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Philip Belove, Ed.D.

Welcome to the

In scenery I like flat country.
In life I don’t like much to happen.
In personalities I like mild colorless people.
And in colors I prefer gray and brown.
My wife, a vivid girl from the mountains,
Says, "Then why did you choose me?"
Mildly I lower my brown eyes –
There are so many things admirable people do not understand.

-- William Stafford.

---

In this essay we’re going to think about composing one of those Internet personal ads. These days running one of those ads can cost around $25.00 a month and people usually run these ads for a year or so, so you are looking at spending maybe a few hundred dollars on personal advertising. How will you know if the money is well spent?

"Well," you say, "it attracts responses." Fair enough. But mere responses aren’t enough.

A year ago I told the story of a woman who put up a bland profile with no essay and no picture, just answers to the multiple choice questions and within 24 hours she received a letter from a man who said that she was the woman of his dreams and he was just about to give up on Internet personals but then he read her profile and realized he’d found his dream partner and so on…So, clearly, just showing up on the pages can be like walking into a bad bar.

Eliminating the bad and attracting the good are two separate processes requiring separate skills. So , we’re going to talk about personal niche marketing. Looking for a match is not like running for class president or home-coming queen or state representative, or any other activity where you want to generate a huge list of positive responses. All you want is that one person who is good enough and capable enough to partner with you so you can create a great relationship.

Niche marketing is how things work in the wild. I have a biologist friend who spent some time in the forests of Guatemala. She said they found a flower they’d never seen before, which had an exceptionally long, thin stem. From that flower they knew that they would find a bird with an equally exceptionally long, thin beak. So it’s a law of life: Whatever you think is your best feature, then that’s the thing you want to hang out there to attract a partner. If it is something about yourself that you truly love, you can trust that there will be others who love it as well.

Marty Seligman, in his book Authentic Happiness, reports on one of the most interesting, and counter-intuitive, findings about what makes relationships last. (He quotes in a 2002 study by Murray, Holms, Dolderman and Griffin in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.)

The more your partner is your biggest fan, tends to see you through rose colored glasses, exaggerates your virtues and minimizes your faults, the happier you will both be. The more your partner agrees with you about what you do best, the more stable the relationship. Even without systematic and scientific surveys, you’ve probably noticed this yourself. You’ve seen those couples where she’s his best audience for his jokes, where he thinks her long and gossipy stories are fascinating.

For so many people at midlife, there is a secret love, a corner of their own soul that they are afraid to embrace and claim for all the world to see and yet, because there is so much passion contained in it, they can no longer deny it.

This secret love is something they’ve always wanted to do but never did because, well, they don’t know why. For one person it was bugs and she went back to graduate school to study wasps. Another woman, who was a medical technician, finally admitted she’d always wanted to be a jazz singer. The movie, Shall We Dance, is about a married man discovering his secret love of dance. He doesn’t believe his wife would understand or share it and so he sneaks around going to dancing lessons. At midlife, many of us get these calls and we have to follow them.

If you have a partner who can believe in and support this love of yours, you will have a great relationship in the second half of your life. If you want a great relationship in the second half of your life, trust that what attracts you to yourself will also attract the partner you want.

I know a man whose greatest joy in life is being what he calls, "Mr. Mom." When he meets women, this part of him is something that he is reluctant to show. Yet I also interviewed a very happy midlife couple and the women has said to me, "What attracted me most to this man was the way he practiced his love for his children." Another example: A man at forty fell in love with making photographs. The woman who now loves him said, "A man who cares passionately about beauty was such a foreign concept to me and yet, I don’t know how else I would have such loveliness in my life without him."

This is niche marketing applied to personal ads. Figure out what your own special light is. It's the secret love of your soul. Name it. and then let it shine.

Use the Let It Shine principle to shape your personal ads.

Here are two personal ads, one before and one after applying the Let It Shine Principle. Here is the before:

Sweet, sassy, Southern Steel Magnolia, slender, many interests, photography, planting flowers, painting watercolors, reading, and refinishing and decorating furniture.   You would be a solvent and kind gentleman who likes good conversations, discussing news, one who is affectionate, compromising and active.  I am searching for a faithful lifetime partner.

Before I became a psychologist I was an associate creative director in advertising agencies. When one of our professionals would write an ad like that we’d say, "Hey, that looks just like an ad." That was our way of saying that it had all the superficial appearance of an ad, but no life. In the same way, A mask is like a face, just not as interesting.

In helping this not-really-all-that-sassy woman re-write her ad, I was acting both as a creative director and as a psychologist. In my psychologist mode, I asked her questions about herself that she enjoyed thinking about – what made her life interesting and fun for her and why. She said, "It’s like those essays in English composition class." I listened to her answers in my creative director mode. Whenever I heard a spontaneous and heartfelt sentence, I wrote it down. Eventually, we’d accomplished two things. We’d figured out what she really did want in a relationship. And we figured out how to ask for it in a compelling way, in a way that could capture the attention of someone else who wanted the same things.

Here’s what we ended up with:

I am looking for a man who wants to share a quiet life sprinkled with a few rowdy moments. I plant flowers, paint, take pictures, decorate furniture and I also hoot and run bases with my grandchildren. I am happiest when I am doing something gentle and making someone else feel good. I also enjoyed screaming at an Elvis concert.

If you take care of my car, I will do your laundry. If you pick up your own clothes and put them in their place, I will reward you with lots of hugs. If you want to be alone, I’ll let you be. A lot of times I like to be by myself, too. I will listen to you as you listen to me. If you join me in watching a movie, taking a walk, and swinging in the swing with ice tea, I will attend a sporting event with you.

In some senses the second ad is quieter and more vulnerable. The stuff about being "sassy" and a "steel magnolia" does not attract or distract us – and who knows what those things really mean.  Instead we have a sense of the day-to-day and deeply genuine pleasures this person finds in her life. There's warmth, flesh and blood in this ad. When we read it we get a sense of a real person with a beating heart.

Is this attractive?

Not to everyone. Someone who liked exotic travel, off-Broadway theater, or grass-roots political organizing would probably not answer this ad. And that would be a good thing. A good ad, because it is specific, turns away as powerfully as it attracts.

This is the heart of how attraction works at midlife. What is charismatic is the act of recognizing and cherishing your true self and of being happy with what satisfies your soul.

Want to try this for yourself? Write me at drbelove@datingatmidlife.com to arrange for four sessions to clarify your vision for a great relationship and, in the process, to create a personal ad that works.

Also, "What’s my next step?" So what can relationship coaching do for you? It’s easy to run out of flexibility and creativity when you are trying to figure out a new relationship. Sometimes, all you need is one new idea to take a relationship the next step. Write me at drbelove@datingatmidlife.com to arrange for a complimentary "next step" coaching session.

Thanks again.

Philip Belove, Ed.D.

Welcome to the

Welcome to my free email newsletter. It represents the fruit of ten years of academic and clinical research into the world of midlife singles. It’s designed to help you figure out what’s going on in relationships and how to create meaningful and satisfying relationships. Please enjoy it, please forward it, please always give credit.

Wanted: Stories about Internet dating. Got a good one for the book? Drop me an email and tell me the story.

This month’s theme is the little efforts with big results.

At a loss for what to do next in your relationship? The mistake most people make in beginning relationships is trying to force growth. Sometimes a tiny step in the right direction works a lot better than a big one. But there is art in figuring out what that next good small step might be.

Email me for a complimentary consult on how to take a very small, but significant next step. drbelove@datingatmidlife.com

Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life
you will be overwhelmed:
you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you have things right in your life
but do not know why,
you are just lucky, and you will not move
in the little ways that encourage good fortune.
The saddest are those not right in their lives
who are acting to make things right for others;
they act only from the self –
and that self will never be right:
no luck, no help, no wisdom.

By Philip Belove, Ed.D. (All rights reserved.)

What’s the biggest challenge in dating at midlife? I don’t think it’s finding an available single. The dating at midlife sub-culture is enormous. Census figures suggest that more than 30% of all adults are not married. It’s easy to find another single person who is looking for a relationship. The question is what kind of a relationship and the challenge is in creating a relationship that’s worth staying in.

In midlife dating relationships it’s strange how easily people get ahead of the relationship their riding in. What happens when people try to force a relationship to go somewhere is that they end up being dragged behind it. A good example of this is what happens when people become lovers before they become friends. When this happens, it makes friendship building more complicated.

Every friendship has its little storms. The challenge in dating at midlife is creating a climate that, despite the ordinary storms, is so pleasant you want to settled down and live in it. How do you do that?

John Gottman, psychologist at Washington University, wrote a book with the audacious title, "Why Marriages Succeed or Fail." He and his team could predict with 90% accuracy whether a couple would still be together five years later. They did it by observing the friendship between the partners. Couples that stay together have five times as many positive interactions as negative. The percent of positive time together would have to be 83%. That, in a college grading system, is a B. If a relationship got a C, it wouldn’t last. It is this ratio that predicts longevity.

Therefore, if you want a relationship to last you have to do two things from the outset. You have to manage the negative stuff so it doesn’t take over and you have to create habits between yourself and your partner so the relationship is pleasant and positive for both of you. People do this naturally in courtship. They are on super-good behavior. The challenge is maintaining that goodness as the relationship deepens. This takes some skill and knowledge.

In this article we’re going to look at increasing the positive stuff, but in passing I want to notice one of the weird quirks of midlife dating. A lot of people get into compartmentalized relationships, ones with a guarantee of no future. These relationships are often very pleasant because people over look the little things that would ordinarily bother them. It’s when a partner starts looking at a life-time of co-habitation and commitment that things usually over looked start to matter. But laying the early groundwork for successful conflict management is a different topic for another time. For now we are going to focus on the little things that make life together sweet.

Robert Trivers, an evolutionary biologist named the principle of nature that creates deep friendship. He called it Reciprocal Altruism. His theory has been successfully measured and tested, but it also seems to reflect deep common sense. It’s an amazing mechanism. It’s what makes people happy to be with each other and binds us into enduring marriages, friendships and business relationships.

It works like this: There are ten thousand small efforts I can make for you, which cost me next to nothing, yet the value of these things to you is enormous. A casual kind word to someone who’s had a bad day can be all the difference in the world to them. If you are starving and I have more than enough food, the cost to me of one more plate on the table is negligible while the value to you is extraordinary.

Low cost to the giver, high value to the receiver: this is the principle of reciprocal altruism. It not only makes you want to return the favor, it bonds you, and it makes returning the favor a pleasure.

Now in a new relationship, if I know what little things I could do, which cost me next to nothing, yet which my partner would deeply appreciate, then how wonderful and easy it would be to do those things and how much both our happiness would be increased!

The challenge, though, is that people are astonishingly uncommunicative about the genuinely positive, appreciative and admiring experiences they have with each other. Psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey point this out in their book, How The Way We Talk Can Change The Way We Work. The same principles apply in the way we make friendships.

People are often vague about what pleases them. If you are dating someone, you may gather, indirectly, that your partner appreciates certain things about you, but you don’t always know how well they really get you in all your special particularity. And when you share evidence of it, say in a perfectly chosen gift – "Ah just my taste! How did you know?" – it’s a thrill. What you want to do is make it easy for them to understand what you like and what pleases you.

Try this exercise. Pick someone you are getting to know and like as a dating partner and then think about what you might spontaneously tell a third person about your new friend. Well, she’s just a great person. She’s really smart, considerate, funny and sweet and kind. Great figure, too. What wrong with that? Not a lot, except if that’s all that happens, it misses four key opportunities to build a solid friendship. What could you do in addition?

First, be direct. If you feel it strongly enough to tell someone else, or even to be spontaneously thinking in an idle moment, say, when you doing the dishes, then be deliberate and direct and say it directly to your dating partner. "You know I was thinking about something I appreciate about you…"

Second, savor the specifics. As good as that statement about being sweet, considerate and funny may sound, it’s still vague. Exactly what were the tiny things that led you to have those sentiments? Specifically, what did she do that was "considerate"? What exactly was it that was "funny," or "sweet," or "kind"? "I liked that little joke you made at the table. I like it when you make me laugh."

Third, be precise. This is as much for you as it is for your partner. In the early stages of a relationship you are not just figuring out whether you like this particular person, you are also trying to clarify for yourself what it is you want in a long-term relationship. In relationship coaching, we ask people to make lists of what it is they want long term. But these lists are always hypothetical. They have to be. You can’t be too specific because you want to allow for happy surprises. And besides, everyone pretty much makes the same list. We all want partners who are smart, physically attractive, kind, sensitive and so on. But we differ in how we want those qualities to show up in our lives. Some men like women who are smart in the way they listen. Others like women who are smart in the way they talk. Those are big differences. What counts as being kind, sweet, or funny for you? You want to become more aware of those things, and one of the best ways is to comment on it to someone else.

Finally, you want to let your partner know how she affects you and you don’t want to fall into the trap of handing out grades. The first is generous and the second is a bit arrogant and doesn’t wear well. This is the hardest one to get.

Instead of saying, I’m so glad you are good with money, which is giving out a grade, you want to say something more specific and self-disclosing like I’m so glad you reminded me to check the restaurant bill because I wouldn’t have noticed that the tip was already included and I would have ended up tipping 35%. In the first comment your partner might be flattered. She might also figure that you don’t know enough about being good with money to even make a judgment. In the second, she can say to herself, Oh, he likes it when I do that. He didn’t think it was obnoxious of me. I can feel comfortable about doing it more.

It’s subtle stuff, and yet, if you practice these rules of thumb until you can be smooth and effortless with them – Being Direct, Being Specific, Noticing your own reactions and Sharing News of your happy experience of the other person – you will have the habit of doing very small things that have solid, positive results. Without making a Big Deal out of anything, you will be shaping the relationship the way you want it. You will be increasing the positive feelings to make the relationship worth wanting. You will be developing your own clarity about what you want. And finally, as promised in the poem, you will have things right in your relationship and you’ll know why. Not bad. – P.B.

* * * *

Thanks all folks. Thanks again. Drop me a line if there is anything in this article you want to respond to or if you have a good story. I’m still pulling together material for the book. Have a great Christmas, Hanukah or Kwansa - PB

Welcome to the

Newsletter
November 2004

Welcome to my free email newsletter.  It represents the fruit of ten years of academic and clinical research into the world of midlife singles.  It’s designed to help you figure out what’s going on in relationships and then how to create meaningful and satisfying relationships.  Please enjoy it, please forward it, please always give credit. To submit questions, to see other issues and articles, to subscribe, go to http://www.datingatmidlife.com

For counseling, answers and coaching, write me directly drbelove@datingatmidlife.com

Instead of a poem

The following ad is said to have actually run in the Atlanta Journal:

SINGLE BLACK FEMALE seeks male companionship, race unimportant. I'm a very good looking girl who LOVES to play, take long walks in the woods, hunting, camping, fishing trips and cozy winter nights by the fire. Really like a man with a pickup truck. A candlelight dinner will have me eating out of your hand. I'll be at the front door when you get home from work, wearing only what nature gave me. Rub me the right way and watch me respond. Kiss me and I'm yours. Call (xxx) xxx-xxxx and ask for Daisy.

Over 15,000 men found themselves talking to the Atlanta Humane
Society about an 8-week-old black Labrador retriever.

