Going through an economic rough patch can be unnerving enough without the added stress of disagreements with your partner about what to do next. If you find yourself in disagreement with your partner about how to manage your accounts, start by reviewing, together, your long-term goals. Since investing is for the long term—remember, you shouldn’t need the money you’ve invested in stocks for at least five years—reviewing the long-term goals and how you chose the investment plan to reach them is a good way to try to get both of you back on the same track. Disagreements can emerge if both partners weren’t active creators of the plan or if both don’t understand the investments used to implement it. Reviewing the plan or the investment analysis together can help bring the less-active partner up to speed and will help make him or her more comfortable with the investment volatility.

A mediator (like the investment advisor who helped you implement the plan), an independent investment advisor or financial planner, or even a new investment advisor (if you created the initial plan on your own) can be helpful if you’re finding it difficult as a couple to agree on next steps. The advisor can act as a disinterested third party—not affected by the jitters the tough market might be causing you or your partner to feel—who can review your investments with you and how they fit into your plan. Even if you’ve always done your own investing, you might find the advisor is a good addition to your team who can help the less investment-savvy partner better understand your investment plan.

If one partner has a dramatically lower risk tolerance, it might help your joint peace of mind to have the more conservative, less volatile investments—like bonds and cash—allocated to his or her accounts while the more volatile stock investments sit in the more risk-tolerant partner’s account. So long as you keep the allocation between all your accounts at the target set by your investment plan, having the conservative partner’s account in less volatile investments might help him or her feel more certain about sticking to a long-term plan, even when the short term seems less certain.

Market turmoil tends to create a sense of urgency and an impulse to make defensive changes to retirement accounts and long-term investment strategies, almost all of which lead to pitfalls. The five options we’ve outlined here are proven to help investors stay the course toward retirement security while waiting out the market’s rebound. And the ultimate comfort investors should reassure themselves with is that the stock market will inevitably rebound and continue its historical growth trend. Lulls are temporary, but a strong retirement plan, carefully tended, will assure lifelong financial security.