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Harry says, “I like you, Erica.” 

Erica says, “I love you - like you.” 

Harry says, “You’re taking this too seriously.” 

She says, gesturing to him in her heart,  “That’s fine for you, but what am I going to do with all this?”

Harry says, “I don’t know much about being a boyfriend.”

Erica says, “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

It’s not enough and she gets in the cab and leaves. Harry has another anxiety attack and thinks it’s a heart attack. 

What’s happened is that she’s done what any midlife single woman has to do if she wants a long term committed relationship.  She’s established a non-discussable, non-negotiable bottom line. She’s given an ultimatum. 

John Malloy, social researcher, interviewed women at midlife who ended up married and women who didn’t. The difference was that the women who did believed in commitment and refused to accept anything less.  Erica shows herself to be one of those.

Also she communicated here ultimatum the only way it could be to a man who was defensively vague.. She refused to talk and walked away.  How different this movie would have been if she’d have stayed or gotten involved in endless arguments about the meaning of commitment.

Phase Four:  The Fertile Retreat: Staying open to the pain.

The is the crying and writing part of the story. It’s done as a montage, to show us that time is passing and she’s in some kind of profound emotional, spiritual process.

Having her write the play about her experience is an interesting device.  One of the marks of maturity is that ability to tell your own story. Mature people can say, “This is the meaning of my life.”  They become people who can control  not what happens to them, which no one can control  but how they have and will respond to life’s challenges. 

Only the immature want to leave their past behind.  The past is a wisdom resource. But you have to know how to transform its lessons into wisdom. This is done by re-working the story in a way that gives us strength and dignity. People who can’t do that live with lies and secrets, which is a kind of hell.  Erica literally re-worked the story of her and Harry.

And in doing it, she changed her view of herself.  Remember the woman who wore turtlenecks?
Listen to her in the conversation with her daughter at the foot of the steps on the beach. Notice how she’s changed from being like her daughter to being a larger, bolder woman.

Erica is crying like hell and Merin says, “ Do you get my theory about all this. You’ve gotta self protect. It’s too dangerous.”

Erica says, “ Do you really buy this stuff you say? Do you think you can actually outsmart getting hurt?”

Merin says, “ So you’re telling me this is good what happened to you."

And Erica says, “ No it was bad. But for the three days it was good it was electrifying.  I let someone in and I had the time of my life.”

Merin says, “ I’ve never had the time of my life.”

Erica says, “ I know baby, what are you waiting for?”

This is her lesson and she passes it along to her daughter. Getting hurt is not the same as being weak. 

It seems to me that if you are going to lose in love, or in anything else, the only thing that makes the loss bearable and honorable is having given it everything you’ve got.

One of the strange truths about spiritual challenges is that if we don’t address those challenges whole heartedly, we leave those unmet challenges as legacies to our children.

Phase Five:  The Tests of Faith.

It’s one thing to have a change of heart and it’s another thing to be tested on it. How solid is Erica’s commitment to love in the face of danger and also to take care of herself?

She faces two tests in this movie. I think she passes the first.  I’m not so sure about the second.

The first test is her encounter with Harry at the play rehearsal. Harry says he is ”worried” about her and she recognizes it as more vagueness about his intentions.  She tells Harry, “You don’t have to worry about me, Harry. I can take care of myself.”  This is the ultimatum again, all or nothing, nothing less than real devotion.  And then, in a lovely display of her own power, she tells Harry that she is probably going to kill the “Harry” character in the play. She thought about letting him live, but killing him is “funnier.”  This, finally, pushes Harry in to his personal cauldron.

The final test is in Paris, at the restaurant. 

Harry comes to Paris after he’s visited his past and re-thought it. He goes to Paris to take a chance on Love with Erica.

The test for Erica is whether she can recognize that he has changed, and what does she want to do about it?

The first test is an especially important one for women who are dating at midlife.  Once they have gone through their inner search and self-examination, can they then discern that same inner capacity in a man? 

The dinner in Paris is a great test for Harry, as I’ve said earlier. He has clearly lost Erica. Can he take the loss with dignity and generosity?  He does a great job.

Erica can’t possible leave Julian for Harry at that moment. Would she do it later?  Probably in real life, she’d leave Harry alone, spend the rest of her holiday with Julian, go back to the States and always wonder whether she should have played it differently.

It’s a Hollywood moment, I think, for her to return to the bridge to meet Harry.  Nancy Meyers has her say, “Julian said I should come back here. He saw that I loved you.”  It’s a movie and in movies things happen too easily so I let my doubts have their moment and went on enjoying the show. 