Elizabeth described herself in her ad as an accomplished, mature woman with excellent communication skills and happy sensuality. She has been exchanging email with Thomas. The correspondence moved to phone calls and they arranged to meet for the weekend. Thomas would stay at her place. She had an extra bedroom but maybe they wouldn’t be needing it. The chemistry was good but Thomas said that he was waiting for "a special woman" to appear in his life and while he liked her a lot, he wasn’t sure she was the one. After the weekend, which included some very good sex, Thomas wrote her a poetic thank you note and she responded with a short note in which she told him how much she appreciated the weekend and she wished him luck in his search. She didn’t write again.

Robert had been a long-time friend of Marsha’s. They both sang in a community choir, and it turned out they both had a taste for weird movies. She invited him over one Sunday evening to see her DVD of Lost Highway, the director’s cut. After the movie they started kissing and when Thomas put his hand on her breast she said, "Where are you going with this?" He stopped and said, "Well, I don’t think there is enough of a fit for a long term relationship but I thought we could at least have some fun." She said, "Okay but it’s late and if we’re going to do that, let’s make it a whole evening," And she invited him back for candle light supper on Thursday.

Raoul was an engineer on temporary assignment in her city when he appeared as an expert witness against Lindsey’s client. She found herself so distracted by the beauty of his lavender shirt against his dark, smooth face that she asked him for his card after the trial. He was stationed locally for the next three months, but then would have to fly back, and so she met him for dinner as soon as she could. They sat in the garden restaurant in the atrium of his hotel enjoying the sexual tension until it became clear, reading just a little between the lines of the conversation, that he had a wife back home. Lindsey said, "Wait a minute. What’s in this for me?" He said, "Lindsey, what’s in it is passion." She said, "That’s my passion, buddy, not yours. I brush my teeth with this kind of passion. Don’t you go claiming owner ship of my passion."

How did these women make their decisions?

In any community, there are two sets of rules governing sexual behavior, the proper rules and the real rules. The proper rules are the ones designed to protect families and to foster marriages. The real rules are what people will naturally do as long as it’s nobody’s business but their own.

In the proper rules, as the name implies, people have to answer to others, the community of elders, for their behavior. But if you are an elder, meaning you are over 40 and you’ve been married and you’ve established yourself as an adult – and in addition you are single and sexual – who are you going to answer to? Who is going to judge your sexual behavior? And by what standards?

The dating at midlife culture is powerfully loaded to support and encourage sexual freedom in women.

1. Birth control is easily available or not even necessary

2. A lot of midlife single women are post-divorce and trying to re-assess their sexual desirability after a failed marriage and the sexual turn-offs involved.

3. A lot of midlife post-divorce women just out of a dry marriage are thirsty for sexual experience, or curious.

4. A lot of midlife single women are less certain that they even want a long term relationship with a man because most midlife singles have been in long term relationships that didn’t work and they haven’t yet figured out what they need to know for the next try.

5. We live in a highly sexualized cultural surround.

6. Much midlife dating is done in private, not in a community setting, and this privacy and anonymity supports sexual freedom.

7. Midlife single women are competing. There are more available women than men and this encourages women to play by men’s rules, which are fundamentally more promiscuous and much more encouraging toward casual sex than women’s rules.

How do women and men make sexual decisions when they have so much sexual encouragement, temptation and freedom? I focus more on how women decide because in a situation where people are free, for men, the default is to have sex given the chance and the decision is to do it first and think later, whereas for women, the default is to think about it first, and the decide whether go ahead.

Whether or not to have sex is always the woman’s decision. This is what you might expect when dealing with matters closely related to pregnancy and childbirth where the concrete consequences are born by women. When it comes to sex women are more practical and concrete and men are more romantic and opportunistic.

Even though women are more practical about sex and even though, in surveys, men want sex sooner, with more different partners over time, and with less personal investment – it’s still a mistake to assume that men are more lustful than women. The truth is probably that women enjoy it every bit as much, if not a lot more.

This theory about women enjoying sex more than men is a couple thousand years old. An ancient Greek myth, the story of Tiresius, is the story of a man who saw two snakes copulating and killed them while in the act and, in punishment, he was turned into a woman. He lived as a women for several years and then, when he happened to see two snakes copulating again, he said to himself, "If the curse worked once, maybe it will work again," and so again he killed the snakes and was turned back into a man. Later, when the gods were having a debate over who enjoyed sex more, men or women, they asked Tiresius because he would know. He said, "Without question, women enjoy it much more." Juno, the highest female god punished him, blinded him for revealing the secret.

(Zeus took pity on him and, as a consolation prize gave him the power of prophecy and some people think there is a relationship becoming profoundly and accurately intuitive and also being able to understand events from both a male and female perspective, but that’s another discussion.)

Here is a joke that makes the same point: After creation was finished, the Lord of All had two gifts left and he went to the man and the women and asked them who wanted which. Adam said, "What do you got?" and the Lord said, "You could pee standing up" and Adam, being male, impulsive and zany, spoke first and said, "Wow. I can see a real use for that. Great. I’ll take it." And the Lord then turned to the woman and said, "Okay. So I guess you get the other one. Multiple orgasms."

And this takes me back to the challenge: how do midlife women make good decisions about taking care of themselves sexually 1) in a culture that encourages sexual freedom, 2) when she really does enjoy sex a lot and wants a sex life, and 3) when she isn’t all that sure a long term committed relationship is possible and/or desirable with the men who are currently available and interested?

Some women – midlife, mature, and psychologically healthy – simply refuse to be involved with another sexually without marriage. One woman I know was doing charity work helping serve a Christmas dinner and the man she was working with asked her if she was available for a relationship. She said to him, "Yes, but I want you to know I’m done with midlife dating and the next man I get involved with has to want to get married." He said, "Well, I guess I feel about the same. Let’s get married." And they were married within two months. Five years later they are still very happy.

Of course not every one is that clear or that ready. Getting ready takes work, and usually an external source of support. Much of midlife relationship coaching involves helping people develop that inner readiness.

Back to the central question: What do people do in the meanwhile?

What seems to happen is that there is a kind of dating relationship that midlife singles set up that includes a speech that goes like this: "I don’t see a long term commitment happening here but I like you. Let’s go out, have fun, have sex but understand that I (at least) am still looking around and I may end the relationship at some time in the future and for now all I can promise is that I won’t be having sex with others." There are a lot of variations on this theme. For example, not having unprotected sex with others, is a common one.

I had asked for a name for this new kind of relationship that includes sex but does not carry any obligation toward long-term commitment. What do you call relationships like this?

Here are some suggestions I’ve heard:

One person I talked to said that these were FOR NOW relationships, because they had no future.

Another said  "I have it............ call it "expiration dating" you know, like food, it has an expiration date. It goes sour after a while, or it rots, but it's definitely got it's own time frame." Another person said that when expiration dating is just about over then your soon-to-be-ex- partner becomes you STALE MATE.

And then there was this response: How about TENTATIVE RELATIONSHIPS IN MIDLIFE DATING.  It spells ‘trimd’ which is kind of a good play on words because that’s what midlife dating feels like to me, a sort of ‘trimmed’ version of how I dated in my single younger days and I definitely use a more tentative approach in the early stages

One woman who always wanted her trimd relationships to get more intimate suggested we call them "Furshelpta relationships" using the Yiddish for something you have to drag along.

A man told me the story of a relationship where he had great sex with this woman and afterwards said, "So you love me?" And she laughed. "Who said anything about love. How about LIKE PLUS?"

Again, these are, for the most part, stories about women approaching casual sex from their practical side. It’s good to have a little sex now and then. It’s good to have it with someone you like, who is kind, sensitive, smart, reasonably attractive and reasonably sane. But, as one woman said, "That doesn’t mean I want another chore-creating individual in my life."

You can hear the mixed and negative feelings in some of this terminology. These women (all the responses were from women) know what these relationships are and they co-create them, but some women are more comfortable with them than others. My own sense is that they are a practical answer to a psychological challenge.

If you’ve been following my writing, you know that I see dating at midlife as being a kind of transition from a young adult’s way of thinking about relationships to an older adult’s way. I see this happening in stages and I see people negotiating their sex lives differently at different stages. All coaching involves moving people to the next level.

At first, people are confused. They aren’t sure what to make of the fact that they are single at midlife and they don’t know how to be as honest with themselves as they need to be. Then their sexual decisions seem to be impulsive. They react against the "proper" rules but they don’t have a better idea. If they are uncomfortable enough with themselves they move to the second stage. Sometimes the job of a counselor coach is to help them be more honest about their discomforts. If a relationship seems Furshelpta, and you resent it, maybe that’s a sign that you need to stop working at it and let it go.

In the second stage they learn the answer to the question, "To whom do I answer for my sexual behavior?" The best verbal formula for this answer comes from the 12 Step programs, the best lore there is on the midlife transition. You have to answer to yourself, to your sense of God, and to at least one other human being. You have to have a principled stand. In this stage the job of a counselor/coach is to be one of those other people a person is willing to answer to for their integrity. A lot of people in this stage simply stop having sex for a while until they can figure out how to do it, even in a transitional relationship, without violating their integrity.

In the third stage, once people have grounded themselves in conscientiousness, once they have become clear what it is they don’t want to do, people start trying figure out what they do want. This is a new set of challenges. A lot of times you have to stop doing what you don’t want before you can see clearly what it is you do want. The job of a counselor coach here is to remind people of their values while helping them experiment with new ones. This is the time to clarify true goals, to find the true inner north.

The problem with this process when it comes to sexual behavior is that sex is bonding. I’ve talked with many who create these special, supportive, mutually beneficial and yet, transitional relationships. And they are very hard to manage. Sexual jealousy is biological. People are surprised at how powerful it can be. Breaking up is hard to do, especially in the early stages of a transition when you aren’t yet able to be deeply honest with yourself.

Still, I wanted a somewhat neutral way of talking about these transitional relationships because people do them and find them helpful. Recently I’ve been calling them Relationships-In-A-Box. I liked the image and I heard it from another woman. She said, "It’s like that little box of precious things I keep in the bottom drawer and every once in awhile I pull it out and look at it, and then I put it away and go back to my life."

So what’s the advice? As I’ve said, it depends on the stage you are in. In the end, you have to know what it is you want and what you are willing to sacrifice to get it. Here is a picture of the fourth stage, the one of certainty. Late in the movie, Moonstruck, the Olympia Dukakis character is a midlife wife whose husband is having an affair and she knows it. She is out to dinner by herself and ends up having dinner with a midlife man whose date has left him. They enjoy each other’s company and he walks her home. He stops to kiss her and, even though she likes him, she refuses. He asks why? She says – and this is the point – "Because I know who I am."

In the three stories at the beginning of this essay, each woman made a different choice about whether or not to have sex. Was one choice better than the other? No. Each woman knew who she was and what she wanted. Her conditions were clear. The woman who refused sex because, as she said, "It’s my passion, not yours," had decided that she only wanted a relationship that could end in marriage and she was prepared to do without. Period. The woman who asked the man back so they could make a whole evening of it also knew herself. She knew that she would allow her self an evening of sex, but only if it was given proper time and respect do it right. The woman who spent the weekend with the man and didn’t see him again also knew herself. She knew she wasn’t going to be trifled with by a man who wasn’t sure at all what he wanted, but at the same time she allowed herself to have a wonderful time.

Three women, three different situations, and in each a woman was being very honest with themselves and with her partner. Each was using a different, but intentional strategy.

Could we say as much for the men? Raoul, the engineer probably would have denied to his wife that he had been with anyone. In that case, he is probably also kidding himself. He has some growing up to do. Robert, who said, honestly, that he didn’t see a long-term future, was being honest with himself and with Marsha. For this couple, their short term encounter had integrity. Thomas, who was waiting for that special woman, was being vague with Elizabeth. Vagueness is always a sign of stage one. Elizabeth was much clearer and took advantage of the situation for herself.

I don’t think that the women who insisted on long term commitment or nothing were in fact more mature than the women who, while looking for a long term relationship allowed themselves some pleasure. What seems to happen as people mature is that they become very honest with themselves and also considerate of others.

-- PB

* * * *

Thanks all folks. Thanks again. Drop me a line if there is anything in this article you want to respond to or if you have a good story. I’m still pulling together material for the book. Have a great Thanksgiving.

Welcome to the

Newsletter
October 2004

Welcome to my free email newsletter.   It represents the fruit of ten years of academic and clinical research into the world of midlife singles.  It’s designed to help you figure out what’s going on in relationships and then how to create meaningful and satisfying relationships. 

Please enjoy it and forward it to anyone else you think will appreciate it.
To submit questions, to see other issues and articles, to subscribe, go to http://www.datingatmidlife.com

For counseling, answers and coaching, write me directly at drbelove@datingatmidlife.com

Please forward and always give credit to the authors.

The Midlife Learning Institute

The July 04 letter discussed how men think about short term relationships. In it I asked for letters from women. This month’s essay incorporates some of those responses. Thanks to those who wrote.

Sex Decisions in midlife dating will be one of the content areas in the upcoming Teleclass series. It starts with a free introductory class on October 6 and the topic will be communication. Join us then, see what it will be like, have a chance to speak up and get heard.

This month’s poetry is by david meuel, from an anthology, intimate kisses, the poetry of sexual pleasure, edited by Wendy Maltz, New World Library.

 
what makes it good
isn’t
the mystery or masterly technique
or even a love so strong
you can smash bricks with it
it’s
the spinning waters way I feel
when you grab me by the eyes
and slip your thin black panties
off
 

Please help. I’m searching for a good, funny, accurate name for this relationship, so common in midlife dating. It is a relationship with a built in limitation – geography, marriage to someone else, not-enough compatibility beyond sexuality, whatever. Sometimes the limitation is named. Sometimes it’s implied. The relationship always includes sex.

It isn’t casual and yet it’s not a full relationship. It is always limited in some important way. It is always smaller than full out commitment.

Maybe it ought to be called a relation-ette, like dinette or raisonette. I don’t especially like STR, or Short Term Relationship which sounds about as passionate as a financial instrument. And besides, sometimes these relationships aren’t always short term. They can last for years. I’ve interviewed people who’ve had discrete affairs, which have lasted as long as ten years and which included monthly trysts and even "business trips" that were really erotic vacations.

There is a French phrase for a friendship with tenderness, safety, sex and love, Amitie Passion, but I want an English term. I thought about "Limited Partnerships" as a term, but again, the phrase sounds so Wall Street, even though I like it because it captures the idea of intentionally built-in limitations.

These are definitely not casual relationships. We’re not talking about casual sex although the fact that they include sex is central to what they are. If we are bound to be single for many years between 40 and 60 or more, we are still going to want to have a sex life. One woman, recently divorced said that despite it all, she and her husband had a good sex life. "I didn’t believe how hungry I got."

For many of us, these Passionate Friendships Including Sex represent a compromise. The middle years are often a time of being more practical than idealistic. One of the jobs of a midlife coach is to remind people not to forget their highest goals. Here is how one woman described this highest goal and its benefits: I want sex, passionate, orgasmic, wild, joyful sex, as often as possible for as long as I am able. For me, this kind of sex is only and exclusively available in a committed monogamous relationship. Period. No question about it. I just can’t have really good sex unless I feel completely safe. As the feeling of safety grows, the sex gets better. I know that popular wisdom tells us that guys have good sex no matter what, but after seven months, I am just beginning to scratch the surface of understanding how my lover’s body works…how to take him to places of sexual ecstasy

And, of course, her personal experience is born out in research. The way it is said is so dry it’s easy to miss what they are talking about: "Sexual satisfaction for both men and women increases with commitment." In other words, if you want ecstasy, you have to be deeply vulnerable and if you want to be deeply vulnerable you have to trust deeply. And if you want to trust deeply, you have to know that you and your partner are fully devoted. Otherwise, there’s a lot of performance and show business. I’ve always been fascinated by the way one woman described a short term lover, "He’s a great technical lover."

