Do you have a partner or a project or a person who moves you deeply? Someone you trust totally? Have you heard yourself use the word “love” in circumstances you hadn’t before? Do you connect love with sex? If you feel you are missing love in your life, what is it you miss?

The reason I ask is that everywhere I go, I hear from women who are experiencing love, intense love, in new ways. In some cases, they do not label the feelings “love” but the more we talk, the clearer it becomes that the word is taking on a wider definition. We are finding love – and sometimes sex – in circumstances we would never have dreamed of earlier in our lives. I want to know more about this expanded and enriched love life.

“I have fallen in love for real and for the first time in my life,” a 52-year-old bride tells me with a tinge of disbelief. Would she have fallen for the same guy thirty years ago or would she have dismissed him as uncool or inappropriate? I wonder. Why now?

“I have fallen in love with my husband all over again,” exults a woman who has been married over forty years. “There were times where I thought we would never make it, but this was worth hanging in for!” What happens in a long term relationship that refires the engine?

“I was happily married for forty years,” says another woman, “but when my husband died, I found myself becoming increasingly drawn to other women. I just found the intimacy so easy.” What is it like to make this kind of transfer or eroticism and intimacy?
And what is it like for the women who never felt satisfied in their heterosexual relationships who are discovering their true sexuality now?

”You may be shocked,” says a very serious-looking doctor, “but I have discovered the joys of one night stands. I need a rest from ‘relating.’ And the sex is great!” I am not shocked; I have spoken to countless women who are experimenting with separating sex from long-term commitments, and countless others who are experimenting with sex in general. Does reaching the “fuck-you fifties” set us free to literally go there?

Then there are the women who have found the opposite is for them – relationships without sex or commitment – good, comfortable, compatible companionship with someone who probably wouldn’t be a satisfactory partner. Others are feeling deep satisfaction in the non-sexual connections in their lives. “I got married about ten years ago, to a man I adore, and we are very happy,” says an executive I know, “but I think my real life-long passion is for the young people I have mentored over the past thirty years.”

Grandmotherhood seems to be another source of unexpected joy. “I can’t believe it,” a friend marvels, “but I feel like I am awaiting a lover when I am going to see my granddaughter. The love is so intense.” What is it about being maternal again that turns an otherwise reserved woman into a doting and dotty grandma?

Most of all, women in every conceivable situation and life style recommitting to their women friends. They are exhilarated by the new levels of understanding and trust that surpass all other connections in their lives. What is it like to build on a long-standing friendship? What is it like to fall out of love with an old friend? What is like to find a new friend?

As diverse as these expressions of love are, I see certain ingredients that they have in common. For one thing, by now we know who we are, which makes it easier to know what we want. At the same time our expectations are more realistic than back when love was what dreams were made of. We don’t expect to change anyone (very much) and we don’t expect a perfect fit or a protector. We are definitely better at managing on our own, not sweating the small stuff, and living with the insecurity of ongoing change. And we are ready to take some risks. Together we are defining a new way of loving.

In my next book I will try to describe what it is going on. Please help by telling me how it is for you. (write me at info@SuzanneBraunLevine.com or post your comment here.)

With the launch of this website we are celebrating the new home for Women in Second Adulthood along with the publication of my new book: FIFTY IS THE NEW FIFTY: 10 LIFE LESSONS FOR WOMEN IN SECOND ADULTHOOD. In my books, I have collected anecdotes, insights, and wisdom from women at a new frontier of self-discovery; their stories, along with front-line scientific research and understanding from those professionals who are monitoring our journey, offer practical guidelines for all of us. On this website we can do the same among ourselves.

We are the first generation of women to experience this second chance at growing-up; after decades of living prescribed roles, each of us is finding her own voice and writing her own script. We – more than 37 million of us – are building the personal drive and political clout to make changes in society as we invent the rest of our own lives.

Many of us became aware of this new stage when we confronted a 50th birthday and the question “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?” As we answered that question for ourselves we discovered what is new about 50 – and 60 and 70. That is why 50 is not the new 30. In many important ways it is better than earlier ages – we feel braver, smarter and more confident – and most women I have met do not want to go back to the lives they lived when they were younger.

That is the way it has been for me. Although I had reported on women’s lives throughout most of my first adulthood, as I reached midlife for the first time I needed to understand what was going on in my own life. I was the one wondering if I was crazy and if I was the only one shaking things up. As I talked to other women I was reassured and energized by our shared experience. For example, the realization that we no longer care so much about what other people think about our behavior or ideas. As long as they feel right to us. And the exhilaration of hearing yourself say “NO” loud and clear without the world falling apart.

