Older couples swapping roles: Husbands now the weepers

Charles "Bud" Tong returned to Louisville, Ky., with his wife recently to renew their wedding vows before the priest who married them 50 years earlier. He said he looks back on his life with no regrets.

"We were always there," he says, remembering the way he and his wife refused to let full-time careers keep them from spending time with each other or their three children.

Still, the 77-year-old former Philip Morris superintendent says that age and retirement have served to increase his focus on his family. Now retired in Bradenton, Fla., he and his wife, Joan, dedicated themselves to being at grandchildren's ballgames and other events — despite the distance. "Every time," he says, "we took off."

Research recently published in Communication Quarterly suggests that a later-life focus on family and emotional bonds — at least for the Tongs' generation — is especially true for men.

Researchers found that men can be downright blubbery when it comes to talking about their roles as husbands and fathers. They may be more emotional about such family issues than their wives are.

Kandi Walker, an assistant professor in the department of communication at the University of Louisville, stumbled onto this discovery while interviewing couples about an unrelated matter. She noticed something unexpected about the older men.

Finally, she broached the subject with the other researcher. "Have you encountered a lot of crying?" Walker asked.

The other researcher had, in fact, noticed some tears. So Walker and Fran Dickson, an associate professor at the University of Denver, suddenly found their research — originally designed to look at how couples of all ages communicate while sick — taking on a new focus.

Jerome Garrison, a licensed marriage and family therapist for Family and Children's Counseling Centers, says the findings match his experience. "As I think about it, I do notice that," he says.

This tendency to be more emotional may be regret-driven, he says. Older men may be looking back on their lives and realizing that they have not, generally, paid enough attention to the most important things.

It's the same reason that "grandparents tend to be a whole lot different than parents, as far as commitment to children," Garrison says.

Walker and Dickson concluded that older married couples often experience something of a role reversal, with the men becoming more openly romantic and talkative about their emotional and family lives and the women becoming more, well ...

Not cold exactly. Walker says that word is too harsh, but the wives did seem more interested in talking about newfound hobbies or their personal growth.

The wives listened to their husband's emoting with a matter-of-fact, "been there, done that" demeanor, Walker says.

For example, the study — according to the account in Communication Quarterly — involved one 70-something man, who enthusiastically told the half-century-old story of first meeting his wife's parents, walking up to her door with a lump in his throat.

"I was nervous the whole day. I was scared I wouldn't know what to say to her parents," he's quoted as saying.

Walker says men seemed thrilled to tell those sorts of stories.

"The men were really very joyful," Walker says. "As if they were reliving the memory as they told us."

The wife's response? In that particular case, the published study says, "She stated she didn't understand what 'the big deal' was about meeting her parents."

Ouch.

That brings up an indelicate topic. Which spouse was more affirming and polite?

Walker says that when the researchers started looking at their field notes, they found that during interviews the men often nodded in agreement when their wives talked, expressed gratitude that their wives stuck with them in hard times and touched their wives affectionately.

The wives nodded less and interrupted more.

For example, when one husband recounted the couple's first meeting after school and says he asked her to get together that weekend, the wife interrupted and said, "It wasn't after school. It was after church. You didn't even ask me to do anything with you until a week later."

The husband replied, "I thought it was that day. It could have been a week, but I knew from the start I wanted you to be mine."

Walker says it wasn't that the women seemed uncaring or uninvolved in the marriage, but the subjects didn't seem as fresh to them. "The women had already dealt with all these issues," she says.

Garrison says that this often can be stressful for men, who may feel as though their wives are turning their attention to other things just when the husbands are becoming more dependent on them.

Today's young couples may not face exactly the same issues as they age, Garrison says. Women will not have waited until their 60s to explore interests outside the family, for example. And young men are involved on a different level in parenting — fathers being about as common as mothers in Garrison's parenting classes.

On the other hand, Garrison says that when he talks to young men and women in their 20s, he doesn't see nearly the same interest in the idea of a long-term, committed relationship as a framework for family.

"For future generations, I think ... the family will mean much less," says Garrison, which may lead to even more regrets.

Walker says originally she was surprised by the findings but in retrospect thinks she should not have been.

The older couples, who were probably more traditional initially than younger couples are, found their roles changing at retirement age. The men suddenly had more time and energy to think about and devote to family issues and concerns.

"This is the first time they have been able to say, 'I really missed out on a lot,' " Walker says.

And the women, now free of some of the home-tending demands, had more time to devote to careers or hobbies.

"It makes perfect sense," Walker says.

Walker says the findings have changed her perspective on relationships a little. Now when she hears young women complain about their husbands not being emotionally responsive, she says, "Oh, just wait for later life — he will be."