This high goal of authentic, profoundly vulnerable sex is often put aside temporarily at midlife. One woman wrote, "I’m choosing not to have any long-term relationships because I don’t want to work that hard right now. I have no illusions about the amount of work required and the last time I put in all that work and it still didn’t work out, I guess you would call that seriously burned. I want companionship, but not if it comes with all that work."

Another woman wrote, "Does his presence in my life add value? Or is he just another task-creating creature? "

Another wrote, "I have never had sex (or anything else for that matter) so good that it was worth all the extra domestic work that men in my generation sometimes represent. …For me, at 46, it is about keeping my independence and maintaining a particular lifestyle which makes room for a lover but doesn’t require me to change everything. "

And that way of thinking is what produces Amitie Passion, the STR, the Limited Partnerships, the Whatdayacallit. As one woman wrote, maybe what I’m doing is not casual sex. I’m looking for good friends, cuddle buddies and possible lovers – in that order…one nighters are no interest. None of the blessings and too much of a risk physically, emotionally and socially"

And again, I have very high standards for any kind of sexual relationship and since I’m in a protective phase and I’m not ready to play at all and am certainly not doing the long –term thing I can see having and hope to have lovers who are my beloveds for ever and that I am sexual with for years or as long as it works."

Midlife dating is different. People who are single at midlife are single for a reason and often not a particularly happy reason. Whatever the reason is, it’s an irritant, a grain of sand in the soul. What else to do with it than try to make it into a pearl? The midlife single years are a transition time for many of us. There are things we have to learn about, not about the world, but about ourselves. To do this, we have to cut ourselves some slack. We need forgiveness and flexibility. Sometimes that means we cannot be in a complete relationship with someone else who often needs the same things.

For many, the STR is a phase, a solution to a problem. But temporary solutions to problems have a way of becoming problems themselves. As John Lennon wrote, in the year before he was shot, "Life is what happens while you are making other plans." Sex mixed with affection, tenderness and safety is bonding. That is why these relationships create a lot of confusion in midlife dating.

"When it’s Love, you don’t have to think about how it will end." In Amitie Passion, there is always the understanding, a sad, sweet understanding, which is sometimes held by one partner and sometimes by both, an understanding that things can only go so far and can eventually end.

As I’ve said, all relationships are negotiated. How do partners let each other know that this relationship is only going so far and no farther? A lot of these negotiations are conducted non-verbally, in action. In relationships, actions speak the truth, but not all that clearly. Also it is no single action, but the pattern of actions over time that reveals the limits and possibilities of the relationship.

As a psychologist I am, of course, fascinated by the many ways people communicate the fact of limits.

Here is a small list:

1. One partner is married. One of the convenient myths of extra-marital affairs is that the spouse will divorce and then marry the new partner. A successful marriage between former affair partners rarely happens and never without difficulty. For one thing, it is difficult to trust someone who is a known liar. Usually, at some level, both parties understand that the marriage, which exists "over there," helps them limit their secret relationship. At the very least, it keeps it a secret and that’s a big limit. On the other hand, it’s quite common for partners to be happy with a secret, limited and fond relationship. Partners see each other once a month or so, meet in distant cities and even manage to rendezvous (another French word) on business trips.

2. Geographical limits. One woman I interviewed told me about how she established one with a man who lived just a bit too far away. The drive between them was a few too many hours for them to maintain it and so they agreed to have a few magnificent weekends and then end it. The advantage for them was that finally the impersonal distance would pull them apart and they could separate without having to reject or be rejected.

3. Post Divorce. In Paul Simon’s semi-autobiographical movie about his divorce, his character and his soon-to-be ex, played by Blair Brown, come back to his apartment after the conference with their lawyers and make love. In the afterglow he says, "You know post-separation agreement sex is even better than pre-marital sex." There are many divorced couples who turn back to each other in a dry time and become temporary lovers. Some re-unite, but many simply re-encounter each other. The divorce serves as a limiter.

4. An all-consuming job. The "all consuming job" doesn’t necessarily exclude a committed relationship, but it serves as an impersonal reason for not going further. Sometimes it is difficult for couples to acknowledge explicitly to each other that for the long haul they don’t see a fit, but for the short haul they could make an exception.

5. The explicit negotiation. In Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, the hero finds himself in a bar late at night and a woman approaches him and says, "Hi there." He immediate says, "I’m not interested." I remember this bland exchange because I fell in love with the next sentence. Vonnegut says, "But it turns out that they both underestimated their lack of interest but not by much." On the other hand, there are many people who drop hints to some selected possible partners that they are interested in short term relationships and the deal is made.

6. The Male Fade. Credit for this term goes to my friend, JJ, who used to talk about the way men would show up in her life, make a lot of noise about being interested and then, without warning or explanation, suddenly stop calling. And then they would show up again, sometimes weeks, as if nothing had happened. This is another way people communicate that a relationship’s possibilities are limited. Women do this, too, of course, but not so lightly or obliviously as men. When women do this, they can usually name reasons and the reasons are personal.

7. The Ten Thousand Small Things. This is the most common way it is done. We are constantly adjusting closeness and distance in relationships. As one woman said, "If it’s my committed lover, I’ll hang up and take the call. If it’s someone I’m just dating, I’ll call by the day’s end. If it’s someone I’m backing off, I may way a day or two." These messages are sent non-verbally. People who are closer touch each other more and in more sensitive places. A hand on the shoulder is different than a hand on the upper arm, or the neck, or the butt. But partners who are going to be apart have other ways of communicating that the relationship has built in distance.

Advice? It’s always the same advice with me. When all else fails, be brave and tell the truth. How do you to that? How do you talk about the tough stuff. That’s a topic for another time. – PB.

***************************************

Finally, speaking of talking about the tough stuff, the best book on couple communication is finally in print. Buy it at http://hometown.aol.com/jackrap1/index2.html

Welcome to the

Newsletter
September 2004

Welcome to my free email newsletter.  It represents the fruit of ten years of academic and clinical research into the world of midlife singles.  It’s designed to help you create meaningful and satisfying relationships.  Please enjoy it and forward it to anyone else you think will appreciate it.
To submit questions, to see other issues and articles, to subscribe, go to http://www.datingatmidlife.com

Please forward and always give credit to the authors.
The Midlife Learning Institute

Hi everyone, Welcome back to Fall.  I hope you enjoyed your August.  Big doings here. I’ll be doing a teleclass with my good friend and colleague, Lynne Michelson ,who is a social worker and experienced relationship coach living in St. Louis. She has loads of experience working with midlife singles and is a lore-collector, like me, and she has lots of interesting things to say. Details below.
 
I’m still sorting through the responses from the July letter and I owe you all an essay on it. That comes in October. In this issue I’m going back to some basics and again, presenting an overview.
 
Sometimes, when I look at my happy relationship I feel like I’ve won the lottery and there’s nothing I could have done that produced such stupendous results. Other times, though, I see all the skills, commitment, and careful, informed attention – on her part and mine -- that go into making it all look like simply dumb luck. But I know better. Relationship success at midlife doesn’t just happen.
 
This months’ essay will be brief. It’s the opening paragraphs of my book, Truth, Daring and Dating at Midlife.
 
In addition, I want to thank those of you who wrote answers to last month’s essay. I had asked what women are thinking about when they consider whether they want a long or short term relationship with a man. The responses were very rich and I’m still reading over those answers and thinking about them. I’ll write a follow up on it next issue. Thanks again.        Philip

First,  this month’s Poetry:

For Men Who Still Consider Sex A Casual Occasion.

It's always lust, whether you have some intention
Of making it last or not.
But when has the notion of a lasting passion
Even entered your mind?
And after so many women,
Isn't it obvious there's only one
You've any business doing this with?
Whatever you're looking for--
Harlot, mother, holy sister--
They all end up with the same words on their lips.
For even as you reach that other shore behind their eyes,
You can feel the questions swimming up after
And darting about your ankles
Like shy but famished fish:
"What is it that you see in me? Am I really the one?"
The eyes go on:
"I want the moon, you know.
Do you think you can give me that?
And even as you die inside me
Every time you come,
Is what I give you back then
Enough so you won't resent that?
And what of the smiling child
Who plays like a shadow about my mouth
Whenever you take my hand?
In taking my hand, you are making a promise
To the ones I have come from as much as to me,
And it speaks of all that's in store for us
Though most of that you cannot see.
After all, I'm dying too--
But not for a love any less than this."
-- Frederic Sibley

---

Truth, Daring and Dating at Midlife.

Copyright By Philip Belove, Ed.D.

Introduction

Jerry, who is a man I’ve worked with, told me this story. Maybe it was an off night, or maybe it was second or third in a series of off nights, he wasn’t sure, but while he was in bed making love to his sweetheart, whose name was Angel, Jerry found himself thinking about calling his old buddy, Jennifer, for a friendly evening of sex. He caught himself rehearsing what he would say to Jennifer, who was bound to ask him, "Aren’t you involved with this new woman?" He heard himself sorting through possible reasons for not "busy" next Friday, or maybe Sunday night. He watched himself working out his ethical justifications. The only thing that was different from what he had done in the past – could it have been fifty times? More? –  was that he saw himself doing it and got scared.
 
Jerry was 48 and divorced twice. That in itself was not remarkable. Half of all marriages end in divorce and two-thirds of all second marriages. He’d been single for seven years with two major (two year long) relationships and a handful of minor encounters. You could say he was a veteran of the midlife dating scene. Angel was 45, with similar statistics. 
 
There’s an old Irish joke that goes, "When all else fails, tell the truth," and next morning, after breakfast, Jerry was scared enough to try it. He said to Angel, "I didn’t very much like our love making last night." He left out the part about Jennifer.
 
Angel said, "I wasn’t feeling all that connected to you either but I didn’t want to say anything and after you went to sleep I went into the next room and sat and cried."
 
After a while midlife singles usually figure that sex isn’t the same thing as intimacy. Intimacy comes from conversations like this. The conversation went well but even so, it wasn’t until about an hour later, during a quiet pause that Jerry said, "I was actually thinking about calling someone else for sex.  Silence. Angelique said, "I was too."
 
Ten thousand moments like this are what it takes to build an intimate relationship at midlife. And these moments have a peculiar emotional tone, a mixture of fear and relief, the footprints of Truth and Daring,
 
Truth and Daring is what it takes for relationship success at midlife. Being single at midlife isn’t a first choice. For most people, it is Plan B. If you are 20-something and single, you are just single. But if you are forty-something and single, you are single with an explanation. That explanation is the grain of sand you have to turn into a pearl. At first, it’s the reason why you are single. Later it becomes the lesson you’ve learned that makes you a great partner for someone. The transformation process is what dating at midlife is about.

---

Announcing a  Fall Teleclass Series
Truth, Daring and Dating at Midlife Ó
Essential Skills For Dating When You Are Already A Grown Up.

 Take comfort. Dating at midlife has some unique challenges and you are not the only one in this boat. In this series you will learn how to  1) Make sense of the common, and major, challenges in midlife dating 2) Respond skillfully, and 3) Keep your a sense of humor. This material is the result of almost a decade’s worth of research. 
 
Date:
Wednesday, October 6, is the free opening session,  and then every other Wednesday in October and November for those who enroll.
10/20; 11/3; 11/17; 12/1

Time:
 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time.  (Don’t forget the shift from daylight to standard time in mid-October.

Cost: First 10/6 Class is FREE:   Series of Four is $25/class or $75 for all Five.

To register: Address an email to Teleclass@datingatmidlife.com. In the subject line, type "Fall Series."
You will receive a return email with the conference phone number and other necessary class information.

To Pay:  Call Philip Belove, Ed.D. at 802/254-6221 to arrange credit card payment,  or send payment via Paypal to drbelove@datingatmidlife.com, or send a check to Philip Belove, Ed.D., 84 South Street, Suite 201, Brattleboro, VT 05301.

Presenters:
Philip Belove, Ed.D., of www.datingatmidlife.com 
Lynne Michelson, MSW, LCSW, of www.connectstlouis.com and the Relationship Coaching Institute.
 
Free Introductory Class
October 6. Communication I.  The Crucial Relationship Building Skill 
Intimate listening is the master skill in relationship building. It’s hard to do adequately, it is not easy, it doesn’t call attention to itself, few people have experienced it, and yet relationships end for the lack of it. Learn what it is, how to do it, and how to use it.
 
Four Class Series
October 20 Communication II:  Relationship Negotiation and Baggage Prevention. The personalities of midlife adults are more defined and more set that those of young adults. That is why, the closer lovers, or wannabe partners, get to each other the more clearly they see the deep and inevitable differences between them. In unsuccessful couples, even though they may love each other, these deep differences can force them apart. In successful couples, these differences become fascinating and even erotic. Everything depends on how these differences are handled. In this class you will learn 1) how to recognize and address possible conflict early, before it can create resentment,  2) several strong,  kind, clear and direct ways to use the news of these differences as a way of building trust and intimacy, and 3) how to get back out of trouble once you are in it.
 
November 3  Communication III:  Sex and the Mating Dance.
Sex is good for you. Regular sex is a better predictor of health and longevity than eating vegetables.  At midlife, the people who have the best, most regular sex are comfortably married or in committed long term relationships. Midlife singles who are just dating, however, still have sex lives, but managing it can be confusing, distracting, and can even interfere with the search for a long term partner. In this class you will learn 1) the difference between men’s and women’s long and short term sexual strategies, 2) the difference between men’s and women’s thinking about sex, 3) ways to talk about sex, and 4) ways to create sexual safety.
 
November 17 The midlife growth spurt: Assessing stages of development.  If you are midlife and single and dating, you are going through a life transition that can be as radical as adolescence. That’s also true for the person you are courting. The greater mismatch between partners in this process, the more trouble. In this class you will learn 1) the stages of the midlife transition and how to recognize them, 2) relationship readiness and what you can reasonably expect from people in these various stages, and 3)  where you have to be patient and  when to decide when someone just isn’t ready. 
 
December 1  Little Efforts with Big Results: Toolbox for the Midlife single. If midlife dating is too hard for you, maybe it’s because you are working too hard at it. Basically, dating should be fun and inviting. In this class, you will learn about the easy, tiny things you can do that make a big difference.

( Program material is excellent for both relationship coaches and midlife singles.)

---

Thanks again.  Welcome you new subscribers. I hope to meet many of you when Lynn and I do our presentations.
 
Please forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested. Feel free to quote, but please remember to give credit for copyrighted material.   PB.

In August 2004,

due to the death of Sue Price, there was no newsletter.

Welcome to the

Truth, Daring & Dating at Midlife

Newsletter

July 2004

Welcome to my free email newsletter. It represents the fruit of ten years of academic and clinical research into the world of midlife singles. It’s designed to help you create meaningful and satisfying relationships. Please enjoy it and forward it to anyone else you think will appreciate it.

To submit questions, to see other issues and articles, to subscribe, go to http://www.datingatmidlife.com

Please forward and always give credit to the authors.

The Midlife Learning Institute

Philip Belove, Ed.D.

