Articles on Dating at Midlife:

How Can you Trust Again? (from www.Thirdage.com)

Dating at Again at Midlife

How Souvenir Memories Reveal your Heart's Desire

The Situation of the Midlife Single

The Powerful Crosscurrents of Midlife Dating

A divorced couple with teenage children trying to explore a relationship

By Philip Belove, Ed.D.

This is a site for midlife single adults. Their needs are different than those of younger people. Here is a short overview of the unique situation of the midlife single. If you are under 25 and single, you are single simply. If you are over 40 and single, you are single with an explanation. You have a story to tell about it.

There are two important points here. First, maturing means learning to live with your own story. Second, reconciling yourself to your story is easier when you see how it is also the story of your times. You are not alone, even in how you construct your private relationships you follow the social rules of your time – and those social rules are changing. I want to expand on both these points starting with the connection between your story and the story of your times.

We live in unusual times as far as intimate relationships are concerned. We live in a culture that supports leaving them.

According to 1995 census figures, of the adults between 45 and 65, roughly 30% are not married. Most are not married because of divorce. A significant portion has been divorced more than once.

Sometime during the 1970’s in the United States, divorce replaced death as the main reason marriages ended. It was the second decade after the Pill. Feminism was teaching women that their lives had validity, even without a relationship. Abraham Maslow, president of the American Psychological Association had given us the idea of "self-actualization", and therapists, educators, and industrial trainers, were spreading its gospel. It had become certifiably honorable to make one’s own self-fulfillment more important than one’s relationship. All these changes indirectly encouraged divorce.

By 1980, starting with California, ending with New York State, every state in the Union had passed a no-fault divorce law. The reasons marriages ended became the private business of the parties involved. Adultery, abuse, or cruelty no longer had to be proven to a court. All you had to do to dissolve a marriage was to claim "irreconcilable differences" or an "irretrievable break down in communication."

Today,in 2001, just this side of the bridge from the old twentieth century, we find ourselves in a world that is culturally de-regulated. All of the great cultural traditions that used to give us certitude have been made relative. In Fiddler on the Roof, which premiered on Broadway in 1964, the lead character, Tevyeh said, "Without our traditions, our lives would be as precarious as a fiddler on a roof." What he warned us against in 1964 happened. Today, The orthodoxies that once gave so much comfort no longer reign unquestioned. Today, we may look to the ancient traditions, but for the most part; we have to put the package together according to our own best judgment.

If marriages have been strongly shaken by these new freedoms, it has been even more confusing for adult unmarried relationships. So much that was once taken for granted must be worked out one relationship at time. What are the implications of sex? How should money be handled? What are the moral obligations? What must be spoken? What can be simply understood? What is negotiable and what isn’t? What is expected of women? What is expected of men?

People don’t necessarily chose to be single at midlife, today. And yet, if you are single at midlife, it is for some reason. There is a story to tell. Every relationship you have entered and left is part of that story, your story.

Let’s move carefully on this point. What if you did all you could in your relationship, and the other person was the one who simply couldn’t deal with intimacy, etc.? What if you had the misfortune to fall for someone who was commitment-phobic? What if you are not the Leave-r. What if the other person is the one who left you? Was that your fault?

My answer is that it doesn’t matter. It is still your story. Leave-ee or Leave-er and most midlife singles have been in both roles the question you must and will ask yourself on those Saturday nights when you decide to stay home is the same: "What does the fact of my being single at midlife say about me and how I have approached relationships? Do I like the kind of person I have become?" It is not the kind of question a 20 year old is likely to ask, at least not with the same power and consciousness. It is a question that produces maturity.

This point about it being Your Story takes me to the second important idea about being single at midlife. Turning 40 is, for many people, a powerful psychological event. To many it means they have lived long enough as an adult to be able to confront who they are and what they’ve done with their lives. John Kennedy said, "When you are 40 you have the face you deserve." You certainly have the resumé you have earned.

Coming into midlife means coming into a new layer of consciousness. It’s just there is the math. Forty years old compared to a life expectance of seventy to eighty means you’ve probably lived more than half your life. Was it the life you wanted to live? Do you wasn’t to keep going this way? Do you want to make changes? Turning 40 makes people want to come to grips with their story of their life. It makes a person want to take responsibility for his or her choices. For many of us, and I certainly speak for myself, this is not always an easy or pleasant task. But it is simply part of life.

Part of maturing as a midlife single is knowing which questions to ask yourself.

Part of the lore of mature midlife dating is the importance of figuring out, for oneself, in each new situation, "Why is this person single?" What was it in the way they lived that led to them being single now? The answer tells much about what you can expect from them.

Do they understand why they left previous relationships? Are they being honest with themselves? That will tell a lot about how honest they can be with you.

Finally, how honest are you being with yourself about why you are single. The better you understand yourself, the better you will be able to understand others. And this is very important as you search for a possible partner.

