Heloise. When he was working, I never heard a peep about how I ran my home. If I have to hear one more time about how much he misses the 'guys' I'm going to scream. You know, I really thought it would be different, better somehow."
"For the past couple of weeks, things have been great—Ginger and I were really enjoying each other's company. Now all we seem to do is fight. The other day when I helped her out by maximizing our storage space and offered a more efficient way to do the dishes, man did she hit the roof. And I really miss my pals at the shop. It seems as if my usefulness has run its course."

Are you having difficulty navigating your way into the Second Half with your spouse? A good starting point is to understand that retirement is a process not an end state. Or to put it another way, the problem is not being retired, but becoming retired. Bearing this point in mind, it helps if you reframe your retirement and passage into the Second Half as a process involving yourself and your spouse. I failed to do this. When I retired I made every conceivable mistake, beginning with failing to tell my wife I was planning to retire. I had been thinking about leaving work for a while, and when the opportunity presented itself I was ready to jump. Unfortunately, I did not take into account the psychological and emotional impact it would have on my wife, or myself for that matter. Thanks to her understanding and patience, we were able to work through many issues and, in the process, strengthen our relationship.

One of the most important issues is being careful not to infringe upon your spouse’s role as homemaker, wife and mother. The best way to do this is to involve them in carving out a new role for yourself. Remember, work occupied about 40 percent of your time. When you retire, the challenge is to fill in that time without tripping over each other as I did. One spouse summed up the problem this way: “I never imagined it would be so hard to be together 24/7.” Another wife put it this way: “I am with this person for better or worse, but not for lunch.”

With apologies to non-traditional couples, I am referring to males in traditional Boomer marriages, where there is a tendency to become involved in activities that are normally the province of their wives. For example, I had two school-age children when I retired. My wife had done an absolutely wonderful job of raising them while I was bringing home the bacon. One day, I made a suggestion about something to do with their schoolwork; I do not remember exactly what it was. I do remember my wife exclaiming with some frustration that she had always made the decisions about the children’s schooling, so why was I getting involved now? I failed to take into account that over the course of a marriage, both of us took on roles that became part of who we were. When one of the spouses unwittingly takes on the other’s role and invades their turf, it is often a source of anger. If this sounds familiar, become more sensitive to your spouse’s role and turf in the house especially when you are tempted to rearrange the furniture in the living room, or straighten out the pantry, or give instructions to the cleaning lady. If you do you’ll earn the gratitude of your spouse and reduce the level of frustration and anger in your home.