Psychologist and Coach

Thank you for your generosity and support.

I received about 50 personal notes from readers after the June 2004 letter with Sue’s obituary and I answered each one personally. I was especially touched to realized how many of you read these letters and how carefully. I want to thank you all again. I do understand why people believe in life after death because otherwise death is so incredibly final. I’m still re-adjusting my thinking. Life does go on.

This issue is about sex. Again. Specifically, it’s about casual sex and how people figure out what they want to do about it. It’s part of one of the chapters in the Truth and Daring, the Dating at Midlife book, now in the process of being born. The article is incomplete. At the end there are some questions and I would be deeply grateful if some of you would weigh in with your opinions and then I’ll use them for the second half of the article which I’ll send out in September. And also, I’m going to take a month off in August on the newsletter. Bless you all and thank you again. On with the show:

A Kiss

It was not like everyone had said.
Not like being needed,
or needing; not desperate;
it did not whisper
that I’d come to harm. I didn’t lose
my head. No, I was not
going to leap from a great
height and flap my wings.
It was in fact
the opposite of flying:
it contained the wish
to be toppled, to be on the floor,
to ground, anywhere I might
lie down…
On my back, and you on me.
Do you mind?
Not like having a conversation, exactly,
though not unlike telling
and being told –
What?
That I was like a woman admitting
There was a part of herself she didn’t know?
There was a part of myself,
I didn’t know.
An introduction,
then, to the woman I was like,
at least as long as you kissed me.
Now that’s a long time,
at least a couple of women ago.

-- by Deborah Garrison

Philip Belove, Ed.D.

The title of the article is taken from a question I got in the mail. The writer, Patricia, a woman in her mid-forties, two years out of a rough marriage, and, as she put it, " older and wiser," is "looking for the sex that knocks your socks off because you know and care for the person first." Was this a reasonable expectation? She wanted to know. " Do men my age even know what I am talking about or are they just rare?"

Do they all want sex first? You can hear her frustration. She wants "the emotional satisfaction of intimacy, not just sexual physical satisfaction."

She describes her typical dating experience. "Several times a month I meet men thru the personals. But we usually just go out once. I think it went nice and I never hear from them again. And they are nice men, not jerks."

She questions herself. "Is it me? I am conservative and very complex… I also keep my sexual side under wraps, to not give them the wrong impression. Am I wrong in doing that? Do men need to see that?"

She has, of course, described the essence of the battle of the sexes. For midlife women, her question is one of the most nagging: How do single midlife men think about sex and relationships?

There is a self-help book, which I have some issues with, called, "How to Succeed with Women by Ron Louis and David Copeland. (Penguin 1998) which answers Patricia’s question. The authors claim that they themselves were not experts with women at all. So they looked around to find guys who really were successful (according to the author’s standards) and then studied what they did. The book is a distillation of that wisdom.

What, according to these guys, amounts to success?

"We wanted to know how to seduce women and more – we wanted to know how to develop relationships that would be fulfilling for both of us." They are clear about their priorities. First, seduction, then, well, yes, okay, yes, a fulfilling relationship would be "more," but first things first.

In case you think I am reading too much into those sentences, let me point out the flow of the whole book. You can recognize the dance of dating as certain men might think it through. Chapter six is about "how to sweep her off her feet and into your bed;" seven is about "the priming date," which is the one that comes before the "seduction date," described in chapter eight. Then, after some hints about sexual technique, the book has a chapter called, "handling problems women cause," on how to deal with women who get really angry. Then a chapter called "breaking up is easy to do." I may be a bit shrinky here but I think the order of events describe a plan. I also notice that it was in their breaking up chapter that they discuss commitments and how to think about long term partnerships. By now we are at page 400 of 450. Then there is a 25 page chapter on how to make a relationship last and a summary.

So success is about scoring. Read their definition. Then we’ll discuss it.

First and foremost, the bottom line is that the woman chooses. The woman has to choose to have sex with a man for it to count as a seduction. There are a lot of ways to get the seduction disqualified. The woman can’t be coerced or deceived. She can’t be naïve or young or drunk or intoxicated. She can’t be so needy that her judgment is clouded. It has to be a choice, conscious and intentional and free. Then only is the score to be considered a seduction. There is another layer of requirement. She can’t be too experienced or blasé or too willing or easy. And not only that he has to satisfy her emotionally and physically. Then if all those requirements are met, the seduction counts.

This is the male code; the rules, male style. In this game, there is no winning, only scoring. In the thirteenth chapter, the one on breaking up, the authors say to their male reader, "If you can’t decide whether you want seduction or a committed relationship you end up bouncing from woman to woman, unwilling to do the work of a seducer while simultaneously unwilling to do the work required for a committed relationship. Being unsure creates failure in either circumstance." They acknowledge that the rules of success are incompatible with the rules of "relationships that would be fulfilling for both of us."

So men, according to this book, have dual and incompatible strategies for dating. And that is the problem that Patricia is struggling with.

Go back to their definition of success and, for the moment, don’t be distracted by the dual strategy. Notice how the whole process of seduction involves the woman’s free choice. Scoring it different from merely getting laid. Somehow, in this game, every seduction is a test of male goodness, some confirmation from a woman that he’s a good enough man.

There is a core of truth in whatever these men are chasing. It matters profoundly to many single men that they be held in good estimation by a good women. Every man needs his maleness and attractiveness blessed. What women have is this power to bless. I mean really blessed and that means, not merely from words alone. Blessings come from deeper places. These men want women to yearn for their sperm. It is a sign that there is something desirable about this man in his essence. Now that is a blessing!

Forgive me if this sounds just too naked but this is the force that drives males animals through out the mammalian kingdom, that produces antlers, peacock feathers, boisterous behavior, and all the other glorious proclamations of male vitality. It happens with guys, too.

What’s a woman to do? First, remember that attractiveness doesn’t lie so much in having things that you value as it lies in knowing that you have what others value.

Here is what I told Patricia: You have what men want, a blessing to give. If you give it too cheaply it isn’t a blessing. Some women will have casual sex if a man is exceptionally superior to her usual standards, but with men it’s the opposite, they lower their standards for casual sex. They will have casual sex with women who are older or younger than usual and also with women who don’t meet their long term relationship standards on such matters as , charm, athleticism, education, generosity, honesty, independence, kindness, intellectuality, loyalty, sense of humor, sociability, wealth, responsibly, spontaneity, cooperativeness and emotional stability.

They will not consider the approval and acceptance of these women to be an honor or a blessing.

Let’s revisit the definition of success. She can’t be coerced or deceived; naïve, young, needy or drunk; and she can’t be too experienced or blasé or too willing or easy. It has to be a choice, conscious and intentional and free. In other words, the challenge is what makes a woman attractive.

Therefore a woman has to convince him that she is a worthy and interesting challenge. And she has to support and encourage him while she is putting him to her tests.

So back to Patricia’s question, "Am I wrong to keep my sexuality under wraps?" I think she is. What she wants to do is let it be know that she is sexual, appreciates men, and is also discriminate. It’s a head game. He wants seduction and a relationship. She has to offer relationship and a seduction.

Women who do this well are often convince the man that it is his idea. Women will know much earlier in a relationship whether seduction will happen. As the guys say, it’s her choice. However they often have no idea how women decide. That’s why they talk about "getting lucky." That’s why there read those books.

Patricia wants to let acceptable men know that they are found by her to be acceptable. The way a man knows that he measures up – this is where Louis and Copeland get is dead right – is that a woman he admires want to have sex with him. That is what flirting is about.

A man can tell if you find him attractive. He may not know consciously, but he knows. Your eyes light up, you enjoy his humor, you like looking at his face, you enjoy dialog with him, you like his body. There are ten thousand ways you communicate to him that you give him your blessings. But if you want a relationship with him, none of this means you have sex with him. Not until he’s proven himself at a higher level. What you are doing is letting him know that you want him to prove himself at a higher level.

So the message you send has to be an adult message and like all adult messages, like good wines, like coffee and good chocolate, like expensive whiskey, it is smooth and complex and with many shades, some of them dark. Essentially has to be a huge YES with all sorts of nuances and encouragement attached. The messages says that he qualifies for the big prize, but only qualifies – and that no small thing. It’s a complex message.

Some long term relationships start with sex on the first few dates, but these are exceptions. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I know two midlife women who, after years of dating and sexual relationships simply refused to have sex without marriage. I thought it was an extreme position but they are both married and happy. One woman told a man who liked her, "I’ve decided no more sex until I’m married again." And the guy said, "Well, I guess I’m pretty tired of dating, okay. " They were married in a month! There is some research that says that the difference between midlife women who get married and those who don’t is that the one’s who do are the ones who still believe in marriage. It’s basically that simple.

On the other hand a lot of midlife women have casual sex. They do it to see if they still "got" it. They do it to heal some hurt feelings. They do it for relieve. And they do it to somehow get a fresh point of view after a bad relationship. They do it because they are bored. And some do it because they are discouraged and really don't want another long term relationship.

The mating dance, like tango, has male moves and female moves

September I’ll write more about the woman’s side of this dance. Here are some questions I’d like opinions on.

What would be the difference between a woman’s calculations about whether to have a short term or a long term relationship. What changes for women between they way they think about casual sex at 25 and at 45.

What blessings do women want from men?

Please write me at drbelove@datingatmidlife.com

Thanks again. Have a great August.

Philip

 

Welcome to the

Truth, Daring & Dating at Midlife

Newsletter

June 2004

Welcome to my free email newsletter. It represents the fruit of ten years of academic and clinical research into the world of midlife singles. It’s designed to help you create meaningful and satisfying relationships. Please enjoy it and forward it to anyone else you think will appreciate it.

To submit questions, to see other issues and articles, to subscribe, go to http://www.datingatmidlife.com

Please forward and always give credit to the authors.

The Midlife Learning Institute

Philip Belove, Ed.D.

Psychologist and Personal Coach

 

"Suddenly one day in your forties or fifties it all becomes clear – and then it goes away"

Quoted by Irving Yalom in Love’s Executioner"

This month’s article was to have been called, "How to Lose Your Baggage," and in first draft, it was pretty good. It was to be a condensation of the fourth chapter of my book and I had planned to offer a teleclass on the topic next week. But I don’t feel like finishing it this week. Next month. Thanks for your kind support.

Also, my apology if this is intrusive. It seemed the least I could do.

 

In Memory.

Susan Howell Fitch Price 1937-2004

My colleague and close friend Sue Price died Thursday, June 3, in the late afternoon. We were to have met for dinner to discuss the Dating At Midlife research project and after two hours and her not showing, I called on her. She’d had a sudden and fatal stroke. It’s amazing to see someone’s life story end so abruptly, unexpectedly, and, I suppose, mercifully. There was no long lingering illness, no premonition, just one bad day and then gone. We’d known each other for more than 25 years.

We were married in 1982 and divorced in 1990. We worked through our protests with each other and created a fond and respectful friendship. When I started the Dating at Midlife web site, she had just completed her Master’s degree in psychology and she designed the site and became my partner on the site. In addition to being a good psychologist, she was a fine artist, a brilliant colorist and oil painter. She was looking forward to retiring from office practice, settling into a small country cottage, doing phone practice like me, but mainly drawing and painting. It won’t happen.

It’s hard to summarize all her amazing qualities and talents. The first time I met her I had dinner at her house and walked through rooms she had decorated, looked at her oil paintings on the walls, ate off beautiful pottery she had made. Her eye and her skills and her talents were on the Martha Stewart scale. People used to hire her to select the colors with which they would paint their Victorian houses. She could make main dishes and desserts that could be used in Gourmet magazine photo shoots.

She was also a scholar, and a cultured soul with an elegant and rare mind. She read more widely than anyone I knew, and faster. She could draw and paint, was a good businesswoman, a great poet, and when computers came in, she taught herself to program and design web pages. When she came into a small inheritance she went back and got a master’s degree in psychology and became an expert at doing assessments. Her master’s thesis involved interviews with women at midlife. For a while, in her late fifties, no less, she worked for Rescue and rode in ambulances and used hypnotic techniques to reassure and stabilize people who’d been pulled out of crashed cars and had shattered body parts. She served on the board of directors for our local Hotline and the Art’s Council. I thought of her as a bit elfish and used to call her Presto because whatever she could think of she could make it happen. Her vanity license plate read, "SUEPR" and that about said it.

She conducted herself, with me and in her other close relationships, with exemplary integrity, always struggling to find the most admirable, fair, and decent response in even the most provocative circumstances. She strove to do her best, be her best and bring out the best in others always. Even her taste in music was toward straightforward moral hymns. She had a touching fondness for the four-four, four-square, marching rhythms of early American church music and songs of noble sacrifice. The Old Hundred might have been her favorite melody. The deepest currents in her soul, along whose path everything else had to sail, were her instincts toward honesty, fairness and justice. Although she was a privileged child of American aristocracy, she was deeply offended by entitlement and snobbery. She was a Vermont style Unitarian with a strong coloring of Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin. There may be others as high minded and broad minded, but, in my experience, it’s rare to find those qualities combined with such a sly and intelligent sense of humor and such a generous and colorful imagination. I am far from being the only one who will miss her.

About Truth and Daring and Midlife Dating

I’ve been a psychologist since 1978 practicing in New England. In 1995 I began to focus on the midlife crisis, the midlife transformation, and more specifically on what it takes to meet the unique challenges facing midlife singles. This combination for success in midlife dating, and in the midlife transformation in general is Truth and Daring. Accordingly I’ve designed an approach which involves a combination of coaching and analysis; analysis to help people know themselves well enough to know what they want, and coaching to help them create what they want.

I can be reached via email at drbelove@datingatmidlife.com and by phone at 802/254-6221.

 

 

Dating at Midlife Newsletter
May 2004

Philip Belove, Ed.D.

I know; I know. I’m late.

Hi folks.  I’m working on The Book and that’s been my focus. In addition, I’m doing some major reorganization of the intellectual property and finding ways to simplify some of my findings. I hope by the next newsletter to be able to give you a small preview.  Meanwhile, here are some interesting discoveries I’ve made about e-dating.

Neil Simon on being single.

“I had been a bachelor for almost three and a half years, and I can’t deny that the many attractive women I met during those years were more than a single man could ask for. Surprisingly, it also got tiresome. Each first date was like a first session with a new analyst. It was mostly about giving information about your past. I also found out that sex without love was not very satisfying.  (Then again, love without sex can be a drag as well, as can love without love, which is when you’re just saying “love” in order to get sex.)”

From The Play Goes On A memoir by Neil Simon
Simon and Shuster 1999

e Dating. e Therapy
by
Philip Belove, Ed.D.

My favorite story about the strangeness of e-dating appeared in The New Yorker magazine a few years ago. The writer, a woman from Seattle, had developed a lively email exchange with a man in New York. It took her two years to finally get to New York, on business, and there she was, having lunch with him. And there he was, across the table from her, in the flesh.

However during lunch, she found herself bored, distracted and restless. She wanted to get away, to go home, to check her email. Like so many other dates she’d had in the last two year, she wanted to get away from whoever she was with so she could go home and enjoy the latest email from… him.

What’s going on? Had an e-relationship actually trumped flesh and blood? Why would that happen?

Here is another story, a common one.  A woman writes datingatmidlife.com with a question.  She’s started up an Internet relationship with a man and now, after six months she is about to meet him.  However, the picture on her profile is 10 years old and 40 pounds lighter than her current self. Now what?

