The Right Retirement Program
Helps Avoid Marital Conflict

As couples begin their retirement planning, they may not realize that the combination of retirement and marriage can be challenging, often changing their relationships and potentially threatening the overall quality of their marriages. However, there are retirement programs that can help with the transition.

The Cornell Retirement and Well-Being Study, published in 2001, states that "The transition to retirement is particularly stressful, especially when one spouse retires before the other. During this time, couples fight much more and are significantly less satisfied with their marriages. Once both spouses are settled into retirement from their careers, however, marital satisfaction rebounds and couples report the highest level of marital satisfaction with the least conflict, compared with their peers."

According to retirement expert Ronald J. Manheimer, Ph.D., Executive Director for the NC Center for Creative Retirement, it is better if both partners figure out and declare their individual retirement goals rather than have one simply go along with the other's plans.

"That passivity, we have found, leads to trouble later on as one partner may feel disappointed and even resentful that he or she did not get to share in writing the next chapter of the couple's life," he says.

Christine A. Price, State Gerontology Specialist for the Ohio State University Extension Service, an expert in retirement programs, makes four suggestions for couples to prepare for retirement and avoid the conflicts of retirement and marriage:

• Have open discussions of retirement expectations from their personal perspectives and as a couple "to plan a mutually satisfying and fulfilling retirement experience."
• Set guidelines on "togetherness" versus "separateness" as well as time devoted to socialization, care giving, and community activities to strike the proper balance.
• Establish alternative roles and activities to counter potential feelings of depression and loss of identity from loss of the work role.
• Re-examine the division of household tasks to promote equitability.

Regarding those in cohabitating or same-sex relationships, a study co-authored by S.E. Mock of Yale's School of Management and S.W. Cornelius of Cornell Department of Human Development says that their retirement and late-life planning is largely affected by the fact that their partnerships do not qualify for Social Security benefits, Medicaid regulations, and automatic inheritance rights.

"For those in cohabitating or same-sex relationships," it states, "the onus is on the partners to make provisions for each other regarding estate planning and inheritance, unlike married partners for whom entitlement to each other's estate is guaranteed by law.

The study cites evidence that "women tend to plan less for retirement than men and also tend to be more relationship focused than men, and that this may be even more the case among women in lesbian relationships." It concludes that for lesbian couples, "degree of retirement lifestyle planning is associated more with their relationship satisfaction than for those in other couple types."

Whether straight or gay, couples facing retirement need to actively negotiate the decisions that will determine their future lifestyles.

Retirement Programs for Effective Planning

As one of the nation's premier retirement programs, Paths to Creative Retirement, offered by the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement, a program of the University of North Carolina Asheville (UNCA), can help you with your retirement planning, avoid the pitfalls of retirement and marriage, and to ensure a more productive, satisfying future. For details, visit the Retirement Planning Programs page.

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