Retirement Is Wonderful

Retirement for Two
by Maryanne Vandervelde, Ph.D.

(Page 2 of 2)

Chapter 2

Retirement Is Wonderful

Anticipation

One of the reasons that so many couples have problems in retirement is that they don't anticipate the changes accurately. It is optimistic and rather charming that so many people think retirement will be wonderful. For example, Prudential Securities did a survey of 826 married Americans between the ages of forty and sixty-five, reported in an article called "Happily Ever After? How Baby Boomers Envision Retirement."1 Their findings include the following:

• Eight-nine percent believe that they and their partner will become better friends.

• Seventy-four percent think that their relationship will become more romantic.

• Eighty-five percent say that both will agree on where to travel for vacations.

• Eighty-five percent think that they will agree on where to live.

• Most expect to agree on how much time to spend with family members (76 percent), how to spend leisure time (75 percent), and how to spend their money (71 percent).

But there are also some concerns:

• Fifty-four percent of the husbands who are the sole breadwinner say that it will be hard for them to adjust, and 61 percent of them expect to have a hard time developing new routines.

• Both men and women agree that the men will have a harder time finding new friends.

• Eighty-one percent feel that they need to plan better for what they will do in retirement.

• Seventy-nine percent think they need to prepare better financially.

It would be interesting to see surveys of the same group a year or two after they retire, and perhaps five years later, in order to compare expectations with reality-as well as to understand the effects of time. It is possible that their optimism about relationship issues will be warranted, but it's more likely that the 81 percent who say that they need to plan better, especially for what they will do, will find that this segues into partnership problems.

Maybe the optimists' satisfaction in relationship areas will be very high, but that still leaves room for many couples who will struggle. Indeed, the evidence below suggests that the adjustment process takes time and that anticipations need to be examined.

The Wall Street Journal recently featured a survey of one-year-retired adults done by Joel Savishinsky of Ithaca College, which looked at the rewards and challenges in that first twelve months. Expectations in the relationship areas were generally not very accurate; many psychological hurdles were not anticipated. But the study also found that by the end of the first year, life really starts to get comfortable if couples are working through the problems.

Many of these surveyed couples found happiness especially in "drift time," and this is a lovely, graceful idea. For example, they could start out on a bicycle trip but never make it to their destination because they had the luxury to digress, to slow down, to change directions. They could go to the grocery store at any time of day. If plan A for their time didn't feel right, they could divert to plan B or C or D.

The adjustment may take some time and effort, and retirement will never be perfect, but many of those surveyed after one year said that it was wonderful.

The Fun-and-Games Picture

Most of us keep our noses pretty much to the grindstone as we move through life. For those of us who are achievement-oriented, this pattern probably started when we were very young children. From about age twenty to sixty-a long and, with luck, productive forty years-we jump through a lot of hoops. We build our careers, raise our children, take care of our parents, tend a few friendships, and try to save some money.

This should not imply that life is a straight line to retirement. Most people have some periodic existential crises that propel them into course corrections-a different educational path after becoming bored, a change in career or financial goals after being fired or getting a promotion, a new approach to relationships after a painful breakup, an altered lease on life after becoming a parent.

Some of us have major early-life or midlife crises, during which we drastically alter our directions-getting a divorce, completely changing our lifestyle, dealing with an addiction to alcohol or drugs, sometimes buying the proverbial red Porsche.

But most of us chug along through those forty years like the little engine that could. Our diversions from the straight and narrow are few; our obligations and commitments are many. We know our roles within our primary relationships, and we try to be a good, supportive partner.

If we're smart, we also have some fun along the way, but we usually find ourselves reacting more than acting. We have many opportunities to make choices, but we also have a lot of life simply thrust upon us. In fact, people in business careers say that their lives have become exponentially harder in the last twenty-five years. "There are a lot more demands on the schedule, we're all expected to be quick, and we're all playing on a bigger stage because it's global."

It's no wonder, then, that most people look forward to retirement-or jubilado, as the Spanish so elegantly call it. Those forty years may not have worked out exactly as we wished or in the ways that we expected, but now we will finally be free of most constraints. If the world will not totally be our oyster, there is at least a shiny new shell waiting to be opened.

Excerpted from Retirement for Two by Maryanne Vandervelde Copyright © 2004 by Maryanne Vandervelde. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Maryanne Vandervelde, Ph.D., is a psychologist, human resources expert, and founder of the Seattle-based Institute for Couples in Retirement. She defined a national trend in her popular book The Changing Life of the Corporate Wife (140,000 copies sold), has contributed to the New York Times, Fortune Magazine, Forbes Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and has appeared on the Today Show, Oprah, CNN, and NPR.