How Midlife Relationships Work

Sometimes people want too much in a romance and just as often they don’t want enough.

In the last 20 years psychological research has systematically investigated the psychology of successful romantic relationships…and rediscovered what many folks simply knew all along. But still, there are a lot of opinions out there and it’s good to know what some folks have found out with rigorous thinking.

A good relationship contains three main elements – technically they are called “behavioral systems.” The term means that our brains are set up to create three different, somewhat independent kinds of relationship conditions. Relationships that live and flourish tend to contain all three.

Sometimes intimate relationships fail because the partners grow to hate each other’s company. “Hate.”  It’s a strong word.

Hatred is wild and strange.  I’ve counseled people who are dealing with an ex who is intoxicated by hatred.  Such people are willing to use children, the legal system, and vandalism to make a former partner’s life miserable. They do it in a gleeful frenzy. They are scary because they feed off their hatred and there’s no stopping them except by going to war against them and defeating them thoroughly.  Most of us don’t like going to war.

For most of us hatred is  uncomfortable.  For most of us, when we are angry we are angry about a principle, a value, something that seems bigger than the issue at hand.  But when anger shifts to hatred it’s because we’ve made the issue personal. Often people who like to hate are also proud of the fact that their values are so personally held.

Because hatred is a personal matter and because the pain associated with it is often so close to the surface, most folks shift from hatred to disgust.  Disgust is the way we put distance between our self and the thing we hate.  In disgust we don’t have to resolve the hatred. We can simply go past it and seek the more comfortable state of denial.  We resolve to simply never see, speak or think about the person we “used to” hate.  We do this for our protection, and sometimes for their protection. We cut them off.

By Philip Belove, Ed.D.

Datingatmidlife.com , Drbelove.com, Drbelove@datingatmidlife.com

“When I look behind, as I am compelled to look, before I can gather strength to proceed on my Journey” –Stanley Kuntiz, from his poem, The Layers.

This blog starts out with a story about an argument I couldn’t win. It ends with a teaser about the next blog entry, which will be about forgiveness.

But about that argument. It was difficult for me. I like to be an agreeable person and don’t like disagreeing. Yet disagreeing is a skill I feel obliged to practice, along with speaking up.  Still, I work hard to find ways to do it respectfully.  My commitment to being able to argue well is, in part I believe, because I’m Jewish. In our tradition, every word in the holiest books is surrounded by pages of discussions about what they really mean. Having your own opinion is an obligation of Jewish adulthood.

But anyway, the argument I had with the woman went like this:  Her new boyfriend told her about his grief for his ex. She said, “If you still have such feelings you aren’t ready for a new relationship.”  He said, “I still have grief and I might always. It was a genuine loss.”  She said, “Live in the present.” He said, “I can’t. I’m Jewish.” So they broke up.

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.  It’s even easy to get into a  relationship if you aren’t particular.  The real challenge is once you are in.

And it’s not so much the relationship per se that’s the problem. It’s the process of designing the relationship.

Every relationship needs a little tailoring. (I once read an interview with a fashion designer and the question was, how does an ordinary person, who can’t spend thousands on clothes, dress to look good. The designer said “tailoring.” He said that even those t-shirts the movie stars are wearing get a little bit of sewing here and there.)

The challenge is in finding a way to tailor the relationship to fit well for both of you. In other words, you both need to find a method for negotiating that relationship.

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?

The Gottman Ratio.

Dating at Midlife: How Can You Trust Again?
By Philip Belove, Ed.D.

If you are dating someone, you are probably considering letting him or her get pretty close to you. Yet at this midlife stage, you have probably also been involved in one or more major relationships that failed or ended poorly. That is why one of the most common questions asked by ThirdAgers is, “Can I trust this new person?”

It takes a while to get to know someone, and good judgment doesn’t descend upon you overnight. It is something you have to work at. Here are a few ways to start practicing:

• Learn to trust yourself: Trusting another person more than you trust yourself is the definition of naiveté. In midlife, you have to develop your own judgment and honor it above the wishes of others.
  
• Pay attention to your inklings: You know the tiny voices that tell you about things thatmight be true, but you just can’t be sure? These are the seeds of your intuition. Don’t dismiss them. They help you develop caution and they also help you discover opportunities. When you are dating, you usually have little feelings — good or bad — about something or someone. Never, ever brush those feelings aside.
  

We all have sacred texts.   For many of us, they come from Holy Books.  But not for all of us. A sacred text, for me, is something someone said or wrote that contains something so profoundly true that I return to it again and again for guidance and inspiration.

The poem that follows is one of my sacred texts.  It  was written by the poet, Stanley Kunitz, when he was 92.  That’s important. He ends the poem saying that “the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written.”

At midlife we tend to underestimate the richness of life that is to come.  It’s important, I think, to look to those who’ve lived well and long.

Also, after the poem are comments. It’s advice Kunitz has repeated to others and often. In this quote he is talking to Bill Moyers.

The opening sentence is profoundly important to me and wisdom I have drawn upon often when talking to people who are at midlife and trying to create, or re-create, or  invigorate, their intimate life. He says, “The first task of the poet is to create the person who writes the poems. ”  Similarly, the first task of the person who wishes to create a beautiful relationship is to create the person, who will be a version of their authentic self,  who will be showing up for that relationship.

Enough said for now:

The Layers

by Stanley Kunitz