What strange dynamic seems to be playing itself out with e-relationships?

E-relationships invite fantasies.  In e-dating the lack of visual information feeds fantasies. If the person you are investigating as a possible companion isn’t right there in front of you, your tendency will be to fill in the blank spaces with all your fears, hopes, dreams, and fancies.  Some people take advantage of that.

I received a panic-stricken letter from a woman who had been corresponding with a man for six months.  She hadn’t yet met the man. They’d progressed to phone calls and then to phone sex. The woman’s dating life was dominated by fantasies, fears and wild longings. There was no way for these two to meet and figure out who they were to each other.

E- Communication Encourages Disinhibition. People who have had a drink or two are said to “get disinhibited.” Disinhibition means shedding your inhibitions.  The effect of alcohol on your brain is much like ether. It puts to sleep the little voices that say “let’s think before we act.”

How many people become audacious at a  masked balls? Being invisible is just like having a drink or two. Being online, and connecting  with someone new, who is open to something new, is a bit like talking from behind a mask, which is what you are in the early stages of an e-relationship.

E-communication creates safety impersonally but intimacy depends on safety created in a personal way.

There are impersonal ways to create safety and personal ways. The personal forms of safety come when two people test each other out, become genuinely vulnerable and learn what they can really expect from each other.  What if she tells him she thinks his ex-wife was right about his selfish streak? To be able to speak at this level of candor is real safety, and real intimacy. That kind of real safety takes a long time to develop.

In e-flirting, safety isn’t something people have worked out with each other. Instead, safety is circumstantial. It happens because there is an automatic distance between the two people. The feeling of safety is there, but it is untested by real intimacy. 

It helps to remember that people will exaggerate their responses and be more emotional than normal. If you connect with someone via Internet and then go to instant messaging and phone conversations, you will want to schedule face time soon.  In e-dating, one of the smartest things you can do is have a chemistry check as early as possible. 

It helps to be very aware of your own ideas about the other person and that your ideas are more like to be projections than perceptions.

And sometimes, none of this is true.

If there is one rule I’ve learned about midlife dating is that anything can happen. I know a woman who started an email relationship and they corresponded for almost a year. It was a love affair of letters, very old fashioned and Victorian. They are now very happily married.  Go figure.

The same disinhibition that leads people to over-share in e-dating makes e-therapy work. 

First, a confession.  Last December, I took a continuing education course in how e-therapy works.  In the last four years more and more therapists have been working on the phone, like me, and some are even working exclusively through email.  It’s all quite new and we are just beginning to understand how it works. This isn’t the first time therapists have had to develop new theory. There was a time when the only therapy anyone could imagine involved only one-to-one.  Therapists who say couples or even families, with all members attending, were pioneering and often in secret. It was as though, to see both members of a couple simultaneously was a kind of malpractice. All that has changed, of course. And now we are comparing notes and working out how to do virtual therapy.

As I listened to the material presented, I saw how many of the insights could be applied to e-dating.  In both e-therapy and e-dating, the idea applies that two people who don’t know each other and are negotiating at relationship that involves some intimacy.  So in this next part of the essay, I’ll tell you some of what we’ve learned about e-therapy.

One of the objections to e-therapy, which is how I conduct most of my professional practice, is that there is no visual connection.  One day this will end, as broadband allows more and more video telephoning. But even now the objection about a  lack of visual contact isn’t that valid. People who are totally blind get 100% of their meaningful communication input from others in the form of sounds. One of my favorite teachers and therapists was functionally blind. He read by holding papers up to his left cheek. Blind as he was, I still believed he could see me. 

The same disinhibiting that makes e-dating so tricky can be very helpful in e-therapy.  There are even a sizeable number of people who work entirely through email.  They don’t even go to the phone. The impersonal safety serves them and allows them to talk about very tender matters. 

The best way to help someone talk about tender matters of the heart is to encourage them to look inward and share outward.  A good way to do this is to remove distractions. Visual information can be a distraction. Time on the telephone can create tremendous intensity. And this can be used therapeutically. 

In some cities you can rent time in a sensory deprivation chamber, floating in water at body temperature in silent darkness, as a way to create extremely deep meditative states. In classical analysis, the analyst sits where she can’t be seen, a voice in the ear. In hypnotic work, in guided visualization, in focusing work, the person doing the work closes his or her eyes and the guide, coach, or therapist, stands by and offers coaching and suggestions as needed.  Centuries earlier, there was the invention of the confession booth, which in turn was an adaptation of more ancient practices.

The same mechanisms,  disinhibition and impersonal safety, can be taken advantage of  in a number of ways.  In e-dating, it can sometimes lead to distortions and risks.  In e-therapy it can lead to a chance for the rapid expansion of self-knowledge.

Factoids from the Wild World of Dating.
It Really Is a Jungle Out There.

Mate Poaching. I think this term was coined by evolutionary psychologist, David Buss. It’s quite common. Just as you suspected. And it is especially common in the de-regulated world of midlife dating. 20% of long term relationships begin when one or both partners are involved with others. This holds steady across age groups and couples who are married,  living together or dating. From current Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a survey of 16,000 men and women in 53 countries.  60% men and 40% women have attempted to entice others who were already committed to others for short term flings. 47% men and 32% women succumbed.

Poachers tended to be people who were adventuresome, sexually attractive,  and willing to talk about sex.  Those who cheated tended to be people with high self-esteem but were   selfish, distrusting and immodest.  Also, the more a culture allowed for equality between men and women, the more likely it was that men and women did equal cheating and poaching.

Further, this is generally known.  In a study in Britain, forty-five percent of women owned up to secretly checking the text messages on their partner's phone, compared to 31 percent of men.

Among younger people, nine percent of Britons admitted to dumping a partner by sending an MS text message on a cell phone. Among those aged 15 to 24, the figure rises to 20 percent.

Dating At Midlife Discussion Group Postponed.

No group scheduled this month.  I’m designing a new curriculum based on my experiences with groups since December 2003.  Watch this space for further developments

Thanks again,

Philip Belove, Ed.D.

Dating at Midlife Newsletter
April 2004

To submit questions, to see other issues and articles, to subscribe, go to http://www.datingatmidlife.com
Please forward and always give credit to the authors.
The Midlife Learning Institute
Philip Belove, Ed.D.

When the sweet showers of April
Pierce the dry ground of March down to the driest roots
Bathing every vein with sweet water
Sweet as virtue,  making flowers bloom,
And the sweet winds, with sweet breath,
Inspire, on every hill,  the tender leaves,
And the young sun has run halfway through Aries, the ram,
Then, with Nature all astir,
People are drawn again to search,
Seeking Love, forgiveness, hope, and rebirth. 
paraphrased from The Canterbury Tales

Dating and Mating Dances and Midlife
By Philip Belove, Ed.D.

It’s Spring and you know what happens. For the next few weeks, in the fields and forests, the birds and the beasts are doing their mating dances. We too, by instinct, perform a mating dance. The human mating dance is called dating.

A  mating dance is a way for two creatures to work out whether they are going to have a certain, special  relationship,  which includes sex; it also includes certain understandings, expectations and obligations. A mating dance is not just matter of whether or not they are agreeing to do The Big It, it is also a matter of how they are going to get along, the Big How. This is the fundamental dynamic in dating.

Mating Dating Negotiating

In the Ken Burns 12 part documentary on jazz, Wynton Marsalis opens the series with this statement: “The real power of jazz and the innovation of jazz was that a group of people could come together and improvise art and can negotiate their agendas and that negotiation is the art.” I was struck by that last phrase, that the negotiation itself is the art. There it is again, the Big How. 

In dating also, negotiation itself  is the art. It’s not some specific goal or event   dinner, sex, vacation plans -- that really matters; the goal is to create a process, an ongoing relationship.   It’s not what you get, it’s how you get there. Everything is foreplay.

In relationships, process matters. It may even matter more than results. It’s a hard concept. A lot of dating advice is about results, knowing what you want and how to get it. How to get women to do this. How to get men to do that.  That’s like working out how you are going to play your solo and never mind what the other person is playing. That’s like being in a conversation with someone who is a brilliant talker and a terrible listener.  Those conversations peter out quickly, to coin a phrase.

What happens in a mating dance is that the partners refine the process. They do it by testing and training their partner.

By training, I mean, partners teaching partners what their subtle signals mean. Training is a technical term. A better term than what I’m talking about is this:  Teaching each  other what to pay attention to.  For example, if you can’t listen to a story that is more than four minutes long without having to say something, then you have to teach your partner  how to know when to notice you have reached your listening limit. If you are creating an intimate relationship, you are constantly teaching your partner how to get closer to you, constantly communicating by implication this meta-message:  Do it this way; this is the way into me.

Tests tell you where teaching what to pay attention to is necessary and whether it is possible. A test is a kind of probe to see how the other person’s psychology works. If I do this, how are you going to deal with that? What if I don’t like something you do, how am I going to let you know. And how are you going to handle that?

It sounds more reasonable than it is. That’s why I call it a mating dance. Animals don’t reason with each other. They just interact until they find a comfortable routine. It’s the same with people. The best guess as to how much communication between people is non-verbal?  70%

Haven’t you ever been struck by the amount of clawing, snarling, scratching and flying of feathers in wild mating dances?  Sometimes it looks more like a fight.  Is this the dance  of love?

Things can get rough in a dating relationship. And no know knows this better than midlife singles. After all, these are the people who have experienced serious relationship failures, who have been left or left, been hurt or hurt someone they loved.

I get annoyed at people who toss around the term as in, “Oh, the trouble with him is that he’s commitment phobic.”  Anyone who has been through a divorce and doesn’t have some healthy fear about trying marriage again is naïve.

If there is any single characteristic of midlife singles it’s this one: they are more wary. Their tests are more elaborate. I don’t like to pathologize people for this.  Midlife singles all understand in their gut one of the most frightening rules of modern romance: anyone who doesn’t like a relationship can leave.  This is because most midlife singles are single because of one or more relationship failures. 

Anyone planning on putting his or her whole heart and soul, his or her deepest vulnerabilities on the line knows this only too well. Abandonment hurts; break-ups hurt; and some hurt a lot.

There is a human version of all that snarling and snapping we see in the animal mating dances.  People want to know how a potential partner will respond when the going gets rough.  If you are considering a long term relationship, you don’t just want to know what the weather is going to be, you want to know something about the climate. This takes time.

Two categories of questions get tested and they don’t get just tested in words. Midlife singles have generally learned by this time that people can say anything. They want to see people revealed through actions.

Category one: What if I hurt you, as I know I can?
 
What if I tell you in a moment of anger that I hate your fat thighs, or your beer gut, or your body odor, or your bad hair cut, or that ugly shirt you seem to like?  What if I just lash out at you for something you’ve said. I know I’ve done that in the  past.  What if I find myself lusting for someone else and cut you off emotionally?  What if I turn out to do some of the cruel things I know I have done to others. Will you overlook them? Will you give me a chance to repair the damage? Are you giving me slack because you are afraid to confront me and how bad will it be when you finally do?

Category two: What if you hurt me, as I know I can be hurt?

What if you start being nicer to someone else than you are to me.  What if you take advantage of me in a weak moment.  What if I say something that makes you angry and you start picking on me?  What if I tell you about my fears and then you lose respect for me?  What if I want you to stop yelling at me?  Can I trust you to be sensitive?

Panic and Choke.

Basically people are bound to make two kinds of mistakes during all this gut level testing stage.  They are going to be either too quick on the trigger and make up their minds prematurely. They’ll have moments of panic. Or they’ll get paralyzed and won’t take any action. They’ll choke. 

When people panic, they leap to conclusions, sometimes many different conflicting conclusions, sometimes one stereotyped one.  A woman opens her work with me by saying, “There are givers and takers in this world.  I’m a giver. Why can’t I find a man who isn’t a taker?”  She has a history of getting into relationships and then testing the men in small ways and then, as soon as she finds the slightest sign that he’s a taker, she drops him. Her tests aren’t really tests because they don’t discriminate. Every person gets the same score and she always panics.

People who choke do the opposite. They can’t draw conclusions. The most common form of this is the character played by Carrie Fisher in the movie, When Harry Met Sally.  She was in love with a married man and all her friends told her to dump him and she kept saying, “I know, I know.”  That was the running joke.  She “knew,” but she couldn’t “do.”

What helps?

The coaching  in the testing phase helps people stay connected to the process, reminding them to slow down and think when they are panicking and  helps them find a safe way to get more involved when they are frozen. When you are listening to a friend talk about his or her experiences, this is what you have to listen for: are they panicking and going all over the place, and are they tying themselves in knots and not taking any action. 

The mating dance lays the ground work for a satisfying long term relationship. Intimate relationships are always negotiating some next step. Those not busy being born are busy dying. (Bob Dylan. )

A Few Openings for the Next Class

We are starting another dating at midlife telephone discussion group this Monday at 8 central. There are a few more openings.   We’ll go for six weeks and the fee is nominal.      Please let me know if you are interested.

Dating at Midlife Newsletter
March 2004

Please forward and always give credit to the authors.
The Midlife Learning Institute

Hi, y’all. This month we’re going to muse on wisdom. At midlife we don’t get smarter; we get wiser. There is a difference.

The central premise of my work is that the 25 years from 35 to 60 are a time of tremendous growth and this process is so insistent that it shapes how we handle the challenge of being single at midlife.

There are phases to the midlife transformation. And what happens is that we acquire capacities,the Soft Strengths.  I call them “Soft Strengths” because they include the capacity to perform what management theory calls “the soft skills”  listening, leading, fostering creativity, nurturing and the like  these are ways of relating to others which involve intelligent empathy, integrity and genuine compassion. Wisdom is one of the Soft Strengths, maybe the most complex of them. Maybe the crown.

It’s hard to imagining with any accuracy what it’s like to be more mature than you are. I have a friend who taught at Harvard in developmental psychology and he told me that everyone tends to overestimate their level of maturity until they are more mature. So I make only small claims for the accuracy of what I am presenting. I am, after all, only 61.

First a poem by Robert Stafford calling us to humility and emphasizing how wisdom comes from experience. Then a short essay on how to create experiences for yourself to make you more nearly wise. Finally, a film recommendation.
The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune.

Robert Stafford
Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life
you will be overwhelmed:
you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you have things right in your life
but do not know why,
you are just lucky, and you will not move
in the little ways that encourage good fortune.

The saddest are those not right in their lives
who are acting to make things right for others;
they act only from the self
and that self will never be right:
no luck, no help, no wisdom.

Look for this and other midlife poems on the website at http://www.datingatmidlife.com/poetry.html

Creating a Wise Conversation:

The Mother Of All Communication Skills
By Philip Belove, Ed.D.

I have this all worked out. The next Messiah will not be an individual. The next Messiah will be a couple. Al and Betty. The message they will bring is this: “We can all have wise conversations with each other but we have to practice.”

Al and Betty will teach by example. We’ll watch them get tangled up in some passionate and profoundly important misunderstanding. Then we’ll see how they work their way out of it.

I think it would be fascinating to see them go back and forth, get frustrated, get sad, have hurt feelings, apologize, finally think they understand, and then be dead wrong.

The most instructive part will be watching them hang, go at it again, until finally, like a miracle, they come up with something neither one of them could have imagined before.

I’ve seen this happen and it’s always profoundly gratifying. I think it a holy act. It is certainly a creative act. Couples who are good at this process say that it is one of the most erotic forms of foreplay.