So I don’t know how she did in her test.  In the denouement, the scene after the climax in which we get a glimpse of how things will be from now on, we see a happy family scene with Harry very much the tamed patriarch, and Erica in a supporting role. I’m not sure what to make of that either.

I would imagine that greater tests for them lie ahead. But Harry’s willingness to dig deeper into himself has been demonstrated. He’s made the investment. And her willingness to settle for nothing less than what she wants has also been demonstrated.  So I don’t instinctively worry for them.

I’m not sure what to make of the relationship with Julian. She clearly has a lot of power and he generously gives it to her. He would not dream of jerking her around and it’s not in his nature. Part of her power comes from the dynamic between them. She could leave easily and he wants to prove himself worthy.  So she owes him something in return for that earnestness. The author/director, Nancy Meyers, has her explain that it was Julian who recognized that she really loved Harry.  It was Julian who insisted that she return to Harry. 

So I think the final test was a little weak, but all the other scenes were clear and strong and good examples of what a lot of women got through and how they go through it.

Here are some of the lessons for a midlife woman in transformation.

Deal creatively with the past. It’s your story and you can make the events in it mean anything you want. You might lose but don’t lose the lesson.
You have to chose between self-protecting and having the time of your life.
You might get more that you want, but you always get what you are willing to settle for.
Your bottom line is expressed in action and it comes across like an ultimatum, which it is.

Part Two: What Harry learned about Dating at Midlife

By the end of Nancy Meyer’s  movie, Something’s Gotta Give, the lead character, Harry Sanborn, Jack Nicholson’s character, shows promise of  finally being a mensch, a man of honor who can be trusted. We don’t know if he’s there yet, but he’s there enough that when Erica opens up to him again, at the end, we aren’t afraid for her.

When I was in Rome I saw the statues of Greek heroes. Seven feet tall. Enough larger than life to be heroic, but close enough to human scale that I could relate and feel cowed. Harry is like that, just bigger enough than life to carry a movie, but close enough to people I’ve known, including, me.

When we meet Harry, he’s a sixty year old guy who has perfected an adolescent male’s dream.  He’s got the money, the power, the fame, the car, the pad and the impossibly gorgeous trophy women. The fact that he’s as much a trophy screw for the women as they are for him doesn’t bother him. It’s how he likes it.

I had a chance to see a pre-shooting script of the movie and the planned opening had him speaking about being afraid to grow old and a cruel fantasy about him being seen with a woman his own age.  I liked the final cut better. It opens with him musing about mature young women at the height of their sexual powers and him uniquely positioned (to coin a phrase) to sample the batch of them.

Psychologist David Buss’s research strongly argues that men have two separate mating strategies, one for casual sex, one for committed relationships.  The casual strategy says spread sperm early and often.  The serious strategy says put all your eggs in one basket and take care of that basket.  Harry isn’t yet capable of the second strategy.  One of the story lines of the movie is about how he acquires that capacity.

His maturing starts out with a heart attack.  In midlife literature, this is called a Wake Up Call.  Sometimes, especially with men who have success and no humility, it takes the threat of death to make them think about their lives.

The opening lines of Dante’s Inferno go like this: “Halfway through life’s journey I found myself in the middle of a dark forest. I had lost my way.”  The heart attack pushes Harry into unknown territory. He loses his way. He has to depend on others. He becomes vulnerable.

Stories work this way because they rings true; life works this way.  First we get a glimpse of the Promised Land, but we don’t get to go there without being purified. This is the heart of the midlife crisis.

At first, Harry doesn’t even have the language to grasp what he’s seen. 

Nancy Meyers wrote a brilliant script, I think, and one of my favorite parts of it is how she has Harry speak that vague, circular language used by men ambushed by love.  Sociologist Timothy Perper, in his book, Love Signals, points out that, compared to men, women are concrete and practical about love. It’s the men who get romantic, gushy, poetic and vague.  

Nancy Meyers has Harry say, “I could really love a woman like you.”   And Meyers underlines the weird vagueness of the sentiment by having Erica repeat it to herself later, adding, “…love a woman like you. What is that supposed to mean?”  Harry is going to need another wake up call.

Harry is out doing his usual with one of his usuals and he runs into Erica.  Erica sees him with another young woman and flees the restaurant. Harry runs after her. They have this wonderful conversation where Harry tries to defend his vagueness. 

