Fantasy/Reality Gap Deep Dive

Acceptance means recognising reality as it is, rather than continuing to respond to how you want, expect or believe it should be. This does not mean that you have to like what has happened, approve of it or decide that nothing can change. Nor, critically, does acceptance mean giving up.

In fact, acceptance can make change possible because you are starting from an accurate understanding of the situation you are dealing with. This is particularly important in retirement. You may be able to change some aspects of your circumstances while having much less influence over others. You may also discover that something you expected retirement to provide has not materialised, or that something you thought you wanted no longer feels right.

Acceptance helps you recognise reality and decide what to do with it. You cannot respond effectively to your retirement if you are still responding to the retirement you thought you would have.

A Fantasy–Reality Gap (FRG) is the gap between a fantasy – what you want, expect, assume, believe or imagine – and reality as it actually is.

We create fantasies all the time. You might imagine where you want to live, how you will spend your time, what your relationships will be like or how you expect to feel when you retire. These fantasies can be extremely useful because they give you something to work towards. The existence of a gap between fantasy and reality is therefore not automatically a problem.

What becomes important is how you respond to the gap.  A helpful FRG allows you to recognise your current reality while working towards something different. An unhelpful FRG develops if you struggle to accept important aspects of reality and continue thinking, behaving or making decisions according to a fantasy that is no longer serving you or is not possible. Fantasy can tell you where you want to go. Acceptance tells you where you are starting from.

You can spend years imagining retirement before you actually experience it. During that time, you may develop expectations about what retirement will give you: freedom, happiness, relaxation, purpose, travel, more time with your partner, freedom from stress or simply the opportunity to do all the things work prevented you from doing.

Your ideas about retirement may also have been influenced by your parents, friends, and colleagues; what you have read or watched; financial planning; previous generations; and the experiences of other retired people.

Then you retire. Some expectations may prove accurate, while others may need adjusting. New circumstances may emerge that you never anticipated, while things you expected to enjoy may feel very different once you are actually living them. This is where acceptance becomes important. Retirement reality provides information. Acceptance allows you to use it.

Helen retired at 62 after more than thirty years working in Human Resources. She had been looking forward to it for a long time.

Her job had become increasingly demanding during her final few years. Constant meetings, difficult employee situations, deadlines, and an inbox that never seemed to empty. Whenever work became particularly stressful, Helen would think about retirement.

“I used to imagine waking up on a Monday morning and knowing I didn't have to be anywhere. No meetings. No emails. Nobody wanting anything from me. I couldn't wait.”

Helen and her husband, Paul, were financially secure. They had paid off their mortgage, had several holidays planned and had a good network of friends. Helen also had a long list of things she wanted to do once work stopped: spend more time gardening, read, exercise regularly, see her grandchildren and finally have the freedom to decide what she did with her days.

For the first few months, retirement was much as Helen had imagined. She enjoyed not setting an alarm. She met friends for lunch, worked on the garden, went away with Paul and appreciated being able to see her grandchildren without fitting everything around work. But after about six months, something began to change.

“I had everything I'd been waiting for,” she told me. “That's what made it so confusing.”

Helen had plenty of free time, but increasingly didn't know what she wanted to do with it. She would make plans for the day and then abandon them. Gardening still gave her pleasure, but she didn't want to garden every day. Holidays were enjoyable, but she couldn't spend her life travelling. She saw friends regularly but found herself missing the conversations and relationships she had taken for granted at work.

Most unexpectedly, she missed being needed. Helen responded by adding more leisure to her retirement. She and Paul booked another holiday. She joined a second exercise class and arranged more lunches with friends. When her daughter suggested volunteering, Helen dismissed the idea.

“I've spent thirty years being responsible for things. The whole point of retiring was that I wouldn't have to do that anymore.”

Yet the flatness continued. Helen became increasingly irritated with herself. She had wanted retirement, planned carefully for it and had the financial freedom to enjoy it. Other people regularly told her how lucky she was.

“So why,” she asked me, “can't I just enjoy it?”

We began by separating the retirement Helen had imagined from the retirement she was actually experiencing. Her fantasy had been understandable:

When work disappears, freedom from responsibility and more leisure will give me the retirement I want.

Her reality was giving her different information:

I enjoy freedom and leisure, but they aren't enough. I also miss contribution, responsibility, challenge and feeling useful.

The problem wasn't that Helen had been wrong to look forward to freedom, holidays or time for herself. She genuinely valued all of them. The difficulty was that she was still judging her retirement by expectations formed while she was working. Back then, freedom from responsibility had seemed like the answer because she had too much of it.

Retirement had changed the reality. Accepting that didn't mean Helen had to return to her old working life or give up the freedom she had spent years anticipating. It meant taking seriously what her actual experience of retirement was telling her.

“I think I've been trying to make retirement live up to the advert I created for it,” she eventually said.

Helen had discovered her Fantasy–Reality Gap.

The next question was what she would do with it.

What Can You See in Helen's Story?

Consider:

What was Helen's fantasy about retirement?

What did her retirement reality turn out to be?

At what point does the gap between the two become apparent?

How did Helen initially respond when reality didn't match her expectations?

What evidence was she receiving that her retirement needed something different?

What might Helen have needed to accept before she could decide what to do next?

Was Helen's original fantasy necessarily wrong, or had reality provided information that required her to reconsider it?

What About You?

Think about the retirement you expected before you retired, or the retirement you are currently imagining if you haven't retired yet.

What did, or do, you expect retirement to give you?

Where did those expectations come from?

If you are already retired, what has reality confirmed and what has it challenged?

Could there be an unhelpful FRG operating somewhere in your retirement? If so, what is the fantasy and what is the reality?