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Table of Contents

 

 

Taking Care of Your Parents in “Old Age”:
Managing Stress in The Sandwich Generation

When Your Sandwich Generation Marriage Feels Flat and Lifeless

The Importance of Communication for Empty Nesting Couples

Relationship Expectations in Retirement

 

Taking Care of Your Parents in “Old Age”:

 Managing Stress in The Sandwich Generation

 By Peggy L. Ferguson, Ph.D. 

Those retirement years often feel like you have traded paid work for non-paid work, especially when you are one of those sixty five million unpaid caregivers in this country.  It is often said “life is what happens while you are busy making plans.”  Dreams about those retirement years as relatively carefree, spent fishing, traveling, spending time with grandkids and just doing nothing, have not come true.  While you were making plans of how you get to enjoy your time on your own terms, your parents were aging.  Now you find that your time is still not your own as their needs have taken your time, attention, and energy.  You may even be sandwiched in between the needs of the previous generation and needs of your own adult children.

Primary or ancillary caretaking of others is stressful business.  You are not only trying to manage your own household and financial responsibilities and chores, but trying to be responsible for maintaining the same infrastructure for others.  Many baby boomers report that they are stretched beyond their skills and resources.  To read the rest of this article, follow this link:  Taking Care of Your Parents in “Old Age”

 

 

When Your Sandwich Generation Marriage Feels Flat and Lifeless
 

By Peggy L. Ferguson, Ph.D.

If you are in the age group referred to as “the Sandwich Generation” you know what it means to be spending your time and energy on assisting your aging parents and in-laws while juggling the continuing demands of parenting late adolescent and “adult children”.   This is also a time when you are thinking about your own retirement and trying to figure out how to accomplish it and keep from eating cat food on a regular basis.  Your resources of time, energy, and money are constantly being used to take care of people other than you and your spouse. 

You may be working together as a team with your spouse to accomplish this nearly impossible balancing act.  Or, you may be missing your spouse, since by the time you settle in at bedtime, you’re brain dead and unable to have a reasonable conversation, much less engage in passionate sex.  You are just as likely to be dealing with your stress and unilaterally and blaming or criticizing your spouse for not being more helpful.  As you individually problem solve, you may have difficulty effectively asking for help.  You may not even be able to recall the last time you really had a conversation with your spouse about anything but “care giving”. Your marriage may seem flat and lifeless.  To read the rest of this article, follow this link: When Your Sandwich Generation Marriage Feels Flat and Lifeless

 

 

The Importance of Communication for Empty Nesting Couples

By Peggy L. Ferguson, Ph.D.

 An “Empty Nest” can leave a couple feeling lonely and depressed with a sense of loss of family and identity instead of the anticipated sense of freedom.

Partners may be trying to deal with these changes on his or her own. When you stop talking about what is going on with you, it can feel threatening in some way, to open up again. The marriage may have been focused on raising kids and the identity of "Us" may have only included the parents and kids, having lost the sense of "us" as a marital partnership years ago. The shared sense of "us" as a team or a couple may be gone. Both may feel alienated.

With the kids gone, you may suddenly be aware of your partner and begin to feel awkward, not really knowing what s/he is thinking or feeling. Couples that have been focused on kids may have anxiety about what to do about their time now. Am I going to be on the spot to spend more time and attention on my partner now? Do they have anything in common, really? It can be anxiety producing to think about spending so much time together. They will be pressed to talk. What will they talk about? What is left in the relationship? With no distractions, will they find themselves sitting in silence, looking expectantly at each other?  To read the rest of this article, follow this link:  The Importance of Communication for Empty Nesting Couples

 

 

 

Relationship Expectations in Retirement 

By Peggy L. Ferguson, Ph.D.

Most people these days have higher expectations for retirement than did previous generations.  They not only expect to have relative good health, but have the added expectation that they will enjoy their retirement and perhaps have an opportunity to do many of the things they could not do in their working years.  They expect to have fun and to have a life after the end of working.  Although there are not many obvious role models for happy, healthy retirement, gone are the days when people expect to retire and sit on the porch watching the traffic go by.  People expect to be busy, to be engaged, to continue to grow and develop as a human being.

Married people expect their spouses to grow along with them.  Many have the expectation that all the time and energy spent in working all those years will now be available to be devoted to the relationship or to having a life together.  Many couples discover in retirement that they have grown apart and fear that apart from the daily reports on the kids and grandkids that they have nothing in common.  To read the rest of this article, follow this link: Relationship Expectations in Retirement

 

Tags: Baby boomers, retirement, sandwich generation, aging parents, managing stress, family caregivers, caregiver stress, marriage in retirement, baby boomer marriages, marriage after retirement, empty nest couples

 

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