There are many changes that happen throughout the retirement years that include countless decisions about lifestlye, leisure, and finances, just for starters. These years can be challenging, frustrating, and also exciting.
Here is a general map that highlights the process one might expect while managing the retirement phase of their life.
- Phase 1: Retirement is a process
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- Stage 1: Pre-retirement – people begin to consider retirement, begin to disengage from workplace
- Stage 2: Retirement – retire from the paid workforce, usually has three possible routes to take
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- Phase 2: Retirement Routes
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- Honeymoon – taking it easy, sense of euphoria, permanent vacation
- Immediate retirement routine – ability to establish a comfortable schedule
- Rest and relaxation – low activity initially but activity levels increase after a few years of R and R
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- Phase 3: Disenchantment – experience a period of disappointment and uncertainty
- Phase 4: Reorientation – start making adjustments that will improve their lives
- Phase 5: Retirement Routine – ability to master a comfortable, rewarding, and satisfying retirement routine
- Phase 6: Physical decline – becoming dependent on partner or spouse, or needing elder care
- Marital Life after Retirement
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- Relationships from the workplace dissolve
- Emphasis placed on family relationships
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- Life orientation – emphasis retirees place on various aspects of life, retired men attach greater significance on marital and family relationships, generally
- Life after Retirement
- Gender role ideology – retired husbands have more conservative, traditional gender roles; husbands of working women are generally more liberal towards gender roles
- Marital Satisfaction – many older couples enjoy a second honeymoon without the responsibilities of work
- Marital Intimacy – three types
- Reciprocity – both spouses confide in one another and self-disclose
- Non-reciprocity – one spouse confides and the other does not
- Segregative – neither spouse shares with the other but rather with someone outside the marriage
- Where are you in this process? I think I am actually in several categories and on the fence between some. Guess that would be in a state of transition…