April 2012
Too Much Togetherness?
This quarter’s Bird’s Eye View comes courtesy of San Francisco publicist, author, and former radio and television producer Miriam Goodman.
According to recent Census Bureau data, about 25% of couples who recently divorced were married more than twenty years. And more than 50% of all divorced people are in the Baby Boomer age range. The trend started about ten years ago and is growing. Al and Tipper Gore were not the first.
Though experts are quick to give their own reasons for why this is happening, most agree that divorce is more acceptable in society, (no-fault divorce laws in many states have helped) and that working women are less dependent on men for financial support so they feel free to leave an unhappy marriage. Others suggest that longer life expectancy and better health has led both women and men to seek more fulfillment and leave a bad marriage instead of being unhappy for their remaining years.
So what does that mean for the couple approaching retirement today? With all the concerns about finances, taking care of elderly relatives and helping out the adult children and grandchildren, must they also take a new look at their marriage? After all, if you are already past 50, you have a good chance of making it to 85. Is your relationship all it could be? Are either or both of you feeling you have been giving in too often to the other’s wishes or not standing up for yourself in the relationship?
These are the questions I have been asking couples in retirement all over the country. In my research for the book, Too Much Togetherness: Surviving Retirement as a Couple, I found that both husbands and wives had assumptions about their retirement years that they did not…or could not…share with their partners. Too often, ingrained behaviors meant one would ‘go along to get along’ and only a sensitive spouse would see and understand the resentment or emotional detachment so present in retired couples. As Boomers reach retirement age, the generation that brought about so many cultural changes has not lost its independent streak. Although California does not collect divorce data, local therapists and divorce lawyers report there are more and more long-term married people seeking their services.
On the other hand, we are among the first generations that have lived long enough to celebrate 50, 60 or 70 years of marriage. Does our increasing longevity mean we should suffer in silence or call it quits? Were we hard-wired to stay with the same person for so long? I have been examining the state of marriage in retired and pre-retired couples for several years. My conclusions are that couples must be willing to communicate, even when they know their partner may not agree with what they have to say.
There is no one size fits all prescription for the perfect retirement. Each person in a couple must understand what is going on and then make the best of their lives with their own resources and what they enjoy doing together and apart. Perhaps one partner has to leave the house and let the other person be alone a few hours a day; or, as is too of the case, she must get him to leave every day and find something fulfilling to do outside the home. Each person has to examine how comfortable they are bending to the other’s desires and speak up and say what they would rather not do. He loves fishing but she doesn’t? She should not feel the need to join him. She loves playing bridge but he does not? Perhaps he can join a golf group that meets at the same time of day.
Whatever you decide to do as a couple and as individuals, make sure you avoid isolation. One must stay connected to the outside world to protect the inner world of the marriage. The challenge of what happens tomorrow is its own reward.
Too Much Togetherness: Surviving Retirement as a Couple is available at bookstores and online and as an e-book. Miriam’s previous book, Reinventing Retirement, is available at toomuchtogetherness.com.
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