" Helping you is what we do."
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THE INSIDE SCOOP ON RETIREMENT
DOES RETIRING HAVE AN IMPACT
ON YOUR VARIOUS FRIENDSHIPS? Sometimes it's expected. Sometimes it's not expected. Either way, when the relationships you had with the people you worked with start to fall away, it can be tough to deal with. LORRAINE: "Friends that I had acquired through employment, those didn't last, and I don't know that they were meant to last. Every now and then we'll meet them and go out for lunch but that's about it, and I don't know if that was a surprise or not. I just never thought about that." EARL: "I wish I'd known what the transition would be like in terms of being subtracted away from people you worked with, friends you made through work." DORIS: "You're not seeing them every day and because you lose your interest in the work field. You're not involved in the issues anymore. The concerns and things." ANNE: "My colleagues that I still see occasionally who are working don't open up to me that much anymore." RICK: "And they did before?" ANNE: "Because we worked together." RICK: "So you're out of the loop." ANNE: "Ya. Which is fine!! I don't need it." CAROL: "What surprised me about the transition was what little connection I still had with the people that I worked with. I tried to do that for the first little while and it became harder and harder for me to relate to them anymore and very hard for them because they're very, very busy. So you have to book lunch three weeks in advance, pretty much, and it just stops being meaningful. So that was a surprise. I thought I would work harder at the friendships that I had at work." RICK: "The foundation for the relationship was work." CAROL: "Right. And there are a few that I have maintained contact with, but not a lot. And I used to have a whole, wide circle of friends at work. I guess that was a surprise." RICK: "Has that been supplanted with a new group?" CAROL: "Well, yes and no. My family, my three kids and their families, all live within this area so I have a large family, and as a result so I've directed my energies more toward them. I've tried to connect with other groups and I haven't been successful with that, yet." MIKE: "I didn't miss work. That was the strange thing. I really didn't miss it at all. I missed the guys! We used to do a lot of things together. We played baseball together. We played ball hockey sometimes. We'd go camping together occasionally and have barbeques and picnics together. That's the biggest thing that I miss. The get-togethers. Now I go with the running group. We run sometimes Sunday. We have clubs on Sunday so you sort of move from one group to the other group. I used to run by myself all the time. That's all I did was run by myself. But now at least two days a week I run with the group." In Mike's case, he retired and the group activities that occurred at work stopped happening too. It wasn't that he was cut out of those, per se. So the circumstances at work can play a part as well. For Anne, she did a considerable amount of travelling as part of her job. As such, when she retired those work trips ceased and, as a consequence, she didn't see all those colleagues regularly anymore. ANNE: "Well of course for me you don't have that relationship, big time, with the people that I had attached to my work. That's just gone. I mean, it's always gonna be there on a friendship level, but we don't have the work thing, but otherwise it just starts to fall off and that's sort of sad in some ways because there was more than just a work involvement. There was that other friendship. But I think the work was what triggered the friendship, you know, and they're still working, so it's hard to connect with them." RICK: "So you've noticed a big difference in the relationships you had with the people you worked with?" EARL: "You become a forgotten person. Really. Unless you've made some very good friends. Ya you really notice that." RICK: "How did you deal with it?" EARL: "I made myself extremely busy. I bought a piece of raw land and I built a house on it. So that kept me very busy even before I retired." GORDON: "When you're looking at retirement 2,3, or 4 years down the road, begin to distance yourself from what you're doing. Try to think outside your box." RICK: "Why?" GORDON: "When you retire, the box is gone, and when you go back to your place of work they're happy to see you the first time but they don't want to see you after that." RICK: "Was that your experience?" GORDON: "I think that's the general experience. They're happy to see you and they'll buy you coffee and you'll sit down and talk, but pretty soon they've gone ahead and you've stood still and it all goes pretty quickly." The Reporter’s Notebook How much of your social life revolves around your job? Do you have many friends outside of your work environment? One of the best things you can do to help with your transition to retirement is to broaden your circle of relationships outside of work. |
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Cheri Crause, Rick Hoogendoorn, Richard and
Brenda Jacques
copyright
2008 Cheri Crause
& Associates Inc.
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