[bhaney]

I've been soft-retired for a while now and don't personally have that social problem, but I've definitely seen it before and have some thoughts and musings on it (which you should trust about as far as you can throw them, but maybe they'll be valuable nonetheless).

The responsibility and structure of a formal job provides a skeleton that a lot of people use as support for building their lives and sense of self around. It's very difficult to rebuild yourself without it, and it's much easier to instead fill the hole in the existing structure with something that has the same shape as a job.

If I had to recommend something in particular, my first thought would be for your wife to try and turn one of her hobbies into a business, and make that her new job. Note that it's not remotely important for the business to have large capital investment, a plan to scale, or even be profitable (though you should obviously keep it from being a money-pit). As long as it's something she can work on (at whatever pace is comfortable for her at the moment) and feel proud of, it can serve as a job just fine for both the purposes of motivation and conversation. If any of her hobbies are artistic, this can be as simple as setting up something like an Etsy shop to sell what she makes, and going from there. If this doesn't work, then I would encourage her to find as low-stress of a "real" job as possible, feeling free to spend as much time searching and job-hopping as is necessary.