He says, “ I like you, Erica.”  She says, “I love you - like you.”

Harry tries to turn the conversation into something intellectual and Erica won’t stand for it.  Her heart is too full of love for him.  “What am I supposed to do with All This!”  

Harry answers, truthfully, lamely, “I don’t know how to be a boyfriend.” 

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say? ” she says. “Good by, Harry.” And she jumps in a cab and is gone.

The difference between women at midlife who end up in committed monogamous relationships and those who don’t is that the ones who do insist on it.

She does Harry a favor.  The test of a mature man is his ability and willingness to be profoundly influenced by a woman while still being true to himself. It is the mirror of the test for a woman. He’s never going to make it to the Promised Land as long as he is worshipping the cheap stuff.

David Gilmore, an anthropologist, wrote a book called Manhood in the Making and he points out that in cultures all over the world adult masculinity is a status that must be won by sacrifice. The mature male happily sacrifices to take responsibility.

In another article of mine (on the web page under articles:  Are you dating a werewolf?) I talked about how some immature men need to be shot through the heart with a silver bullet by a woman who loves him enough to do it.  And that is what happens in the next and final wake up call for Harry. 

Erica drives off in her cab; Harry is alone. Erica goes back to mourn and to transform her pain into art; Harry goes back to his whatever. Erica writes a play which is a thinly disguised story of her relationship with Harry; Harry comes to a rehearsal. 

There are two important notes sounded during this last conversation between Harry and Erica before Harry finally gets it.

When Erica asks Harry why he’s at the rehearsal he says, “ I was worried about you, Erica.”  Erica says, simply “ I can take care of myself, Harry, I’m fine without you.” She rejects his cheap heroics. She is a woman of substance and she wants as much as she is capable of giving.

Then Harry learns that the “Harry” character in the play dies at the end of the second act. Erica has killed him in the play.  Harry protests and she says, “It’s funnier that way.”  Harry has panic attack that feels like a heart attack. The silver bullet finds its mark.

For a lot of midlife men, the transformation requires remorse, reflection and withdrawal. In the next sequence Harry finally changes and we know it’s a real change because he finally does something he’s never done before: he stops playing his game with women and instead, takes a good look at it.  The movie has him spend six months tracking down women he’s been with and wronged and inviting them to tell him their side of the story.  Six months is Hollywood time. In real life something like this could take three to five years.

Well, you don’t know what you’ve learned until you are tested.  The final phase of this story contains its most important lessons.

Harry returns to New York and goes to look up Erica. She’s not there; she’s in Paris. Harry knows just where.  It’s that restaurant she invited him to way back when.  He goes to Paris, he goes to the restaurant. He is a mature and confident man. He sees her. They talk, it looks promising for Harry,  and then, whoops,  he sees that she is there with her handsome young lover, Dr Julian Mercer.  This is Harry’s first test.

I asked a group of men whether they could show up,  be generous, and be genuinely friendly if the woman they were courting chose another man over them. Some could but all acknowledged that it would be very difficult. This is the sort of thing women do better than men, I think.

When Harry realizes she is with Julian, he gets up to leave. Then, Julian, the only one of the three of them who could do this, invites Harry to join them for dinner and they have a great time together, all three of them.  Harry pays for dinner. Afterwards, at the cab, Harry says good bye.  Erica goes off with Julian. Harry goes by the Seine and watches the romantic boats go by. Snow falls softly. Harry says, half in jest, “Now look who gets to be the girl.” 

Kipling wrote, “If you can meet defeat and victory and treat those two imposters as just the same, then you are a man…”   How lovely that Harry’s line about being the girl is the mark of his manhood.

Movies are as telegraphic as haiku. Simple sentences speak chapters. Harry’s graceful joke, suggests he can handle being vulnerable. But there is more.

If Harry had been resentful, if he had stormed out, got drunk, tried to pick up a young woman, got whiney, tried to put Julian down, or any of those not-willing-to-accept-it behaviors, , we would have been worried for Erica when she returned to him on the bridge. But he didn’t. He was a man of honor.

The they-live-happily-ever-after ending is a little glib. There are tests ahead for him But even so, we know he’s changed and for the better.  In the final scene, he is Mr. Grandmom, showing his nurturing side and being the grandparent in the restaurant.

He starts out a self indulgent boy. He learns that there are things worth wanting that aren’t won by charm alone, which require sacrifice.  He learns to sacrifice. And then he is able to learn. And then he gets what he wants.