Marriage Takes Work—Especially When Only One Spouse Retires
Relationships get complicated when one spouse retires and the other keeps working
4 min
When one spouse retires but the other doesn’t, roles change and feelings get complicated.
David Buck, 60, stepped back from a long career in sales management just as his wife, Susan Rose, 58, an ordained minister, leaned in, working 40-plus hours a week.
They’ve had to rethink who does what at home. David now folds more of the laundry and takes on grocery duties. He also has freedom, which Susan sometimes longs for. He talks about going to visit their adult children, who live out of state. Their first grandchild is on the way.
“I do get jealous. I have a couple more years,” Susan says.
Most couples now retire at di’fferent times , research suggests.
Only 18% of retired households claimed Social Security at the same time, according to a review of Federal Reserve data conducted by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
A separate poll found that just 11% of couples retire at the same time. Nearly two-thirds stagger their retirement by at least a year, according to a survey of 1,510 couples ages 45 to 70 commissioned by Ameriprise Financial, a financial services company.
Timing two retirements
The timing of retirement is often out of a couple’s hands. Nearly one-third of retirees surveyed left the workforce unexpectedly due to layoffs and early retirement packages. Health is also a factor.
Women, who often leave work to care for older parents or in-laws, retire at younger ages, averaging 62 compared with 65 for men, according to the Center for Retirement Research. A younger spouse may continue working to keep family health insurance until Medicare kicks in, or to delay having to tap retirement savings. They may want to hold off collecting Social Security to get higher payments.
Some people simply want to keep working even if their partner doesn’t. Living on one paycheck can be scary for people used to having two, no matter how much money couples have.
When couples retire at different times, routines, schedules and expectations diverge, and tensions can surface. Assumptions arise over who should clean or make dinner. The still-working partner may feel a twinge of envy when the other one heads to the beach or visits grandchildren.
“There can be resentment. This is the time people have been dreaming about,” says Pepper Schwartz, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Washington who focuses on relationships.
Other couples are wary of their partner retiring and being around all the time. “They dread too much togetherness,” says working filmmaker Sharon Hyman, 61, who lives separately from her retired partner of 25 years.
Navigating new routines
David Brown, 70, and Beth Keenan-Brown, 64, planned to retire together. Last year, Beth left her nursing job and David retired from the Secret Service. They made plans to travel to Budapest and spend more time at their beach house.
Shortly after Beth retired, she received a dream job offer and returned to work full time, as director of clinical operations for a Maryland hospice agency. Now she spends the week in their Severna Park, Md., home, which is larger and has space for a home office, while David stays at their beach home in Delaware, where he bikes and volunteers with Meals on Wheels. They travel back and forth.
“It’s a challenge keeping our calendars straight,” says David.
Beth logs her meetings on a joint Google Calendar so David knows when not to call. Every morning, they FaceTime over coffee and talk about their plans. On Wednesdays they each get takeout from the same type of restaurant, recently Ethiopian, and eat together over a video call.
There are upsides, too. They have made two trips since she took her new job, one to Costa Rica and the other to the Netherlands, thanks to her added income. Beth has unlimited paid vacation with her new job.
She says it would be hard if they were still in the same house and she was working while he was retired. “I think I would drive you nuts,” says Beth, adding that she is younger and has more energy than David.
“I just can’t keep up with you,” says David, who had a stroke a few years ago and needed to slow down.
Tough choices, new roles
Jeni Mastin, 74, of Vancouver, British Columbia, retired a decade ago from a career in nonprofits and social work. Her partner, Cameron Hood, is still working as a musician, teaching music and performing jazz.
“I’m an artist. I imagine I will be working until I drop dead,” he says.
Their different schedules and responsibilities have led to some inconveniences. Earlier this year, Jeni planned a monthlong 65th birthday celebration for Cameron in Mexico. They cut it a week short because of his teaching job. Cameron’s work schedule also means that he can’t always go with Jeni to her doctor’s appointments. His substitute teaching job ends at 3:30 p.m. and there’s an hourlong commute.
David Buck and his wife, Susan Rose, the minister, are navigating the transition in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
David, who describes himself as “semiretired,” continues to advise some clients of his time-management consulting business. Susan logs more than 40 hours a week doing two part-time jobs, one as transitional pastor at a local church and the other at a nonprofit she formed to mentor women in ministry.
David has picked up more responsibilities at home, taking on tasks that Susan did before she began working more and he semiretired. He takes their cars in for maintenance and balances the checkbook.
“If the dogs need to go to the vet, that’s me,” says David.
