Introduction. Improving retirees' subjective well-being is crucial, and yet
we know little about how retiree subjective well-being develops over
time. The existing research has also largely neglected the dynamic role
of significant others in shaping retiree adjustment outcomes, which is an
important omission because social relationships become more
important with age as romantic partners take a particularly central role
in the lives of retiring/retired individuals.
Purpose and Methods. Drawing on action regulation and transactive
goal dynamics theories, this conceptual article addresses these concerns
by developing the self- and dyadic-regulation pathways to retiree
subjective well-being.
Expected Results and Conclusions. The self-regulation pathway
conceptualizes retirement planning as an iterative action process that
involves setting retirement-related goals and generating, deciding on,
and executing plans to pursue those goals. We propose that retirement
planning leads to higher levels of retiree subjective well-being via the
attainment of resources and that retiree subjective well-being has a
reversed positive effect on retirement planning. Assuming that Partner
A is a retiring/retired individual and Partner B their partner, we
conceptualize the dyadic-regulation pathway to retiree subjective well
being, whereby Partner B's action process is interlinked with Partner A's
retirement planning process and Partner A's attainment of resources.
These links between both partners should be weakened by Partner A's
power and strengthened by couple-level intimacy. Couple-level intimacy
and retiree subjective well-being are posited as reciprocally and
positively related. Together, both pathways suggest that retirement
planning is a dynamic and iterative process in which the retiring/retired
individuals and their partners jointly engage, ultimately leading to better
retirement adjustment.