I think it’s really important to see how people reach dead ends, and feel it’s hopeless, and then still go on. There is no right answer that better, more decent, smarter people than you already know. If you are looking for a really new understanding you don’t know where the process is going to end.

People who achieve midlife maturity really do understand that, at some level, they are writing their own life story. They really are making it up as they go along. The idea that someone better than you already knows the right answer to what you ought to do is a form of fundamentalism and fundamentalism makes for bad art, bad science and bad love.

The idea that only one of the two people in a partnership has the keys to wisdom is so, um, thirty-something. How could two smart, mature people and let’s say they are both people who’ve achieved that midlife power and both know a thing or two not have important disagreements from time to time?

In watching Betty and Al struggle and then fail, and then succeed, we will learn two things. First, it is possible to have a conversation that is wiser than either of the individuals in it; and second, it isn’t easy.

It is also possible for a conversation to be dumber than either of the partners individually. However, as soon as you start believing that your judgment, or your partner’s judgment, is better than the judgment produced in conversation, your partnership is trouble.

It’s easy to dumb down a conversation. All you have to do is withhold. Just give it less than your best. Be agreeable when you really don’t agree. Shout your partner down if you don’t like what she has to say. It’s easy to bully people when they aren’t completely sure how good their ideas are. The need-to-know principle also creates stupidity in conversations. One person decides what the other person needs to know without letting them in on the process.

Okay. But how do you add wisdom to a conversation?

How That Extra Thing Happens in a Conversation.
First of all, you can’t make wisdom happen. Wisdom is a grace.

Here is a metaphor for how wisdom shows up:

You may not have noticed this, but your left eye sees a slightly different picture than your right eye. If you blink back and forth you can see it. Each eye sees from a slightly different perspective. In normal vision your brain compares the different pictures, notices that difference, and presents that information to your consciousness in the form of a bonus called “depth perception.” The same principle works with stereo sound.

The same kind of thing can happen in conversation. Al says his say and Betty says hers. Because they are both smart mature people, they will see things somewhat differently. The difference between their viewpoints is the bonus that adds depth to their understanding. This bonus, I suggest, is a form of wisdom.

But it’s only a bonus if you know how to collect it and this requires some exceptional cognitive capacity. Each partner has to keep track of three sets of information. Al has to think about his own point of view. And then he also has to think about Betty’s thoughts and feelings and observations on the matter.

And in addition to all that, they both have to keep track of how their two points differ.

This way of thinking and perceiving is a virtuoso communication skill. One developmental psychologist has estimated that it is beyond the capacity of 80% of the American Public. And yet, it’s one of those things you have to do if you want a midlife relationship to unfold in a pleasing and satisfying way.

It can be done. It can be learned. And when two people cooperate in the task of keeping track of all three pieces, the task is easier.

Why You Might Want to Practice Your Communication Skills.

I once knew a man who didn’t believe in piano playing. “I tried it for a bit,” he said, “but nothing came of it.”

I’m always surprised at how much people resist practicing communication skills. I’m sure everyone reading this has had some experience where they were told how to do reflective listening and they just didn’t bother. It feels so artificial. What’s the point?

I think it is as artificial as counting out loud when you are handling large amounts of cash. I notice that I never count singles or fives out loud. But hand me a bunch of fifties and I start saying the numbers out loud as I count them. Using extra words makes me use additional parts of my brain to keep track of important content.

There are ways to construct sentences that will help you hold those slightly different thoughts in your mind, and also compare them, so that you can then perceive the depth in your conversation. I’m going to list a few of them so you can practice. There are more but we’ll start with the two most important ones.

Paraphrase Passport.

This skill is called “Paraphrase Passport” because you have to use a paraphrase in order to travel to the next part of the conversation. 
It’s a simple rule. You don’t get to say your say until you have demonstrated, to your partner’s satisfaction, that you have heard and understood what your partner has said.

After your partner has spoken, you say something like this, “Okay. Let me see if I can say back what you said to me.” And then you try, and then you ask, “Did I get it?” “Did I leave something out or add something?”

The Paraphrase Passport works both ways. You could say to your partner, “Wait, before you go on, state what you think I said.”

The paraphrase passport reminds you both that there are two separate perspectives in this conversation. That will be useful when you get to thinking about the differences between them.

The I-position.

The other basic skill is also designed to help you keep track of the two separate sets of observations, thoughts, feelings, and judgments, yours and your partners. You create sentences like this:

“When I see, hear, you…(and here you name what you have observed and what is observable, the facts).., then I feel …(and this is where you include your emotional reactions)..and I think…(this is where you include your judgments)…”

So you are not only putting out a lot of information, you are also, sorting it and making it easier for the other person to keep track.

Why you should practice these skills.

If you want a relationship in which you are an equal player with your partner, if you want to share your best thinking with your partner, if you want your partner to share her/his best thinking with you, and if you want to feel wiser when talking to your partner than with anyone else, practice these skills until they become second nature.

When they do become second nature, you will have acquired a cognitive complexity which is simply out of reach of many younger people. You will have exercised your own mind and raised your relationship up to the next level. And finally, you’ll start to understand the pleasures of being an elder, and of having that additional perspective on life.
#####

Film Recommendation
Searching for Debra Winger
A revealing look at life in the spotlight and the actresses who live it.
A film by Rosanna Arquette

As you know, I’m always on the lookout for good midlife films. My son, who owns a remarkable video store specializing in hard-to-find films (www.cinefilevideo.com) told me about this one.

This is a chance to listen to 12 bright, successful, accomplished career women discuss how they have learned to balance their career with their private lives. They talk about the aging and losing youthful beauty. They talk about what it’s like to be more powerful than their male partners.
One strange overtone to the movie for me is that these women are all beautiful, independent, smart multi- millionaires presenting themselves at their very best. It took me a while to decide how real they were being. I think they were being real, probably because they seemed to have a collegial relationship with Rosanna Arquette, who produced the film and who is sharing her midlife soul search with them and with us.  She is talking to other actresses of similar stature and this equality allows these women to speak candidly and unapologetically about their strengths, regrets and struggles. These are smart women with a strong sense of who they are, women at the top of their game, unapologetically passionate about their work and relationships.

Second Discussion Group Forming

I have to say that the first discussion group is a roaring success.  We’ve settled into a band of five and we’ve been together long enough to become comfortable with each other and we’re starting to speak rather deeply about our experiences as midlife single.  Rather than invite more to join this group, I’m going to start another and I’m looking for two or three men and two or three women who want to discuss darn near anything having to do with midlife dating.  We’ll start in April.  It is a one hour phone call each week.  Let me know.

Thanks again for joining me in this thoughtful survey of midlife issues. Please give me feedback on the article. I’m putting together my book proposal and I want to know what works and what doesn’t. 

Till next month.. Be well.
                           Philip

Dating at Midlife Newsletter
February 2004

Philip Belove, Ed.D.
All original content copyrighted by author. Please reproduce and forward with attribution. Mass distribution rights retained by author.

Hi everyone.  Again, thanks for tuning in.  We are now into year two of the newsletter.  Last month I did a teleclass on the movie Something’s Gotta Give.  The discussions were so interesting that we decided to continue for another month just talking about dating at midlife issues.  I’ll be opening the teleconference to new people in March so let me know if you are interested.  

Meanwhile, I put the summary of Erica’s Journey on the website. This month’s essay is about Harry’s Journey. And it will go on the website, too, next to Harry’s. Isn’t that romantic?

There are a couple other articles worth checking out. Go to www.datingatmidlife.com and click on the “articles” link for a ten question true/false test about human sexual behavior. I pulled together some of the more curious factoids and I think you’ll enjoy it.

It’s the month of Valentines Day and we’ve been talking about the differences between a woman’s way of loving and a man’s.  This month’s poem is a woman’s voice.

 

I ask the impossible

I ask the impossible: love me forever.

Love me when all desire is gone.

Love me with the single-mindedness of a monk.

When the world in its entirety,

And all that you hold sacred, advise you

Against it: love me still more.

When rage fills you and has no name: love me.

When each step from your door to your mob tires you

Love me: and from job to home again.

Love me when you’re bored

When every woman you see is more beautiful than the last,

Or more pathetic, love me as you always have:

Not as admirer or judge, but with

The compassion you save for yourself

In your solitude.

Love me as you relish your loneliness,

The anticipation of your death,

Mysteries of the flesh, as it tears and mends.

Love me as your most treasured childhood Memory

And if there is none to recall

Imagine one, place me there with you.

Love me withered as you loved me new.

Love me as if I were forever

And I will make the impossible

A simple act,

By loving you, loving you as I do.

Ana Castillo, 2000

And now, from a male sensibility:

when I have thought of you somewhat too

much and am become perfectly and

simply Lustful….sense a gradual stir

of beginning muscle, and what it will do

to me before shutting….understand

I love you….feel your suddenly body reach

For me with a speed of white speech

(the simple instant of perfect hunger

Yes)

      how beautifully swims

the fooling world in my huge blood,

cracking brains A swiftly enormous light

--  and furiously puzzling through, prismatic, whims,

the chattering self perceives with hysterical fright

a comic tadpole wriggling in delicious mud                        

                           -- e.e. cummings

What Harry Sanborn can teach us about some single midlife men.
By Philip Belove, Ed.D.

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.

Before the midlife wake-up call, a charming, and immature guy.

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.

First he’s vulnerable, then he’s in a profound and challenging encounter with a powerful creature he’s never encountered before,  a mature woman.

Harry finds himself flirting with and then in bed with, and then profoundly moved and touched by an unexpected partner, Erica, the first woman he’s ever been with who was capable of “getting his number,”  knowing who he is and being his equal.  At first he is not afraid. He is fascinated.  He glimpses of a Promised Land, a chance of being no longer profoundly alone.

Seeing the Promise from a distance.

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 gets tested and fails. Doesn’t get it yet.

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.

The silver bullet every woman must have.

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.

The Real Cave is a Cave of Remorse

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.

How Harry Proves Himself Worthy

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.

The mark of a mature man is his ability to lose, or win,
with generosity, honor and grace.

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.

###

And for dessert, this from Scott Adam’s Dilbert Newsletter.

We were at a friend's house for dinner. While out on the porch, we overheard our friend arguing with his wife. We are not sure what the wife said, but we heard the husband say, "There is no "I" in marriage."
-- quoted from the Dilbert Newsletter

Don’t forget to forward this to your friends. Also,  if you are considering coaching or therapy or just want to ask a question or forward a comment, go to the website and take advantage of the services offered.  Thanks.

All original content copyrighted by author. Please reproduce and forward with attribution. Mass distribution rights retained by author.

 

Dating at Midlife Newsletter
January 2004
http://www.datingatmidlife.com
Philip Belove, Ed.D.
All original content copyrighted by author. Please reproduce and forward with attribution.

Welcome note: 

Hi all, Welcome to first issue of next year. Thank you again for your interest and support.  I’m going to be pretty practical in this issue.
This holiday season is a time for parties and a time to meet new people. It’s worth thinking about some of these skills.

It’s always strange to be teaching communication skills and social skills. When I first got out of college and into the corporate world, we had to go to executive training seminars to learn to be polite. We joked and called it “charm school,” as if we all ought to know this stuff already. But we didn’t. 

Even now, with a degree and training, it still feels like I’m learning stuff that everyone else already knows. With those apologies, onto the poetry and the teachings.

For poetry I had chosen an intense love poem but I felt it was too earnest for the holidays. Instead, I’m sending you a trinket, a little haiku by Issa.

 Issa is a Japanese master,  who lived 200 years ago.  Translations are by Robert Hass in his book, The Essential Haiku. Each paragraph is a separate, free-standing poem.

            Here,

            I’m here

            The snow falling.

The snow is melting

And the village is flooded

With children.

Children imitating cormorants

Are even more wonderful

Than cormorants.

Asked how old he was,

The boy in the new kimono

Stretched out all five fingers.

Goes out,

Comes back

The loves of a cat.

Deer licking

First frost

From each other’s coats.

Even with insects

Some can sing,

Some can’t.

Napped half the day:

No one

Punished me!

No talent

And so no sin

A winter day.

And I had to include this last one because, before I became a psychologist, I wrote advertising:

Writing shit about new snow

For the rich

Is not art.

And now on to some simple advice:

How To Work A Room As A Midlife Single.
By Philip Belove, Ed.D.

I’m a bit of an introvert. That means that my consciousness is captured by all the information coming in at me. An extravert would be charged up by a room of 50.  I am overwhelmed.  So I had to think through how to handle myself in a setting like that.  How do I meet so many new people. How do I enjoy myself.  Here is some of what I’ve learned.

Someone told me once that the word, “courtesy,” contains in it the word, “court.”  Courtesy is how people were supposed to act when they were at a royal court. It is a kind of social ritual, a set of rules for how to act regardless of the personalities of the people you are dealing with. Such rituals make social dealings go smoothly. That is the purpose of courtesy.

The most important rule of courtesy in a large social setting is the rule that anyone gets to talk to anyone for three or four minutes.

What happens in the first four minutes of a conversation?  Actually quite a bit.  You usually learn someone’s education, social class, and personal taste and values.  You learn how well they listen.  You learn how generous they are interpersonally. 

The other thing you are doing here in using the four minute window is stepping past "the stranger threshold",  that built-in instinct we have which keeps us away from strangers.  Once the two of you have stepped across the stranger threshold, you can speak to each other again easily.

Here are ten little hints how to step across the threshold gracefully.

1.        Open with an invitation to conversation. It’s not an audition; it’s an opening. Bland openings work just fine. Hi, my name is Philip. Contrived approaches damage rapport. What you want to do is make contact and leave an opening for a conversation to start.

2.        Learn names and use them a few times. It will help you remember the name, and if you use it in a friendly way, you’ll be showing friendship to the person you are speaking to.

3.        Keep your first encounter light. An encounter with another person is a big impact, even if you are not an introvert. People who have just met break off eye contact often in order to soften the encounter.  Having a short encounter and then leaving  the four minute rule  is the same idea. When you re-encounter the person later, you are no longer a stranger,  you are an acquaintance, a known person. And you start the next contact at a more relaxed and open level.

4.        Do pre-meet-ups.  This is along the line of the previous tip.  Smile when you have eye contact and do a non-verbal hello. A silent “hello” when you haven’t met lays the groundwork for the first meeting. Later on, even two minutes later, you can come up and talk to them and have the stranger barrier lowered

5.        Be with a friend. Women know this. They network in pairs.  Men can do the same.  The safety and the friendship between two people who are comfortable with each other makes it more comfortable in turn for a third person to join. One of the best ways to talk to a stranger is to draw that person into a conversation. Also, when the new person is talking to your friend, you get a chance to watch how the new person in action.

6.        Offer food. Much as you would befriend an animal-type animal, you can befriend a human animal by offering them a plate of shrimps on toothpicks.  Pass the nuts and chips. Men buy each other drinks.  It’s a deep ritual to share food.

7.        Flirtation just happens, so let it. Most conversations between men and women are almost flirtations at first.  By voice tone alone you can usually tell whether someone is on the phone with a man or a woman.  If flirtation is forced it’s always a turn-off.  If it’s natural and real, it’s pleasant and not insulting. It’s just a flirtation.

8.        Tell your truth. Don’t “over-share.” No embarrassing secrets, please. Keep it light; you’ve just met. But stick to what ever is true for you in the here-and-now. You would be amazed at the sensitivity of most people’s bullshit detectors. And one of the first readings people take of each other in an initial encounter is whether or not the new person is safe.