Susan says she has a hard time letting some things go. “I will say, ‘I can go to the grocery store on the way home,’ and Dave will say, ‘Stop. I can go to the grocery store. Tell me what we need,’ ” she says, although he tends to pick up snacks and cookies that she wouldn’t buy.
It has been an adjustment for David, too.
Being semiretired, he says he sometimes forgets about the demands of a job, especially one in ministry where congregation members have needs outside of 9 to 5. She might call and say her meeting went longer than expected. “Then I’m sitting there thinking, ‘I got dinner about ready. What am I going to do now?’ ” he says.
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At least for people who carry the APOE4 genetic variant, a juicy steak could keep the brain healthy.
3 min
Must even steak be politicised? The American Heart Association recently recommended eating more “plant-based” protein in a move to counter the Health and Human Services Department’s new guidelines calling for more red meat.
Few would argue that eating a Big Mac a day is good for you.
On the other hand, growing evidence, including a study last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that eating more meat—particularly unprocessed red meat—can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s in the quarter or so of people with a particular genetic predisposition.
The APOE4 gene variant is one of the biggest risk factors for Alzheimer’s.
You inherit one copy of the APOE gene from each parent. The most common variant is APOE3; the least is APOE2.
The latter carries a lower risk of Alzheimer’s, while the former is neutral. A quarter of people carry one copy of the APOE4 variant, and about 2% carry two.
APOE4 is more common among people with Northern European and African ancestry. In Europe the variant increases with latitude, and is present in as many as 27% of people in northern countries versus 4% in southern ones. God smiled on the Italians and Greeks.
For unknown reasons, the APOE4 variant increases the risk of Alzheimer’s far more for women than men.
Women’s risk multiplies roughly fourfold if they have one copy and tenfold if they have two. Men with a single copy show little if any higher risk, while those with two face four times the risk.
What makes APOE4 so pernicious? Scientists don’t know exactly, but the variant is also associated with higher cholesterol levels—even among thin people who eat healthily.
Scientists have found that cholesterol builds up in brain cells of APOE4 carriers, which can disrupt communications between neurons and generate amyloid plaque, an Alzheimer’s hallmark.
The Heart Association’s recommendation to eat less red meat may be sound advice for people with high cholesterol caused by indulgent diets.
But a diet high in red meat may be better for the brains of APOE4 carriers.
In the JAMA study, researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute examined how diet, particularly meat consumption, affects dementia risk among seniors with the different APOE variants.
Higher consumption of meat, especially unprocessed red meat, was associated with significantly lower dementia risk for APOE4 carriers.
APOE4 carriers who consumed the most meat—the equivalent of 4.5 ounces a day—were no more likely to develop dementia than noncarriers. (
The study controlled for other variables that are known to affect Alzheimer’s risk including sex, age, physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption and education.)
APOE4 carriers who ate the most unprocessed meat were at significantly lower risk of dying over the study’s 15-year period and had lower cholesterol than carriers who ate less. Go figure. Noncarriers, however, didn’tenjoy similar benefits from eating more red meat.
The study’s findings are consistent with two large U.K. studies.
One found that each additional 50 grams of red meat (equivalent to half a hamburger patty) that an APOE4 carrier consumed each day was associated with a 36% reduced risk of dementia.
The other found that older women who carried the APOE4 variant and consumed at least one serving a day of unprocessed red meat had a cognitive advantage over carriers who ate less than half a serving, and that this advantage was of roughly equal magnitude to the cognitive disadvantage observed among APOE4 carriers in general.
In all three studies, eating more red meat appeared to negate the increased genetic risk of APOE4.
Perhaps one reason men with the variant are at lower Alzheimer’s risk than women is that men eat more red meat.
These findings might cause chagrin to women who rag their husbands about ordering the rib-eye instead of the heart-healthy salmon.
But remember, the cognitive benefits of eating more red meat appear isolated to APOE4 carriers.
Nutrition is complicated, and categorical recommendations—other than perhaps to avoid nutritionally devoid foods—would best be avoided by governments and health bodies.
Readers can order an at-home test from any number of companies to screen for the APOE4 variant.
The Swedish researchers hypothesize that APOE4 carriers may be evolutionarily adapted to carnivorous diets, since the variant is believed to have emerged between one million and six million years ago during a “hypercarnivorous” period in human history.
The other two APOE variants originated more recently, during eras when humans ate more plants.
APOE4 carriers may absorb more nutrients from meat than plants, the researchers surmise. Vitamin B12—low levels have been associated with cognitive decline—isn’t naturally present in plant-based foods but is abundant in red meat.
Foods high in phytates (such as grains and beans) can interfere with absorption of zinc and iron (also high in red meat), which naturally declines with age. So maybe don’t chuck your steak yet.
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