All That Extra Time Together

 It is kind of an unfair kick that for most people retirement comes at the wrong time of life. 

You want to ride your bike ten miles but have been told your balance is off, biking is out after 65. 

Jason Segel in Shrikiing

You think you can buy an RV, travel more, but there are too many personal or financial details to handle. You aren't going anywhere for any extended length of time. 

Then, when that's over and you have the time and the money, your own health gets in the way. 

George Burns used to say, I'm so old that I don't buy green bananas. There are lots of jokes like that. 

I'm only thinking of this because I know a few people in their mid-fifties who have retired and are liking it. I also know couples in their fifties who are ready to break up because of the stress of early retirement.

For most of us this is a moot subject. Early retirement isn't an option.We're still working deep into our sixties, either we can't or don't want to hang up the towel. 

The family therapy hitch about retirement at any age is that it disrupts the homeostasis of relationships. Whereas once distance felt predictable, now emotional suffocation rules. We saw this happen during Covid. 

I had never been busier than I was during Covid. Closeness stressed relationships. Having the kids home didn't help. 

There's a good example of what can happen to a couple when the person who used to work outside the home announces, Honey, I'm home. For good. We find it on Apple television,  Shrinking. 

Shrinking is about a therapist who changes his work style after his wife passes away.  He self-discloses far too much. His boundaries with patients disappear. He invites one to live with him. That the boundaries have disappeared, shrunk to nothing, could be why the name of the show is Shrinking. I'm sure there are other interpretations. 

Anyway, the spouse of one of the main characters retires and tells his wife he intends to be around now. She tells him flat out, Not acceptable, find something to do. And he says, essentially, Make me. My house, too.

That's how it can feel. One partner is suffocated. The other is finally free, happy.  The suffocated partner can either get on the bus or figure out how to get out of the situation themselves 

The intimacy they have is threatened by the need for a smaller rubber band. I'm sure there's a rubber band post on this blog somewhere, stick 'rubberband' into the search bar above. 

Baby boomers retiring is keeping this therapydoc busy, that's all I can say. But this is not about me, right?

pickle ball for retirees

My point, however, is that if we start having fun before we retire, start a little younger, we are halfway there, maybe all the way there. The couples I see who do some kind of sport together, who really like playing together, who have that recreational intimacy that I have stressed so much about here, love retirement. It is about, What should I (we) try now? Tai Chi? Golf? They can do a jigsaw puzzle together and have fun. The thing I liked in that excerpt from my novel is that people had fun at the bowling alley. They loved it. They loved the entire gestalt of something as mundane as bowling.

I guess we could call it preventive medicine, becoming the co-captains of a boat. going fishing. Learning pickle ball. Just watch that ACL tendon, watch the knees on the latter. It's easy to tear one if you haven't stretched. 

therapydoc