Let me summarize. People who date at midlife are caught in a cross current between two profound shifts in their world. The first is sociological; the second psychological. The sociological shifts are cultural shifts. Today, we live in a de-regulated culture. Today we must each find our own way. Couples really have to work out their own rules as well.

The psychological shift is a matter of becoming one’s own person. The older we get, the more important it becomes to us how we are living our precious remaining days. At the same time, people come to these relationships with wounds. For the most part women are angry or hurt and men are confused and hurt. Both want happiness.

It’s easy to be hard on yourself when you are a midlife single. Take another look at those two shifts. Let the implications sink in. It will help you lighten up. Part of being mature is knowing that there is knowledge, training and support available to help you deal with this and other challenges of modern living.

I want this web site, as well as my workshops, courses and articles, and my counseling and coaching practice, to a source of that knowledge, training and support for you. Here are some personal questions for you to consider as you think about these ideas:

1. How would you compare and contrast the relationship you are looking for now with the relationships you saw in your parents’ generation?

2. How have your relationships helped you achieve what you wanted and needed for your own fulfillment?

3. How have they hampered you?

4. When there was a conflict between your own needs and the needs of a relationship, how did you handle it?

Let me know what you think. Please write me at drbelove@datingatmidlife.com

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The Powerful Cross Currents of Midlife Dating

How The Phases Of The Midlife Change And The Phases Of Dating Interact To Cause Turbulence.

By Philip Belove, Ed.D.

I want to offer you new ways to think about dating at midlife. It is not the same as dating when you are in your twenties, or even in your thirties. Dating plays on your emotions and stirs up strong feelings. As complicated as that can be, it becomes even more complex at midlife. There are reasons for this. First of all, dating these days takes place in a culturally de-regulated situation. I’ve discussed this in another article and it’s worth bringing it up again here. There are no strong traditions to guide the dating process. There are no groups of elders watching the process unfold. People are pretty free to do anything they want. In addition, there is a second emotional process, which is as powerful in its way as dating, and this is the process of the midlife transformation. Instead of one, there are two powerful emotional currents in the dating process at midlife. If you can think more clearly about how you are being played by these currents, you’ll be able to handle yourself better.

When two powerful rivers join there is a lot of turbulence created as the two currents merge. The waves reinforce each other or cancel each other out. The steady flow is interrupted. Down stream, things run smoothly again. But you have to get through the passage. I’m asking you to join me in looking at dating at midlife as a point at which two powerful currents merge.

Dating involves trying to change your life. When you make someone into a partner, you give him or her access to your unconscious. The song says, "You’re getting to be a habit with me." When that happens you start taking someone into account automatically when you make decisions. You’ve made them part of your unconscious processes. That is a big change.

The midlife transition is a different kind of change. It involves reorganizing your personal style. Doing that, plus figuring out how to make a new person part of your life, is making two big changes at once. Both change processes that follow a predictable course. Both processes tend to interfere with each other, however. I think it helps to appreciate this.

First we’ll look at the changes that happen in dating. Then we’ll look at the changes that happen in the midlife transition. As we go along, I’ll try to point out how one set of changes influences the other.

Dating happens in stages. I’ll call the first stage Search and Decide. I’ll call the second stage Testing It Out. I’ll call the third phase, Settling In or Getting Out. First you search for someone with whom you might want to spend time with and, more or less simultaneously you decide on what the possibilities are with that person. That phase is emotionally challenging in one way. Then, if you find a person you want to go to the next stage with, you get involved in a testing process. You spend a lot of time with them and occasionally you have difficult negotiations about how to make two lives fit together.

The way people do the Search and Decide phase depends greatly on their state of mind. Many who are single at midlife are preoccupied with other concerns children, aging parents, businesses, divorces and/or they are in an emotional state that makes it difficult for them to be open to new relationships. They are wounded, angry, exhausted, or resentful.

The Search and Decide phase of the Dating process can also be put on hold by the Midlife transformation process. Often around 40, the stresses just mentioned will trigger an intense self-examination. At midlife some people start to tinker with how they take their place in the world. They start to change their style. That change in style includes a change in how they want to be in a couple.

This midlife change process also happens in stages. And there are times in the middle of the process when people don’t know quite what they want. They become cranky, distant, hypersensitive and demanding. They will defend their midlife change process and they will sometimes give it a priority over relationships.

Like dating, the first phase of the midlife change is also a search. It is not a search for an Other, it is a search for Self. It is a search for the lost parts of you. For whatever reasons, there are aspects of your personality you’ve tucked away and not used, not acknowledged, or not liked. When you start to feel that your life is almost half over, you begin to reconsider your opinion of those dormant parts of yourself.

There is a lot written in wisdom literature about this search for the lost parts of the Self. Some consider this search the equivalent of the search for wisdom. Older people value wisdom more than smarts. Now isn’t the time to pursue this discussion, but I do want to mention it. I’ll speak more about it elsewhere.

