How Retirement Affects Marriage

12/11/19 • 22 min

Transitioning from full-time employment into retirement is naturally going to impact both your life and your marriage. Retirement comes with lots of changes, and there are ups and downs to the process. Whether you have parents going through this, you’re coming up to retirement, or you have recently retired, there’s lots to learn about how to handle the changes that come with moving into retirement since it’s a brand-new stage of life. Research shows that there are both positives and negatives that can come as a result of retirement. Certainly, in North American culture retirement is idealized and celebrated as something to look forward to at the end of your career, but many couples also experience some disappointment when it turns out to be not as great as they had hoped. Marital Satisfaction for Couples at Different Life Stages One study looked at positive interactions between couples of different ages. The study showed that younger couples had the most positive interactions: good healthy, positive day to day moments. Middle age couples (40’s) had the least. And older couples (about 65 and over...the retirement group) had an intermediate amount of positive interactions. But the study also found that negative attitudes decreased with age. It’s normal for couples to go through tough stages of becoming parents, establishing their careers, getting mortgages paid off: this requires adjustments across the lifespan. It is reasonable to expect that going into retirement is going to require some adjustments as well.[1] According to studies from around the turn of the century and current research, the divorce rate rises within the older population compared to the divorce rate of the younger generation. This raises an important question: if retirement is pitched as such a wonderful thing, why are people struggling in their most important relationships? Retirement is a Life Transition Transitioning into retirement comes with a lot of adjustments. Going from working to not working is just one of the changes that come with retirement. Many couples find themselves facing changes in where they live, changes in their routines with their spouse, and even changes in their identity. A retiring therapist might ask himself questions such as “Am I still a therapist if I am not doing therapy? What am I now? What is my purpose? What is our purpose?”[2] When retiring from any profession, one or both spouses may find themselves facing a shift in their sense of identity as they move into a new stage of life. There are many other questions that come up for couples in retirement: How will you and your spouse decide what to do with your time? What is your retirement plan in terms of your savings: can you live without employment income for 10, 20, or 30 or more years? In addition to these questions, the couple have to adjust to changes on the relational side of things. Couples find that they’re spending a lot more time together, more than they have for many, many years. Most retired couples are not raising children, caring for parents, or heading off to work for the bulk of the day. Suddenly, whatever your marriage is like, it is all right there in front of you and it has to be faced.[3] If your marriage has been strong and healthy — you’ll see the effects of that. And that’s great! For those couples, marital satisfaction will increase because they have even more time to spend together. But if your marriage really hasn’t been great for 20 years but you’ve made it through by focusing on raising and launching your kids, or concentrating on your career or business, and now you’re past those things and you’re just left with a “not great” marriage: that’s a challenging place to be in. Those escape mechanisms of work or other things are gone and not available any longer, and there’s a lot to figure out.[4] Retirement Factors that Affect Marriage

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Exploring the Links Between Attachment Style and Porn or Sex Addiction

When you’re working through recovery from something like porn or sex addiction, depending on how deeply rooted that addiction is, it forces you to confront a number of different dynamics in all aspects of your life. Many people who do this difficult healing work are a blessing to others because they’re forced to face down so many issues, as often they have experienced a great deal of personal transformation. One of the important areas we look at in our therapy with those struggling with these addictions is attachment, something that we went into in detail back in episodes 251 to 254. Attachment Calls Out the Blame Game One of the unfortunate impacts of porn and sex addiction in marriage is that the addict often resorts to blaming tactics to defend or minimize the addiction. Of course, this is very hard on the spouse of the addict but when we understand the role of attachment in this sort of addiction, it helps us understand more of what is happening which in turn helps to push back on this blame game that gets played. A few on the other. The more a person was comfortable with interpersonal relationships, the more the draw of his fantasies would diminish[1]. (e.g., genuine engagement scholars talk about the relationship between attachment style and sex or porn addiction. Leeds (1999, cited in Zapf et al., 2008) thought that an addict’s attachment style lived in tension between fantasy on one hand and genuine interpersonal relationships and connection and intimacy in marriage). It’s easy to see how someone is drawn towards fantasy based on their own attachment difficulties. The father of attachment, John Bowlby, did not speak to sex addiction and attachment specifically, but he did point out that our individual assumptions about how we view others and ourselves are most significant in our closest relationships. This includes how comfortable a person is with being close to another person: indeed, much of attachment is about the intermittent effort to create closeness[2]. Thus, when you have an addiction like this occurring in a marriage, the addicted spouse is attempting to experience that closeness in a fantasy-based experience rather than in the context of a real, tangible, marriage bond. Again, you see that the attachment needs are there but they are pointed in the wrong direction. Attachment difficulties are very common in people with sex addiction. A 2008 study (by Zapf et al.) showed that over 80% of the sex-addicted participants were characterized by attachment styles other than secure attachment[3]. Nearly half were of the fearful avoidant or disorganized attachment style where there’s a real longing for connection but a great fear of it as well, compounded by the shame-based concern of being really seen. You can see how pornography or sex addiction is an attempt to fit in the missing piece of that attachment puzzle. Pornography Deteriorates Attachment The problems of sex and pornography addiction are closely linked to difficulties in forming a close connection to one’s spouse. The research is beginning to show that individuals with sex addiction or pornography use have trouble forming close attachment to their spouse. Patrick Carnes, the grandfather of the whole sex addiction recovery movement conceptualized it as primarily a relationally oriented problem. Leedes (1999) wrote, “although the inability to form close attachments may not be sufficient to explain the etiology [source] of sexual addiction, it is a necessary component” (p. 218)[4]. Weinsten (2015) further notes that the acting out behaviours of sex addiction and compulsive pornography use are characterized by sexual activity minus emotional connection[5]. That is why you see these maladaptive attachment styles at play whenever you witness sexual compulsivity[6]. The acting out associated with these addictive patterns is like an attempt to gain intimacy, but without the emotional connection that come...

