Talk To Me: My husband wants to stay at home when we retire but I want to travel 

Psychologist Caroline Martin is here to answer your questions on whatever issues you are dealing with in life, from work pressure and stress to loneliness and grief

The Disneyfication of the complex stage of retirement does not help prepare us for the tough conversations that are often necessary

My husband and I are due to retire in a year. I can’t wait to start my new life, but all he wants to do is work in the garden or his shed. I’ve told him I don’t intend to stay at home, cooking meals and keeping the place clean, which didn’t go down well. It would be wonderful if we could travel together, but it looks like I will have to go alone. I feel frightened and guilty at the same time. Our children are raised and have families of their own, so there is no reason to stay put.

Type ‘retirement planning’ into your search engine and your screen will be awash with financial organisations offering insights into providing for your pension and tools for projecting your cost of living. What you don’t often see are the very real numbers of those married couples who decide to go their separate ways once the reality of retirement and conflicting visions emerge.

The Disneyfication of the complex stage of retirement does not help prepare us for the tough conversations that are often necessary when navigating these new waters.

The transition into retirement is not always straightforward. There is often work to be done to address any grief, sadness, or residual exhaustion or fatigue associated with leaving the workplace.

The word ‘retirement’ comes from French and means to retreat or withdraw into seclusion. I wonder if this has resonance for your husband. He may be relishing the thought of having a period of recovery. There is something striking about the image of your husband wanting to tend to his garden, perhaps clearing out plants that are sucking nutrients out of the soil to the detriment of other plants. Perhaps he plans to sow the seeds of native plants that have been previously dismissed as not exotic enough. He may need to return to his internal roots, become familiar again with what he needs to grow and feel nourished. Before starting to make plans, he is perhaps wise to tend to his literal and figurative garden.

He may need time to meet himself again, to mend before embarking on any great adventures. This does not necessarily relegate you to the waiting room twiddling your thumbs. Most couples who enjoy retirement spend some time together and also engage in other activities independently of one another. Be sure to create or nurture an existing social network for yourself. Placing the burden of your happiness and entertainment solely on the shoulders of your husband is unfair and vice versa.

You too may benefit from a pause between handing in your company ID and printing off your boarding card. Our values tend to shift over time and where and how we wish to use our energy changes correspondingly. We can feel ill at ease when we are acting in a way that is disconnected from our values. At points of transition in our lives, it is wise to review our core values to ensure our behaviour is aligned with them. Seeing where your values are aligned with those of your husband will give you a good sense of where and how your shared time might be spent.

Through being in the workforce, you both have had experience of being managed and perhaps also have managed teams of people. Negotiating now, how you will co-manage your time may need a carefully crafted conversation. The transition out of the workplace may require some unlearning to ensure neither of you feel like you are being managed. Your husband may be resisting a sense that you will be managing his time once he retires.

You have successfully navigated some big transitions already in your life together. You made the decision to commit to one another. You decided to have a family. There were likely conversations around how each of your roles would adapt to these changes. Take time to reflect on these significant transitions you have already mastered, consider what helped at the time. Perhaps you focused on the agreed end goal and that gave you momentum to keep going when things got sticky. Perhaps you had support of extended family or friends. Perhaps you took time to reconnect as a couple.

As you reflect and enter a phase of discovery, consider how your parents and your husband’s parents talked about retirement. Was retirement fraught with tension in the home or tinged with illnesses? Or was retirement a time of rejuvenation and adventure? Different historical personal experiences can influence how we anticipate, think and feel about imminent developments. Take the opportunity to explore these internal stories together, be curious about how they may be informing the present.

It can also be helpful to notice how friends are successfully navigating this space. How are they reaching compromise? What conditions are making those relationships successful? Paying attention to others who are thriving in retirement is far more informative than focusing on those who are struggling. Ask your friends, ‘what gives life to their marriage in retirement?’

While I don’t espouse the Disneyfication of life, paying attention to your individual and shared stories can help you script the next chapter together. During this dream phase, envision what hopes and wishes might be part of this journey. The design phase requires genuine collaboration as you consider, ‘what should be? What is meaningful for us individually and as a couple?’

You might find that these conversations bring new adventures. As John Lennon said, “life is what happens while you are busy making other plans”.

Take care.

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