Love Stories of Later Life

Popular romance novels and daytime soaps still perpetuate the myth that only the young and unwrinkled can enjoy romance. For many, late life romance is either comic or disgusting. Even the professional literature on love has little to offer regarding life after twenty. Most love research studies the experiences of college students – a convenient population for professors, but hardly one that can illuminate the lifelong implications of romantic attachments.

While love researchers neglect age, gerontologists neglect romance. In 1973, Robert Kastenbaum chided the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Aging for neglecting love. He said: “ . . .we do not have a comprehensive gerontology unless we know something about this realm. . . . Loving is not encompassed by the frequency of reported sexual interests and activities. . . All the ‘dirty old men’ jokes in the world do not dilute the poignancy of love and sex in later life. . .”⁳ In the 30 years since, professional priorities in the field have remained skewed towards the “gero-erotic” with literally thousands of articles published on sex and barely a handful on romance.⁴ Like these scholars, most Americans acknowledge that sex is a possibility for older adults, but few can imagine that life’s second half might offer the intoxication of infatuation or the agony of unrequited love.

Some people feel that romance after 80 is simply impossible. My father-in-law felt that way when his wife of 63 years passed away in 2002. He was 83 years old, and his grief intensified with the expectation that he would spend his remaining years alone – an expectation that he would prove false on August 7, 2005. On that hot day in a garden in California, two three-generation families gathered to witness his marriage to the longtime friend who is now his soul mate and companion. Variations of this scene play out daily across the United States, as older adults discover the possibilities of late life romance.This work is grounded in the phenomenological research tradition that seeks to describe, interpret and understand complex human experiences. Our goal was to achieve “critical subjectivity,” described by Yvonna Lincoln, an expert on qualitative methods, as: “an altered state of consciousness or ‘high-quality awareness’ for the purpose of understanding with great discrimination subtle differences in the personal and psychological states of others.”⁵

This understanding is constructed through a complex reciprocal interaction involving respondents, researchers, and ultimately the readers of this work. It includes three components: the “lived experience” of respondents; the survey as an “expression” of that experience; and the “interpretation” of the experience. In his insightful discussion of interpretive methods Mark Tappan explained that: “interpretation must take as its starting point the historical and psychological reality of the lived experience of both the subject whose expression of experience is being interpreted and the interpreter herself.”⁶ We therefore construct meaning in a dynamic process that integrates the perspectives of all participants.

Like all of us, I am influenced by my daily experiences. In this book I have disclosed those that seem relevant to my interpretation of the data and the literature. This should help the reader understand where I am coming from and to evaluate the “truthfulness” of the material presented. Coming to the material with a unique life history, each person who reads this book will take away a different message. Nonetheless, a central insight has emerged from the array of romantic experiences reviewed here: love changes people.

Love as a Force for Change

Romantic experiences define character in ways that are so subtle that they might go undetected and so varied that they defy generalization. Love opens the door to our potential and helps shape the people we become. The work reported here describes four ways that love shapes our lives and ourselves.

First, the intense unsettling experiences that come with romantic love create opportunities for personal insight. Coupled with self-reflection, intense romantic experiences can teach us about ourselves – our needs and vulnerabilities and our demons. As we will see in this book, these lessons can change a person’s approach to life and to love.

Second, love is a training ground for relationship skills. We inevitably learn from interactions with our partners. For some these lessons are adaptive, teaching the value of compromise and the importance of reciprocity. We learn how to communicate our love. Particularly in late life, we confront the boundaries of our personal control and we learn about letting go. Less useful lessons arise when romantic interactions are marked by abuse, neglect or manipulation.

Third, love stretches us beyond our comfort zones, revealing capabilities we didn’t know we had. We see this in the uncharacteristic acts committed when we are deeply infatuated. Desperately in love, we discover personal capacities we never knew were there. Love can also stretch us by exposing us to different ways of being as when we meet a person unlike anyone else we have ever loved and, in loving them, are transformed.

Finally, love changes the very course of our lives. Our choice of romantic partners can determine what jobs we take, where we will live, whether or not we have children. In midlife, people who have not experienced love as they long imagine it may set out on a quest – some might call it a “midlife crisis” -- to satisfy this burning need.

As a gerontologist I have long felt the most interesting part of human development takes place in late life. Some changes are so gentle and slow that we don’t notice them for decades. And most young people have too much on their plates to spend time in contemplation. Besides that their reminiscences are awfully short! Late life provides the opportunity and the perspective to observe changes that romantic love has made in our lives and our persons. Then one day we turn around and realize that even in life’s final decades some of us are still changing!

