Retirement is both an exciting and a confusing time. Many aspects of your life are totally rearranged -- especially routines, roles, and responsibilities. Add to that spending a lot more time with your partner and the potential for problems skyrockets.

Many couples who are moving into this new phase of their lives do not realize the impact this significant life transition will have on their relationship. They have likely been focused on making sure they can afford to retire but haven’t thought about the interpersonal challenges that may lie ahead. Even if you have a fabulous relationship and are looking forward to a never-ending second honeymoon, retirement will change the dynamics of your relationship.

You may have a big picture vision of your post-career life and the things you want to do but have you talked or even thought about how everyday will look? All the changes that are happening impact what you want and need. It is a wonderful opportunity to enhance your relationship. But it requires you to renegotiate the “rules of engagement.”

What needs to be renegotiated?

Nearly everything – big and small. For example, your old roles and responsibilities may have been working just fine for some time. But now that the amount of time you have available has changed, it’s time to reexamine things as simple as who does what around the house, how much time you are going to spend doing things together, and how much time you will do things separately. Even how you make decisions might shift. If you were used to making decisions yourself in your area of your former life, it might be necessary to look at how you are going to handle the increased number of decisions that now affect both of you. These issues are more important than many couples realize.

A success story

I worked with a couple who had retired about a year earlier. When Jim retired, Sally assumed that he would help her with household chores like the laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, and running errands. After all she was retiring too. Jim didn’t offer. Her annoyance and resentment started to build. She asked him for help several times, but he always had something else he had to do. She didn’t understand why he was being so thoughtless.

On the other hand, now Jim had time to pay more attention to the bills and how they were spending money. Jim assumed he should take over that part of the household responsibilities. Because they had not discussed this, Sally interpreted Jim’s actions to mean that he was second guessing her and micro-managing the things he used to praise her for doing so well.

Before they knew it, they were fighting much more than they ever did in the past. The fighting was eroding their trust that their relationship was an emotionally safe place, and they began to pull away from each other. Fortunately, we were able to work through it and get their relationship back on track. But the conflict could have been avoided by discussing their assumptions and expectations of the way everyday would work.

When the demands and distractions of the working years are reduced, another problem often arises. Issues in a relationship that may have been ignored for years become more apparent and are harder to ignore. Rather than let them ruin your relationship, ask for help in working them out. This is a great opportunity to move past the old stuff and take your relationship to new heights.

Look at this time as an opportunity to constructively renew your relationship.

Here are some tips:

• No matter how good your relationship is, go back to the basics. Just like your car, relationships don’t work well if they are not maintained. Every relationship benefits from a periodic brush up on the skills that make them work.
• Work together to understand each other’s current needs and create a clear, realistic, shared vision of what you want your life to look like.
• Find the balance between being together and being apart that works for both of you.
• Have an “Expectation Exchange.” Unexpressed and misunderstood expectations about both the big and little things of your new life usually lead to conflict.