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& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | | JULY 3, 2000 WORK & FAMILY By Jill Hamburg Coplan Growing Older, Growing Apart? What should a retirement-age couple do when she's gearing up her business--and he's ready to kick back?
My husband and I each own our own business. I opened my antique shop after my children left home. Although we are both nearing retirement age, I have no desire to slow down, just as the business is becoming very successful. My husband, however, feels quite differently and would like to semi-retire and devote time to traveling together and spending time with our children in other parts of the country. -- J.A., Rockport, Mass. I'm not one to reduce human affairs to chemistry, but there's an interesting phenomenon whereby some women, following menopause's drop in estrogen and relative rise in testosterone, become fantastically driven in business. That's not convenient if their companion is slowing down. "They're unable to come to grips with this lifecycle transition, which is not an unusual situation with that age group," says Joan Atwood, PhD, a psychologist and the director of the graduate program in marriage and family therapy at Hofstra University. "Often, the husband has had enough of work, while she's just starting to feel her oats in her career and doesn't want to give it up." One way this plays out is in a power struggle that can take its toll on the marriage. Bear in mind that divergent work ethics don't only strike older couples. They crop up in many marriages -- and can be a hidden asset. "Most of the time, we marry our missing part," says John V. McShane, a certified family-law specialist with McShane, Davis & Hance in Dallas, Tex. "It's usually good for one person to be ambitious and for the other to place more emphasis on quality-of-life. The marriage's strength comes in the compromise." How do you get there? Here are a few recommendations: Negotiate in good faith: That means, of course, being ready to give a little. One tool is to brainstorm solutions, individually or together, Atwood suggests. Generate as many ideas as you can, no matter how ridiculous they sound. Then see which seem agreeable and reasonable. You might agree, for example, to close the store for six weeks a year and let an assistant take over. He could offer to schedule trips with friends. You might combine antique-buying trips with tourism. Don't disparage your spouse's values: "Where so many people get in trouble is when they pronounce the other person's behavior as wrong," McShane says. "A difference in values isn't right or wrong -- it just is. Each person has to be able to honor that this is what their spouse gets fulfillment from." Don't sacrifice your own fulfillment: Women who've spent their lives as wives and mothers can get locked into the caretaker role. If a wife tends to be that way, she should be wary of blaming herself for her husband's unhappiness, or of sacrificing her ambitions at an exciting time. So says Margaret Paul, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles and the author of Do I Have to Give Up Me to Be Loved by You? (Hazelden). "[If] he's not taking responsibility for finding fulfillment through his work or elsewhere," Paul notes, "that can create conflict, through his demands and neediness." And if the do-it-yourself approach fails, let a marriage counselor help you learn how to negotiate the issue of balancing a business, retirement, and marriage. The skills you learn there will come in handy forever after. Send your questions to frontierlife@businessweek.com.  Jill Hamburg Coplan has covered work, family, business, and finance for the past decade as a writer and editor for newspapers, magazines, and wire services. She left Working Woman magazine, where she was senior editor, when her first child was born and now works solo from a home office in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can e-mail her at Jill Hamburg Coplan  | | |
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