Men's Coaching for Retirement | The Men's Work Directory

What retirement takes from men

The job provided more than income. It provided: daily structure, purpose, competence, belonging, status, identity, and a reason to leave the house. When it ends simultaneously, men discover that they had no other infrastructure that provided these things — or that the infrastructure they assumed would replace it (golf, travel, grandchildren) doesn't actually meet the depth of the need.

Sam Keen's Fire in the Belly was already diagnosing this in 1991: men had been so thoroughly reduced to their work function that when the work ended, they often found nothing underneath it. This is not a personal failing. It is the consequence of a cultural arrangement that organized male identity almost entirely around economic production.

What men who navigate it well do differently

The men who navigate retirement well typically do two things: they maintain or build community, and they find what James Hollis calls a 'second calling' — not a second career in the economic sense, but an engagement with something that draws on who they actually are rather than what the job required.

Coaching for retirement, in the men's work tradition, works with both dimensions. The community work — often a men's group or ongoing retreat engagement — provides the belonging and witness that the workplace provided. The meaning work — honest inquiry into what the man's life is actually for, now that it no longer has to be for the employer — is the interior counterpart.

Richard Rohr's Illuman programs are particularly relevant here: their explicit engagement with the second half of life and with elder mentorship addresses the specific territory of men in retirement. The tradition of elder mentorship — men who have navigated this passage serving as guides for those entering it — is exactly what these programs formalize.

Common Questions

I have financial security. Why am I struggling with retirement?

Because what you're experiencing is not a financial problem. Financial security addresses income replacement. It does not address identity, meaning, belonging, or purpose. These are the actual losses of retirement, and they require different interventions.

My wife is happy I'm home. Why am I not?

Partners often have independent social lives, meaningful activities, and their own daily structure that retirement doesn't disrupt. Men who depended on the workplace for all of these discover the disruption more acutely. This is common and not a sign that something is wrong with the marriage.