Since then I have written two books about us. But, the more we live, the more we discover and the more there is to say. Where better to continue the conversation than right here where we can talk directly to each other?

We’ve added some new features to the site, a newsletter and more changes are coming. We hope you find the site a welcoming, comfortable place to call ‘home’, bring friends, tell your stories and add to our collective wisdom and about the discoveries of our generation

Join Us!

When my kids were younger and I wanted to have a difficult conversation with one of them, I would wait until we were driving alone in the car. I found that it was easier for me to broach the subject when my gaze was fixed on the road, and it was more likely I would get some feedback if my son or daughter didn’t have to make eye contact either. In that circumstance, the avoidance of eye contact fostered intimacy.

But most of the time intimacy is, for me, precisely about eye contact. I need to see facial expressions, even the mouth moving, in order to continue the conversation, and I need to see something in the eyes in order to venture deeper into my feelings. People in love are all about eye contact. Eye contact is also the source of the momentary intimacy of two strangers acknowledging that, for example, that they both found the way a fellow customer was behaving out of line, or that they both noticed how cute the cocker spaniel in the middle of the sidewalk is.

Internet intimacy is something new for me, both disconcerting and intriguing. Virtual communities offer none of the visual cues I am used to. But they also eliminate other – often harmful – visual clues that enable someone to judge someone else by looks, accent, or station in life. In terms of content, there are almost no barriers, and no consequences. For women, in particular, it is exhilarating to express ourselves without concerns for propriety or hurt feelings.

Such conversations are empowering. Speaking the truth, sharing stories, researching expertise, and finding support – that used to be territory we only shared with our best flesh-and-blood friends. But even then, it was still hard to admit certain things; I once confessed to a friend that I was afraid of disciplining my children for fear of upsetting them, and she seemed so shocked that I regretted the whole conversation. Nowadays such raw admissions are common – and validated – in cyberspace.

An unheralded byproduct of this new intimacy is that we are all becoming fluent in self-expression. As far as I am concerned, this is major. I got an inkling of how transformative internet communication is when I was writing my next book (Fifty Is the New Fifty, out in April). I contacted hundreds of women who had signed up on my website and asked them all kinds of personal questions: How is it to be fifty or sixty or seventy? How are your relationships holding up? Are you burned out at your job? How is your sex life? Do you really understand your finances? The stories I got back were always honest and fresh, and – this was the most amazing aspect to me – they has the authenticity of spoken narrative. In the past, if I wanted a story or anecdote from someone, I had to sit with her – making eye contact – and skillfully draw out emotional details and anecdotes; if, instead, I asked her to write down her responses, the result would be stilted and devoid of detail. Now everyone on line has a loud and proud written voice. That voice speaks the truth to unseen intimates, but even if no one is listening, it gives personal expression – in the same way journaling does – to what we are feeling and experiencing. If I were looking for continuity, I could call this new dimension to communication “I- contact.”

As time passed we got in the habit of feeling free to make our own plans for the evening – after checking with each other. And occasionally we would both spend an evening in one of either of our friends. Of course, we continued to double-date too. While some couples were totally compatible, others included one person we liked and one we tolerated – not always the same one for both of us.

I hadn’t really considered the differences between single friends and couple friends until recently, when my husband and I had occasion to get together with three different pairs of long-married friends – people we have known forever, and love very much, but who live in different parts of the country and aren’t on our regular social timetable. It made me think about the special relationship we have with each and both of them and how that has changed over time.

With single friends, even in a group, the intimacy is one-on-one. With couples, I once calculated, there are twelve relationships among four people – each with each (including one’s partner, whose behavior may be affected by the other people in the mix); that mathematical fact complicates the dynamic exponentially. In the past, I had been very aware of the interplay between the partners we were visiting. In one case he was very successful and she very (overly?) supportive, in another he was a kind of a stumblebum and she quite critical, and in the third she struck me as very spiritual and he not on her wavelength.

This time, though, the rough edges between them were less apparent – to me, anyway. The supportive wife seemed much more assertive and her husband more appreciative; the critical wife seemed more accepting and her husband more on top of things; the less spiritual husband revealed a deep and abiding inner life. In each of the visits, our friends spoke openly of their affection for each other; it was the first time that I could remember. They all seemed so much better suited to each other. Who knows if my original take on their relationships ever had any connection to reality – what I perceived as new compatibility may have been what they saw in each other from the first. Maybe it was something in me – that I am less dismayed by difference than I had been earlier. Maybe I see them that way because there are fewer rough edges to my own partnership.