9.        Look over there! Most people are perfectly happy to share spectatorship, as a way of connecting with a new person. It takes you both off the spot. A straight-out you/me encounter is pretty intense. This is a way to be together for the first time, but less intensely.

10.       Be physically open. It really matters.  People respond instinctively to physical openness. Show your palms, show your face, show your throat. Stand close without crowding and smile expectantly. The other person will respond. 

Discussion Group Scheduled In January.

There are a few slots available still for the January discussion group. Let me know if you are interested and can attend. There will be three sessions: Monday January 5, 12, and 19 from 8:00 to 8:55 pm eastern time.

Dating At Midlife: The Challenges and Pitfalls
as presented in Nancy Meyer’s film  “Something’s Gotta Give.”

Erica Barry (Diane Keaton)

Marin (Amanda Peet)

Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson)

Young Cardiologist (Keanu Reeves)

This is a class about the emotional realities of being single, at midlife, and still attracting and achieving intimate love.  We are going to use the brilliant new romantic comedy, “Something’s Gotta Give” as a discussion text to illustrate key points. The writer and director of the movie, Nancy Meyers, said that it is about “People finding out they are not destined to be who they were convinced they were.  Falling in love is more complicated at this age, and I think more joyous, also. And it hurts more. Everything is more intense. Unless I’m wrong.” 

I think she’s stated the basic truths of dating at midlife. In this teleconference we’ll discuss three of the special challenges of dating at midlife:

1.        The wake-up call at midlife and how that changes one’s approach to love

2.        The nature of baggage
3.        The self-protective and instinctive compromises midlife people make when it

         comes to love
4.        The difference between a man’s struggle and a woman’s struggle to open to

          love.

That’s it. Have a great set of holidays.

Philip

Dating at Midlife Newsletter
December 2003

Philip Belove, Ed.D.
All original content copyrighted by author. Please reproduce and forward with attribution.

HEY YOU DROPPED YOUR BAGGAGE.

By Philip Belove, Ed.D.

It was in the early morning hours
When I fell into a phone call
Believing I had supernatural powers
I slammed into a brick wall
I said, hey, is this my problem?
Is this my fault?
If that’s the way it’s going to be
I’m going to call the whole thing to a halt
You don’t feel you could love me
Gumboots, From Graceland by Paul Simon

I said I’d write about baggage and how to deal with it.

Let’s start with the statistics again.  In the October newsletter, I quoted the recently completed AARP survey of 3500 single adults between 40 and 60 .

The top three dating complaints of single men in their 50s:

     · Dating partners who have a lot of "baggage" (42 percent)

             · Women who "become difficult to get along with" after the first few dates (28 percent)

             ·Women who want to get too serious too fast (18 percent)

The top three complaints of women:

   · That baggage thing (35 percent)

             · Not having a clue where to meet men, and meeting too few new men (23 percent)

             · Overeager guys who want to get real serious real fast (21 percent)

             · Have not had a date in the last year.  (43 percent)

The other figures are interesting but we’re talking about baggage.  You’ll notice that all the men’s complaints come down to baggage and the first and third of the women’s complaints are about baggage.

(I don’t know about you, but I also noticed that 70% of men complain about baggage and 35% of women. Twice as many. What’s that about?  Let’s bookmark that question.)

“Baggage” is not really a technical term and so it’s one of those things that we all know what it is when we see it but are hard pressed to say exactly what it is.

I’m not going to do a survey of literature, but I do want to acknowledge that what I’m going to say here is only one position in discussion, a discussion in which soothing voices of healing professionals can become quite sharp.

I like the position I’m going to put forward. It comes from one of my favorite psychologists, Alfred Adler.  His term for baggage was Protest. Protest is a technical term and in every day speech it means more less the same thing as “a chip on the shoulder.”   Someone with a “chip on their shoulder” is someone who is always ready to argue about something. And that’s what baggage is about.

Very precisely if you are protesting, it means that you are against one thing because you are for something else.  It means you are taking a side in an argument.  It also means that you know both sides of the argument very well.

One of the things that protesters do is they take one side of the argument so intensely that they can force otherwise neutral people to take the other side.

There is a Monty Python skit called “The Argument Clinic,”  A man pays to go have an argument with someone.  (Looking for a particular argument is a form of protest and a form of baggage.)  He goes into the Argument Room and asks the man at the desk, “Is this the right room for an argument?”  And the man at the desk says, “I told you once.”  And the other man answers, ”No you didn’t.” 

“Yes, I did.”  

“No you didn’t.”

It happens so fast, you don’t even see how it starts. The man at the desk says, “I told you once” as if he were responding to something that already happened.  That’s how baggage and protests work.  They are habits and habits are unconscious. What is unconscious always feels like it has always existed; timeless.

When I first started studying this, I used to think that things which were unconscious were vague and murky. Not so. Unconscious knowledge is very precise and complex. When a concert pianist plays Beethoven she is mainly conscious of the music. But the mechanics of making the music are all so well mastered that they are unconscious.  Most people drive their cars unconsciously. In fact, the most dangerous driver is one who has to think about how quickly to take the foot off the accelerator while pushing in the clutch, and slowly pressing the brake while steering gradually over to the slower lane. The one who does this best does it so smoothly because the individual parts are integrated into unconscious knowledge. And it’s the same thing with these interpersonal protests and arguments that we call baggage.

Let’s look at a real example.

Genevieve had an over bearing mom.  When she grew up she married an over bearing man. And then she got a divorce and it seemed that she was “attracted to overbearing men. Nice guys never showed up. This is an example of baggage and here is how it works.

First, you have to look at her protest. What was her protest?  It started out with her mom. The way she handled mom’s nagging, demanding, insisting, snooping and punishing was to protest in her head. The protest was a like a poster only she could see. It went like this, “F  U.  I will do anything I damned well please.”  Down with Oppression! Up with Personal freedom!

“We fill our lives with proceedings which at first seem reasonable until they later become a habit.”  Samuel Beckett

Genevieve, for her sanity and survival as a child,  developed the habit of being super-alert to possible demands and super-prepared to challenge them. If you were going to deal with someone as over bearing as Mom, you didn’t want to defy her in big ways. That would be like Iraq trying to stand up to the U.S. Military, or like Apache’s trying to stop the US Calvary. A losing proposition.  You wanted to handle it like guerilla war and defy her in millions of small ways. And so Genevieve became very good at taking millions of small stands. 

Baggage, in this case, was the difference between saying, “F--- you, I will do anything I damned well please,” and the simple, quiet, non-combative and direct approach -- “I  do what I please.”  The simple way, which is the mature way, leaves out the protest part, leaves out the FU and the damn well. 

Adler called this extra attitude, the Protest. Another pioneering psychologist, Karen Horney, called it the “Constant Attitude.”  I like that phrase, too, because it is a kind of attitude that people carry constantly, regardless of the situation, something they impose on the situation.

There is a famous joke by Henny Youngman about that.  “A man walks into a therapist’s office and says, “Hey @$$hole. How come people don’t like me?”  A constant, yet invisible attitude.

One of the strange things about Baggage is that it attracts baggage. There are men in this world who carry matching pieces for Genevieve’s set.  She has baggage that says, “F U & D W” on it and there are guys out there who have the attitude, “F this, I’ll Damn Well decide who is going to the boss.”

If I understand Harville Hendricks correctly, he seems to be saying that matches like this are matches made in heaven. That’s because the two people challenge each other on their baggage and, if they really love one another, they will have to give up their baggage in order to make the relationship work.  Therefore, it is the force of love that heals them of their protest attitudes. (He describes the dynamics a little differently, but I think we are talking about the same stuff.)

For a while, one of my teachers was collecting phrases that summarized such matched sets of luggage.  “He worshiped the ground she walked on and she treated him like dirt.”   “He was a man who claimed to know best the difference between right and wrong and she helped him by reminding him of how wrong he could be.”

Genevieve had carried her baggage so long that she’d gotten used to it.  The proceedings which at first seemed reasonable, had become a habit. However, she’d read my  “Souvenir Memories” article on the web site and the first memory her soul handed her (she spontaneously produced it) was about an encounter with her Mom in which she responded with her brave FU stand.  Even then she wasn’t sure what to make of the memory. 

Why did I remember that?

And this is where I think it helps to talk to someone else about this stuff. I could hear the protest in the story and draw her attention to it and to its implications. She’s smart and it didn’t take much more than that for her to make a lot of connections.

So what do you do with baggage?

First you unpack it and that probably is work best done in a conversation with someone else.  You don’t always notice your own constant attitude. Usually, because it’s so constant. Second, because it’s hard to look at the unattractive side of your personality. It just is. 

Second, you don’t try to change it quickly.  I know this is counter-intuitive. There are a couple reasons for not trying to change it quickly.  First of all, when you first a habitual protest that you’ve taken for granted for many years, you don’t know where it’s been. And you don’t know where it goes.  So the first thing to do is watch how it works in you.

Third, once you’ve watched it work for a while, then you’ll have all sorts of ideas about how to drop it. It really is an unnecessary add-on to your social skills and, as you get better at anything, including getting along with others, you learn to succeed with less work.  You’ll find ways to drop it.  Again, it really helps to talk about this with someone who knows what they are listening to.  Real change is a kind of lightening up.  It isn’t that dramatic. 

Here is Robert Bly’s translation of Rilke’s poem about the Swan. It is about the difference between the way the swan walks on land and the way it moves in water.  I think about this when I think about the difference between carrying baggage and letting baggage drop.   If you read it aloud you can feel the deliberate clumsiness of the first two verses and the grace of the third.

The Swan

This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.

And to die, which is a letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan when he nervously lets himself down

into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each minute more fully grown
more like a king, composed, farther and farther on.

And then I also think about another Paul Simon song, This one about mastery, a quality of people who’ve made it through their midlife transformation.

“He makes it look so easy, look so clean,
He moves like God’s Immaculate Machine
He makes me think about all these extra moves I make
And the bag of tricks it takes
To get me through my working day,
That One Trick Pony.”
From One Trick Pony by Paul Simon

It’s that time of year again. In the Northern Hemisphere, the darkness falls early and our very bones call us to huddle and share warmth. In a loving protest against the night we celebrate the light and warm we carry within and the miracles of hope. No feeling so sweet as pooling our love. My best wishes to all of you.
                                  Philip

No one is single at midlife without baggage. The people to worry about are those who claim to not have it.

Let me give you an example. A friend of mine took an ad on a dating site. She didn’t have time to write a full profile and so all she did was create a screen name and answer the multiple choice questions about age, figure, religion, salary and a few other things. Nothing that would give anyone a sense of who she was. She had no picture. She didn’t write a personal essay. 

Within hours she received an email that said, “Congratulations! You are the one that made me upgrade to gold member. I joined as a free member this morning with no intention of upgrading now. I am looking for one woman to love and be with, and I do not play games. I have been divorced since 93 and have no children or baggage.”

So here is the question: If I am right and this man has written a sort of personally developed form letter, (which is to say, “he says this to all the girls”), is this a man with baggage, or without baggage?

If he’s lying in the opening sentence, does that mean he’s lying in his closing phrase? 

It’s hard to think about baggage.  Well, to be more precise, it’s hard for me to  think about my baggage. Your baggage is easy for me to think about. 


AARP recently completed a survey of 3500 single adults between 40 and 60 .  It’s on their web site.

The top three dating complaints of single men in their 50s:

· Women who "become difficult to get along with" after the first few dates (28 percent)
· Women who want to get too serious too fast (18 percent)
The top three complaints of women:

· That baggage thing (35 percent)

· Not having a clue where to meet men, and meeting too few new men (23 percent)
· Overeager guys who want to get real serious real fast (21 percent)
· Women who have not had a date in the last year.  (43 percent)
The other figures are interesting but we’re talking about baggage.  You’ll notice that all the men’s complaints come down to baggage and the first and third of the women’s complaints are about baggage.

What is baggage?
Baggage is anything quirky about you that makes it difficult for you to be in a relationship.

As the name implies, it’s something you are bringing with you from wherever your were before. It’s a fairly sophisticated concept. It suggests that people have left-over feelings and thoughts from previous relationships and, unconsciously,  involuntarily, they carry those feelings with them into the next relationship. 

We you angry at someone in the past and not able to get satisfaction on whatever it was you were angry about? Well, then according to the theory of baggage, you will bring that anger with you into your next relationship.

Whatever was left over and unresolved. Fear. Distrust. Resentment.  A feeling of being cheated.  And also gratitude, obligation, and guilt.  And maybe also horniness and lust.  And maybe also sexual fatigue. All these things are part of baggage.

Usually the best place to look for clues about baggage in an intimate is to look at how someone manages their relationship with their cross-sexed parent. How does he handle his relationship with his mother; how does she, with her father.  The next best place to look is at the relationships with their ex’s. 

One mark of maturity, according to one of my favorite researchers, Robert Kegan,  is “an awareness of the influence of personal history and the attendant distortions.”  Another mark, according to Abram Maslow, is “humor that is philosophical rather than hostile.”

Both those definitions point to a certain humility, and openness to being, at times, just plain wrong.  “When wrong to promptly admit it.” (This is from the 12 Steps of AA, another exquisite summary of the capacities of a mature person.)

So does this mean that in order to claim maturity you have to acknowledge some kind of psychopathology?  No.  It’s more that when the question comes up, I listen for a certain amount of humility. And I don’t think it’s the sort of thing you can know about someone quickly.

One form of humility is gratitude. Some people exhibit an amazing gratitude about their lives and their successes. They seem to understand the role that grace, or Grace, has played in their lives. 


Philip

In the September issue I had an article about how there was no way, no herbal remedy, nothing that increased the size of a who know who’s you know what. And a lot of people didn’t get the letter because it couldn’t get through the spam filters designed to prevent the delivery of emails about doing that change to that thing that we can’t mention, apparently.  If you missed the article on …you know… it’s on the web site.

I’ve wanted to hold this class for about a year. If five to ten of you are interested, I’ll do it.  We’ll meet once every other week on the phone on a Monday night.  The cost will be $100.00 and there will be five meetings.

I want us to discuss four or five movies. Each reveals something interesting about midlife relationships.  I’ll send out a set of discussion questions beforehand. Each person will rent the film locally and look at it before the class and think about the questions. Then we’ll get together on the phone and talk. For the fifth class, we’ll decide whether to do another movie or a wrap-up session. 

Here are the movies I have in mind. I am always looking for additional suggestions.

An Affair of Love.  Originally titled Une Liaison Pornographique.  French with subtitles.  The same premise as in the recent book A Round-Heeled Woman. In this film, a middle-aged woman (Nathalie Bly) decides to place an ad to meet a man for sex in the afternoon. They never know each other’s names and fall in love but then what? A chance to talk about how midforties single men and women deal and think about sex.  Directed by Frederic Foneyne and written by Philippe Blasband.

Dinner with Friends. Norman Jewison’s adaptation of the stage play by Donald Margulies. Starring Andie MacDowell, Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear and Toni Collete. Two couples, life long friends, and one of the couples gets a divorce. How does a marriage survive their best friend’s divorce?  How do friendships survive a divorce?  I recommend viewing it twice on DVD because the director’s commentary is so insightful.

The Lion In Winter. Andrew Harvey’s 1968 classic about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, starring Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole as the couple, both in their fifties, in a well-weathered, battle-scarred marriage.   Young Anthony Hopkins in his movie debut. A good chance to think about the difference between young adults and midlife adults and their approaches to love.

