Differences in Social Activity Patterns and Social Skills:

In other cases, dissatisfaction in retirement is not a function of psychological identity or the exclusion of non-work contacts from social networks prior to retirement. Some individuals maintain few social relationships outside of work simply because their working schedules absorb too much of their time to develop social relationships outside of work; others may lack the social skills to cultivate social relationships in general, but have managed to do so within the vocational environment through proximity, familiarity, or expertise and competence in their fields. In principle, such individuals may have only developed limited social networks outside of work without any specific psychological tie to their work and without any deliberate preference for establishing...

In retirement, they simply devote themselves more fully to other aspects of their psychological identity. Similarly, those individuals who maintain a wide network of satisfying social relationships and contacts outside of work before retirement are likely to avoid depression and loneliness in retirement while those whose social network is limited to work-related relationship are at much greater relative risk of depression and loneliness after retirement.