At retirement, one relationship that often changes is with your spouse or partner. In the early and middle years of a marriage, couples normally don’t spend a lot of time together. As partners, they are busy making a living, raising a family, and fixing up a home. In a recent survey, it was found the average married couple spends only three or four hours a week together without the children, and that may be collapsing on the couch and watching TV.

Due to the hectic pace, each partner tends to develop his/her own schedule and routine around their work, family, and home demands. Then retirement comes and it’s a time to relax and enjoy the fruits of your labour, which includes spending quality time with your partner. It’s supposed to be the time when we enrich our relationship; when we do things and go places together.

However, a relationship filled with good times is not something that just happens. Like all other aspects of retirement, it requires planning and effort. Without a plan, a couple can ‘get in each other’s way’, take each other for granted, resent each other, and curse retirement.

Peter was a senior manager for a utility company. Peter was admired for his leadership and enjoyed a high level of prestige within his company and industry. His wife Pam was a successful advertising executive. When they retired, both looked forward to a life of relaxation, fun and spending time together in their garden. However, three months into retirement Pam began to criticize Peter’s gardening techniques. She questioned his spacing of the plants, the way he waters and fertilizes, his grass cutting, and other gardening tasks. Pam’s nitpicking continued until one day Peter got so angry he stormed out the door and remained away from the house for hours.

Pam’s criticism was not only limited to Peter’s gardening, she also sniped at him not fluffing the pillows after removing himself from the couch, criticized the way he makes the bed, questioned his dish drying technique, and howled at how he hangs his clothes. The result is Peter feels under-valued and under-appreciated, especially after slogging 10 to 14 hours a day at work, day in and day out providing Pam with a beautiful home and expensive lifestyle.

So what went wrong? Like all other aspects of retirement, it requires planning and effort. As part of any retirement plan, it’s important to recognize that you and your partner have built up your own space and privacy needs. Each of you needs time to pursue your own interests, hobbies, tasks or ‘just chill out alone.’ One train of thought is if you were apart from your partner eight hours a day during your working days, you should plan to be apart approximately four hours a day in retirement. This enable each partner to have his/her own time and space. Be sure to talk with each other about your individual needs and agree on how those needs can be successfully fulfilled.

As part of your planning, it’s important for you and your spouse to identify to each other what retirement means in terms of roles and responsibilities. By doing this, you create a mini job description; it can outline dates, duties, responsibilities and authorities. It also means each can tackle responsibilities in their own style and technique without the other partner playing judge and jury.

The essential elements of a happy relationship are feeling valued, being appreciated, and loved. When a couple lacks any one of these positive feedbacks, the relationship suffers and the partners drift apart. Accepting the status quo slowly wears away at the couple’s intimacy and bond.

Though it is easy to take each other for granted, the preparation for retirement provides you and your spouse an opportunity to assess and enhance your relationship.

But what happens when one partner exhibits toxic behaviour such as chastising the other with comments such as “You’ll never amount to anything!”,, “You never get anything right!” “I can’t understand you”, or “You’re a dumb thing”. A toxic person is someone who seeks to destroy you; to rob you of your self-esteem and dignity and poisons the essence of who you are.

Here are some tips:

• Don’t use humour, calm questioning, direct confrontation, or Give-Them-Hell-and-Yell Technique
• Don’t run away
• Don’t stuff your feelings away until they build up beyond repair

Do’s

• What is it you want to say? What is the message you want your partner to hear? How should you phrase it?
• Choose a good time to communicate. Remember, for two people to fully understand each other, both must have time to spend in the communication
• Give the other person your full attention. Don’t just listen but listen for understanding.
• Avoid being defensive. Try to understand your partner’s point of view
• Verbally follow your partner. Engage in active listening to your partner’s messages. Use “I follow you”. “yes”, and other such verbal encouragement
• Use open-ended dialogue and questions such as “Tell me more about …” “What are your ideas on..”
• Clearly state your point of view. Once you understand your partner’s views, state you point clearly and briefly
• Resolve the conflict. By treating each other with respect and trying to understand each other’s point of view, the conflict moves from a situation filled with emotion to a difference in thinking.

However, if the relationship has grown far apart and there is nothing left in common, unplug, and let go. Use your anger to remove yourself from the toxic relationship, leaving with your dignity and self-respect intact.