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Why You Need To Touch Your Spouse More

Physical touch is an important way to keep the emotions of love alive in your marriage. It is one of the first senses we develop as humans and is a primary component of intimacy in adult romance. Unfortunately, it’s something we can forget about, be turned off towards, or start to associate with difficult memories or experiences. Today, we want to look into the research on physical touch to see the benefits of it and learn how we can rekindle it in marriage. Touch Matters Social touch is essential for normal human development and for the development of attachment during intimacy. We talked about attachment in episodes 251 to 254: it’s the development of a loving, secure bond between two people. There is a large body of research literature on the beneficial effects of touch (typically mother-infant) for attachment and soothing during infancy and in that very important infant-caregiver relationship.[1] There’s also a lot of research on the benefits of physical touch in marriage, and we want to talk about touch in that context. We’re talking about the kind of affection that includes “any touch intended to arouse feelings of love in the giver and/or the recipient.”[2] And while we are using the word “arouse” in that definition, loving touch can be either non-sexual or sexual. Really, both are important. Another research article we looked at helpfully pointed out that, “Ideally, the touch is appropriate to the setting, does not interfere with goal-directed behavior, and is not oriented toward immediate sexual gratification.”[3] When is Touch Appropriate? Touch that is appropriate to the setting means that you are not touching your spouse sexually in a public place, in front of family, etc. That kind of touch can be loving, but is appropriate only in some contexts. Most couples will understand that intuitively. Physical touch should also not interfere with goal-directed behavior, meaning that it’s not intrusive. It should never involve holding or restraining your partner when they’re trying to do something else. Affectionate touch should not be controlling or interfering even if it is intended to be warm. Furthermore, it should not interfere with safety. For example, you shouldn’t attempt to hold your partner’s hand while they are driving during a snowstorm and need both hands on the steering wheel. Touch should always be respectful — this should not take away from spontaneity completely, but there are times that respect and safety should come before spontaneity. Finally, physical touch should not simply be “oriented toward immediate sexual gratification.” There is certainly a place and time for sexual touch in a healthy marriage, and there is a place for touching your spouse in a way that invites sexual initiation or invitation. At the same time, if every time you touch your spouse you are really just approaching your spouse sexually with little or no loving non-sexual touch, and this is a regular it is likely that you will leave your spouse feeling objectified like you are only touching them for sexual gratification. Something to be handled or groped. That’s not intimate, respectful or nurturing. Touch Is a Love Language Touch is one of the love languages articulated by Chapman in his book, The Five Love Languages.[4] If you feel this is one of your love languages or your spouse’s, then tender touch is very important. For some husbands, when they heard the words “physical touch” they immediately think of sex. But think of sex as just one dialect of this love language: holding hands, brief kisses, hugging, back rubs, an arm around the shoulder... these are all ways of expressing love by non-sexual physical touch. Some forms of touch may be explicit and call for your full attention. For example, a back rub or foot massage from your spouse. Naturally, sexual foreplay calls for your full attention. But other kinds of touch may only require a moment a...