Romantic Possibilities

Much of our interest in other people’s lives stems from the hope of learning something that will expand our own possibilities. Psychologists Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius introduced the idea of “possible selves,” defined as the people we believe we could become.⁷ One way that we learn about our possible selves is by observing the people around us, particularly those who are like us in some way. As Markus and Nurius observed, “What others are now, I could become.”⁸ Thus we observe others closely to vicariously monitor our own possibilities.

Based on the loving experiences of hundreds of older adults, this book is offers an opportunity to expand your sense of late life’s romantic possibilities. It affords a glimpse at adventurous possibilities and those that are more predictable. Here are a few:

Infatuation. It happens. Not just to the young, but to 50, 60, 70, even 80 year olds. It’s just one of the possibilities of late life romance. You may find yourself, like 88-year old Ted, reflecting on a lifetime of inappropriate infatuations; or, like Barbara, you may be dancing in the street trilling “I’m in love!” at the age of 79.

Pursuit. Looking for love can force you to look at yourself in new and sometimes uncomfortable ways. Like 62-year old Candy, late life may be a time for you to seek the relationship in which you will finally get it right. Or, like 68 year old Alice, you might find yourself cruising the Internet for a companion. Love might sneak up when you aren’t looking, like it did for Sandrine in her late 50s.

Ecstasy. Long-term romance can be ecstatic. Like 87-year old Marty, you may be able to say, “My whole life is a love story!”

Complications. Late life romances involve more than two people. You might find, like Barbara did at 83, that even after the romance is over you remain close to his children. On the other hand, when you fall in love in your 80s you might discover, as Ginny and Al did, that his children are a serious impediment.

Loss. Grief happens, and life goes on (usually). You may lose the love of your life, like Susan did and find that you are not looking for or even interested in love. This doesn’t mean you won’t find it, but it does mean the late life experiences of divorced, single, and widowed adults can be rich and fulfilling even without romantic partners.

Awareness of these possibilities might change the way you think about love and about your own aging. Far from being a romantic wasteland, late life provides unique opportunities to experience love fully and intensely. Of course, these are just possibilities, they are not guarantees. Without paying attention, we may walk right past them on our way to something else.

More than anything, this book is an invitation to explore the romantic possibilities of later life so you will know them when you see them. It might also help you interpret your own romantic history and decipher the role love has played in making you the person you are today.

Try this:

The road not taken – By the time we are 50, most of us have at least one romantic road not taken. It might be a relationship nipped in the bud, an infatuation stifled, or a rejection from a long-time lover. Starting with the premise that romantic experiences shape you – your habits, personality, even your physical self – imagine for a moment what you would be like had one of those romantic roads actually been taken. Would you be sweeter? Happier? Bitter? Would you eat differently? Would you live someplace else? What might your children be like? In this exercise you can use your imagination to enrich your life experience.

NOTES FROM INTRODUCTION

ⁱ Haley, Bruce (1978). The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; Himes, C.L. (2001). Elderly Americans. Population Bulletin, Vol. 56/4, Washington DC: Population Reference Bureau (from Hudson 2005).

⁲ U.S. Bureau of Census (2000). Census 2000 PHC-T-9. Population by Age, Sex, Race and Hispanic of Latino Origin for the United States: 2000. Table 1. (http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t9/tab01.pdf).

⁳ Kastenbaum, R.J. (1973). Loving, Dying, and Other Gerontologic Addenda. In C. Eisdorfer & M.P. Lawton (Eds). The Psychology of Adult Development and Aging. Washington DC: American Psychological Association. pp. 699-705.

⁴ Please see Appendix A for relevant tables.

⁵ Lincoln, Y.S. (2002). Emerging criteria for quality in qualitative and interpretive research. In Denzin,N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds). The Qualitative Inquiry Reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Press. 327-347. p. 337.

⁶ Tappan, M. (2001). Interpretive psychology: Stories, circles, and understanding lived experience. In Tolman, D.L. & Brydon-Miller, M. (eds). From Subjects to Subjectivities: A handbook of interpretive and participatory methods. New York: New York University Press. P. 45-56, page 49.

⁷ Markus, H. & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible Selves. American Psychologist 41(9), 954-969.

⁸ Ibid, p. 954.