I suspect they had similar observations to make about us. Something does happen over decades of marriage. If you are going to last this long, at some point you – I, we – close the divorce option and conclude you are in it for the duration. At the same time, if you are going to enjoy it, you stop trying to change each other – you “give up” in a way, but what is lost are unrealistic expectations and worn-out gripes; what is gained is, if you are lucky, a rediscovered appreciation for the less-flawed aspects of each other. Over all, you become more relaxed about the relationship. If this sounds boring, I guess it can be, but as I contemplated us and our friend couples, I was moved by the realization that – for better and for worse – we had each become less than two but more than one.

We certainly didn’t register at the time that we weren’t just growing up alongside one another – we were helping each other make sense of our world, establish relationships, sort out emotions and over and over again set the markers for being grown up. In other words, we were extracting lessons from what was happening to each of us and translating them into principles to live by for people our age.

That mutual demystification of life is just as important to later stages, particularly the one about aging. I have written and lectured and mused to myself about the support I get from a good laugh with my friends as we search for What’s Her Name’s name, or the strength I get from the knowing warmth of a hug for no reason, or the real know-how gathered by their mobilized problem-solving powers. But recently I have become aware of a new dimension of growing up together.
My 90-year-old mother is increasingly bewildered by the aging process. Even when I try to explain that many of the memory problems, stiff joints, skin anomalies that she is noticing are shared by much younger women, she feels blind-sided by the kinds of things my friends and I laugh about regularly. It finally dawned on me that, because she never had a close community of women, “a circle of trust” as I call them, she has grown up alone. No one bemoaned her thinning hair before my mother noticed her own. No one set a light tone for coping with the memory lapses. No one described learning to do one thing at a time as the multi-tasking mechanism shifts into low gear. No one has given her an important life lesson from the field as a friend recently did to me. “You know I’m beginning to think about things I won’t do any more,” she said. “But I’m surprised to discover that it doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.”

Growing up together is a life-long process, and we need to nurture and cherish our best friendships not only for their historical value but for the protection and guidance that our dear soul-mates contribute to coping with change and for how they make aging just one more stage of growing up.

For my birthday this month my husband and a dear friend orchestrated the evening I really wanted – even though they would have preferred doing something a bit more elaborate. At my request, each of the ten guests brought a dish they had cooked, and I basked in the intimacy of the group. Here were my two darling children, now both in their twenties and able to understand what we have all been through as a family (like any family). And my husband, with whom I have finally achieved a kind of wonderful equilibrium; when I told someone that recently, he asked me how long it had taken. “About 37 years,” I replied. There were also a very few chosen friends, of twenty or more years. But also there was one new – or prospective – friend, someone I have a strong feeling is very special and want to get to know better. A few others I wished could be there were away – on adventures of their own, as it should be.

A few days later, I spent a week with my 90-year-old mother – who doesn’t look a day over 70 (the age at which she began studying for her Ph.D., which she completed in her early 80s, while holding a fulltime job). She is “losing it” now but is still eager to go places and do things. In fact the loss of short term memory seems to make the world that much more full of surprises and wonder for her. Not a bad model for longevity.

I am looking forward to getting started on the new book, on enjoying my revitalized marriage, watching my children “turn out” and to sharing what comes to my friends.

So why don’t I want to tell you my age? Not because of what the number means to me, but because of what I think it means to you.

I’m especially thinking of the readers of MORE Magazine, where I am a proud to be a contributing editor, who may be reading this. The magazine is for “women over 40” which we all accept as a way of saying “older” but not “old old” – the age my mother is. But where is the cross-over point? I am afraid that when you find out what birthday I have just celebrated, you will dismiss my ideas and my enthusiasm for this new stage of life, that by telling you my age I will become “other” in your mind.

That is why I have held off telling you what birthday I celebrated. I wanted you to get to know something about my life and my state of mind first, to enter into conversation with me as you read – “Yes, I know what she means” or “for me it is this way…” I wanted you to see me for who I am before you jumped to any conclusions about me.

Of course that is precisely why I should admit my age – to help demystify the arbitrary cut-off established by the Social Security Administration that I too used to see as separating one group off from the rest of society. I love where I am in my life – all sixty-five years of it so far!