Scenes From A Marriage. Ingmar Bergman’s film follows the divorce and post-divorce relationship of a midlife couple.  For Midlife Singles, one of the most important relationships is the one they still have with their ex.

An Autumn Tale. This is Eric Rohmer’s movie about a midlife single woman. Her friend takes out a personal ad for her and interviews prospective men and then hands her choice over to the single woman.  The single woman is perfectly independent at “mid-fifty.”

Make your reservations early. Enrollment is limited. Let me know at drbelove@datingatmidlife.com

The mailing list for this newsletter continues to grow steadily.  I thank you all.  Please forward to your friends.

Until November, Thanks

Philip Belove, Ed.D.

Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.

Carl Jung

In this issue:
* Penis info
* Commercial for Teleclass.
* Essay on how to interpret the stories someone tells you about their previous relationships.
* Poem about being all of who you are.

What you need to know about Penis enlargement.

Last week I took a class in how to draw, taught by my friend Marc Lazard. He’s a brilliant and gracious teacher and I learned a lot.  I was sitting next to a man who was a retired cosmetic surgeon. One of the strange things about watching him learn to draw was that he worked very slowly, never said, “oops,” and hardly ever used his eraser. You want that in your surgeon. 

Since he was a plastic surgeon I asked him about penis enlargement. He said nothing changes penis size. No drug, no herbal concoction, and the only surgery that does anything is dangerous with a high risk of impotence.

Penis pumps, vacuum pumps that create a vacuum around the penis to enlarge the erection, put a strain on the blood vessels, and broken blood vessels in the penis are a significant health risk. 

I get so much spam about penis enlargement that I fear many midlife men are buying this stuff.  It’s a scam, if not downright dangerous.
         -- PB
 

Measures of Maturity: The “Why Did Your Last Relationship End?” test.

This is the central fact of dating at midlife: if you are single at 20, you are just single. If
you are single at 40, you have a story about it.

No one gets to be forty years old without having been hurt or having hurt. How a person deals with this unfortunate truth shapes their expectations about new relationships, and the way someone tells you their story tells you what they are expecting from you in the coming relationship. 

There is a lot you can learn by listening to how they tell their stories.  But you have to know what you are listening for.  One of the things I listen for is how they deal with the fact that they have been hurt, or that they’ve hurt someone.

In my experience, if you have not reconciled yourself to this dark side of life, you will put certain specific and unreasonable pressures on your next relationship.  In this short article, I want you to think about how this works.

I am going to start with the story of the Troubles Tree, an old Jewish folk tale.

One day in a small town in rural Poland an angel appeared and told everyone that, because of the piety of certain people the town’s people would be given a gift. For one day, everyone could walk around freed from the burden of their life’s troubles.  A tree would appear in the center of the town and each person could hang their troubles on it.

Since these were very ordinary people, their troubles fell into the two ordinary categories. There was the suffering they had to bear because it was inflicted on them and there was the suffering they had to bear because they had caused suffering in others.

The first kind of trouble came from being betrayed, cheated, lied to, and taken advantage of.  This trouble caused people to be resentful, suspicious and expecting some kind of compensation for the damages they had suffered. These feelings led them to be in a constant sad and complaining mood, always feeling entitled to better.

The other kind of trouble was the trouble of being guilty. Many people couldn’t stand facing the fact that they had cheated, betrayed, lied and taken advantage of others. This trouble caused them to justify and excuse themselves and accuse others of being even worse. It led them to be afraid of simply enjoying their lives, always worried that what they had would be taken from them.

To be free of these troubles, both groups had to write down their troubles on a piece of paper and pin it to the tree. Those who felt sorry for themselves had to write down the injuries they’d suffered. Those who felt guilty had to write down what they had done to others.

The Day of Relief was sunny and clear and people relaxed. At sundown, they gathered in front of the tree.  First, the angel pointed out that every single person in the town had pinned something to the tree. Everyone had troubles.  Second, the Angel said that anyone who wished could take anyone else’s troubles instead of their own.

The people began to read the pieces of parchment. In the end everyone chose to take back his or her own trouble.

But from this time forward, they bore them willingly. It made a great difference.

It makes all the difference in the world whether you bear your troubles willingly or you bear them with fear, denial, or resentment. And this becomes oh so clear as you try to create a new relationship for yourself at midlife.

If you have been hurt and haven’t come to grips with it, you will expect someone else to make special allowances for you.  And as a listener to a story of unfairness you will be tempted to say something like, “Oh, that’s okay. I’ll shelter you. I’ll do better than the others. You may not have been able to trust them, but you can trust me.” 

If you have hurt others, and haven’t accepted that, you will want to get off the hook. You may want to warn the other people away:  “I’m too dangerous. I have too much baggage. I’ll hurt you.”  Or you may want to be excused, “She made me be mean to her.” And if you are listening to someone who doesn’t want to be carrying their guilt, you will be tempted to lighten their load: “That’s okay. I forgive you. I understand that you were just reacting. I can handle it. I’m strong.” 

So many people enter into new relationships expecting to do better than the previous girlfriend or boyfriend only to end up being rather sympathetic and curious about the previous lover.  People who can’t carry their own troubles will make demands in a relationship that will eventually wear it down. 

Most counseling involves convincing people that they can carry their own luggage. That, and showing them how to do it.

Clearly, the past can not be undone. If you have hurt someone, you have. If you have been hurt, it really happened. The message from the Buddha is that Life is Suffering. The message from Jesus is that we each must carry our cross.

These are the tests of maturity: Can we carry our baggage without resentment? Can we carry it without trying to find some way to get out of carrying it? Can we accept the emotional facts of our lives and live well any way?  Those who have learned to answer, “Yes,”  (and I don’t think you are born with this capacity) live differently and love differently.  

Now I return to my initial premise, if you are single at midlife, you are single, with a story about it. How you tell that story foreshadows how you will tend to create the next relationship you get in to. This is true for you, and also for the person you are dating.

(The seeds for this essay are in a chapter named “Self-Pity and Guilt”  in a book by Stephen Mitchell, Can Love Last.)

This Month’s poem.

Again, Sharon Olds. I’ve held on to this poem for several years. It says so much about what it means to mature. First there is the naiveté of her parents and how that gets lost. I especially like the line, “they would never hurt anyone.” And then there is her own maturity. Despite the cruelties of her parents, she accepts them. This is pathos,  her own acceptance, deep acceptance of the truths of her upbringing. 

I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
Under the ochre sandstone arch, the
Red tiles glinting like bent
Plates of blood behind his head, I
See my mother with a few light books at her hip
Standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
Wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
Sword-tips black in the May air,
They are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
They are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
Innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and stay Stop,
Don’t do it  she’s the wrong woman,
He’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
You cannot imagine you would ever do,
You are going to bad things to children,
You are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
You are going to want to die. I want to
Go up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
Her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
Her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
His arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
His pitiful beautiful untouched body,
But I don’t do it.  I want to live. I
Take them up like the male and female
Paper dolls and bang them together
At the hips like chips of flint as if
To strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

         -- Sharon Olds

“Relationships At Midlife” at the Movies.
Commercial for Teleclass.

I’ve wanted to hold this class for about a year. If five to ten of you are interested, I’ll do it.  We’ll meet once every other week on the phone on a Monday night.  The cost will be $100.00 and there will be five meetings.

I want us to discuss four or five movies. Each reveals something interesting about midlife relationships.  I’ll send out a set of discussion questions beforehand. Each person will rent the film locally and look at it before the class and think about the questions. Then we’ll get together on the phone and talk. For the fifth class, we’ll decide whether to do another movie or a wrap-up session. 

Here are the movies I have in mind. I am always looking for additional suggestions.

An Affair of Love.  Originally titled Une Liaison Pornographique.  French with subtitles.  The same premise as in the recent book A Round-Heeled Woman. In this film, a middle-aged woman (Nathalie Bly) decides to place an ad to meet a man for sex in the afternoon. They never know each other’s names and fall in love but then what? A chance to talk about how midforties single men and women deal and think about sex.  Directed by Frederic Foneyne and written by Philippe Blasband.

Dinner with Friends. Norman Jewison’s adaptation of the stage play by Donald Margulies. Starring Andie MacDowell, Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear and Toni Collete. Two couples, life long friends, and one of the couples gets a divorce. How does a marriage survive their best friend’s divorce?  How do friendships survive a divorce?  I recommend viewing it twice on DVD because the director’s commentary is so insightful.

The Lion In Winter. Andrew Harvey’s 1968 classic about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, starring Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole as the couple, both in their fifties, in a well-weathered, battle-scarred marriage.   Young Anthony Hopkins in his movie debut. A good chance to think about the difference between young adults and midlife adults and their approaches to love.

Scenes From A Marriage. Ingmar Bergman’s film follows the divorce and post-divorce relationship of a midlife couple.  For Midlife Singles, one of the most important relationships is the one they still have with their ex.

An Autumn Tale. This is Eric Rohmer’s movie about a midlife single woman. Her friend takes out a personal ad for her and interviews prospective men and then hands her choice over to the single woman.  The single woman is perfectly independent at “mid-fifty.”

Make your reservations early. Enrollment is limited. Let me know at drbelove@datingatmidlife.com

Updates and news

The mailing list for this newsletter continues to grow steadily.  I thank you all.  Please forward to your friends.

Until October, Thanks

Philip Belove, Ed.D.

Dating at Midlife Newsletter
August 2003
Please forward and always give credit to the authors.
The Midlife Learning Institute
www.datingatmidlife.com
Philip Belove, Ed.D.

Take heart. Being single and dating at midlife isn’t that easy. The ideas here and on our website can help you make sense of the turbulence.

You are meeting two complex challenges simultaneously.  You are not only creating a new intimate relationship with each other, you are also creating a new intimate relationship with yourselves. And you are doing this as complex adults  The demands of the midlife transformation changes the business of dating.
                          

What happens in the midlife transformation?
By Philip Belove, Ed.D.

I have a friend, 72, who said, last week, “I’ve just realized that I’m going to die. I always pretended it was only something that happened to others.”   At seventy-two he finally could handle the full impact of the challenge that drives us all through the midlife transformation.

Some of us never get that strong.  For most of us, it takes years.  I remember when the beginning edge of that awareness struck me. I was thirty five. I had been living a life designed more to make other people happy than to make me happy. Somewhere in my inner shadows I was sustaining myself on the thought that next time I would live life for me.  I began to understand that depending on my next life to give spiritual justification to this one was a poor strategy, but I wasn’t sure of the alternative.

What was a better idea?  I didn’t know and then I had a dream. In the dream I was in an office in an advertising agency visiting an important person, who I referred to in my dream as “the person in the advertising business I admired most.” In the dream I realized that that person was me. Even in the dream I felt sheepish about giving myself such importance. I had a lot to learn.  

In my waking life I was not yet a psychologist. I was an associate creative director making television commercials for shampoo, soap, cereal, frozen pizza and dog food.  In my dream I walked into my office and found this important person,  “me,” on the window ledge about to jump.

The “me” on the ledge said to the “me” in the office, “In there it is only the 36^th floor, but out here it is the whole world!” (Thirty-sixth floor!  I was thirty five.) Then the “me” on the ledge jumped backwards, out, away from the building, and into the air.  When I saw him/me jump, I was startled and terrified. He saw my reaction and laughed. He hung in the air for a moment, immune to the laws of gravity, and then, as if he has wings, he flew away.  Out here it is the whole world! 

When I woke up I said, “What was that?”  Apparently, I was living a life much too small for my Soul.  The following Fall, shortly before my 36^th birthday,  I entered graduate school to become a Psychologist. 

Midlife like the third quarter in a basketball or football game. You’ve seen how the first half of the game has gone and you have a chance to step back and review your strategy and approach. Psychologically speaking, you develop a different way of seeing, thinking and experiencing the world. It’s as if you gathered enough experience of yourself as an adult that you can think about who you’ve become.  It is the time when you realize that it is your life and you can do with it as you wish.  So what are you going to do? Strengthen and clarify your approach? Or make changes?

Sometimes the simple numbers wake you up. Thirty-five is half seventy and seventy is, well, seventy. Other times, the wake up comes as a powerfully provocative event  a dream, a loss, a crisis, a divorce, a break-up of an important post-divorce affair, or even a success.  A friend of mine has a story about his midlife awakening at 50.  He was chairman of the board of a local institution and he was given a party in honor of his birthday.  He looked around the room at the tuxedos and realized that there wasn’t a single person there that he considered to be a true friend. Time to change. He bought a motorcycle and leathers, and he did much more. 

Whatever the wake-up call is, you suddenly realize that your life is, in large part, your creation. This is the core realization. It will be what you chose it to be  and you can continue to make your old choices, or you can unmake them and make new ones.

Working out the implications of this wake-up call  changing careers, creating a second marriage, or restoring your first marriage can take five to ten years. This is the midlife transformation, a life transition as meaningful and challenging, in its own way, as adolescence, college, or graduate school.

Maybe the best analogy is graduate school because in the process of maturing you acquire capacities, abilities, strength, which you then rely on to create quality and satisfaction in your life for the rest of your life.

The first capacity you acquire is an understanding of  what it means to write your own life story. Similarly, you learn to be both more imaginative and more deliberate in the way you manage and creating relationships.

You become capable of genuine self-examination. You have some ability to see yourself as others see you, and also as they don’t! You become open to coaching and more capable of self-coaching. You  become open to learning how you are both a better and a worse person than you thought you were. 

As you become capable of seeing yourself somewhat objectively, you become aware that you have a unique personal style, (a psychology) which shapes how you think, feel, judge and decide and which makes you very much an individual, a character. (Mature adults are always real characters. It’s a good thing.) Being able to see your style means you become able to refine your style. You become your own work of art.

As you become more aware of how unique and quirky you are, you also become aware of the unique quirkiness of others. Your sense of humor becomes generous. You become solid in your ability to forgive and be charitable.

Notice the key phrase in this ancient observation about maturity:
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity  I Cor 13:11

All this maturing amounts to a spiritual awakening. You become aware of how strongly who you are influences life around you. You become able to see the next generation of adults moving onto the main stage of life and, with grace, how you can help them. You are also able to see how, in all your intimate relationships, you are the co-creator.

                                                      ###

This month’s poem is by William Stafford.  I learned about him through Robert Bly and the men’s movement. It is a man’s poem.  I know that many women feel as inauthentic at midlife as men do.  Yet, I’m more likely to hear these feelings of being lost, alone-in-the-world and cut-off from some birthright from men. (Women, by contrast, will be more likely to speak of feeling unappreciated, marginalized, depreciated and denied access to power.) What I love about this poem is the bright strength and sustaining hope that shines at the poem’s end.

A story that could be true

If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.

He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by
you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
“Who are you really, wanderer?”
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”

         == William Stafford

I’m writing and distributing this free ezine because I want to share some of the work coming out of the relationships-at-midlife research project. Please visit the website. Please send us your questions about dating at midlife situations.  We are more than happy to answer them and they help us with our research. http://www.datingatmidlife.com. Or write me directly at drbelove@datingatmidlife.com. Forward this newsletter freely.

Please forward freely.  Please give credit for all original writing. Please visit the website for more.  Also, at the website, you can interact with us, ask free questions and arrange for counseling and coaching.

         -- Philip Belove, Ed.D.

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