For now it is enough to say that you are re-inventing yourself. You are re-tooling your ego. You are re-imagining who you are and what you are. You are looking at the person you thought you were back when you were 20 and you are deciding whether or not that is "really" who you are. Part of re-visioning, (the more common word would be "revising") yourself, will be revising your ideas about your ideal partner.

This re-visioning process is a modern phenomenon. In the last 20 years, as midlife moved from 35 to 45, as the years of good health and vitality were extended, as it became possible to have a second half of life that was a full life, a new kind of psychological technology was born, the art of re-inventing your life, the art of creating guiding visions. We’ll talk about how we can help you do that later. Right now, I want to emphasize that this re-visioning is a natural and spontaneous process. The techniques are attempts to teach many what a few have done spontaneously.

Let’s just look at what people do spontaneously to re-invent themselves at midlife. I think it is helpful to have a more specific sense of how this process work for others if you want to try to see how it could work in your own life. It also helps how it causes trouble in relationships.

An interesting example of this process is shyness in men. Male shyness is often hidden by high testosterone levels. At midlife, when testosterone drops, a lot more male shyness is visible. Shyness in relationships is a trait in many men. At midlife, however, those habitually shy men may come to feel that there are things that need to be said.

Now if one of these quiet men is in a stable, long-term relationship with a woman, you can imagine how upsetting this sudden drive toward self-assertion might be. It starts out as an inkling. This man who has been so agreeable might suddenly want a little say-so around here for a change. He might feel that his wife doesn’t understand him, doesn’t draw him out, and isn’t really interested in him. Such a process has upset many long-term relationships.

One man I know had just switched careers. For the first time, he had his own network. For the first time, he has his friends. He’d previously relied on his wife to create a social life. He had been shy. Now, he’d become un-shy.

They began to quarrel more when they went out. He became resentful. He, who once gratefully found her fascinating and charming now found her dominating and self-centered. He, not used to speaking up, couldn’t explain himself. She, not used to drawing him out, couldn’t understand. The marriage ended within a year.

The re-balancing between shy and outgoing can go in either direction, by either sex. Often, it’s the woman who wants to be more outgoing. Often a woman might feel that she has been watching men do certain things for a number of years and, well, "Maybe I’d like to try that out. Maybe I could do this." A woman I interviewed told me the story of how she wanted to do more, but her husband responded to her frustration by doing more and more "for her." She felt patronized. His "help" only made her angry.

Here is poem I found by R. Masten, in Speaking Poems (Boston: Beacon Press, 1977

I have noticed that somewhere around forty

The man comes in from the field

Wearily, he throws his hat on the hook and says,

"You were right, Grace. It ain’t out there!"

And she, with children grown at last

Pulling her coat down from the hook, says,

"The hell it ain’t"

Coming and going they pass in the door way.

If you can see how disturbing these shifts could be in an established relationship and you can imagine how much more so in a relationship that is just trying to find itself.

One reinvents oneself at midlife in stages. At first, there is a Retreat, an exhaustion stage, a running out of gas on the old, outmoded project. Then, in the quiet there a dawning awareness of important little voices that need to be listened to, inklings. I would call this an Awakening stage. Then there is a stage in which the person makes a strong commitment to discovering the new possibilities within, along with a Commitment to a New Self.

Discovering these new possibilities is a trial and error process. A lot of it involves listening to your inklings. The parts of yourself you want to claim at midlife are often stashed in some dark corner of the basement in unlabeled boxes along with your high school year books, and bell bottom pants and old vinyl recordings. Sometimes what you are looking for isn’t all that clear, more like a vague itch.

This uncertainty can look like pathology in midlife dating. I’ve had clients complain, "I don’t know what she wants. Why doesn’t she just come clean and tell me what is going on. Why is she torturing me?" The answer to this man is this: "She doesn’t really know herself. There is no coming clean. If there is a secret, it’s as hidden from her as it is from you. She really is making this up as she goes along. She is improvising a new Self."

There is an end to this making-it-up process. At the end of the midlife change there is a new steadiness, a kind of Wise Maturity.

Retreat. Awakening. Commitment. Wise Maturity. Each of these stages of the midlife change will interact with the stages of dating.

Dating among young adults today is de-regulated. It is even more of a free market among midlife singles. People have to negotiate their own rules. Even so, there is a natural order and a set of organic stages. These natural stages in dating can be recognized by the different expectations that emerge at each stage. I think it helps to talk about three separate stages; 1) Search and Decide; 2) Testing It Out; and 3) Settling In Or Getting Out.

Search and Decide involves seeing whether or not you want to get involved with each other. You both sense possibilities. There’s a lot of sexual tension. It’s exciting. Songs are written about it.

One of the common hazards of Search and Decide is how the seduction dance works. In the de-regulated environment of midlife dating, sex, though often very bonding, is not automatically a commitment. As one woman told me, "Well, when you sleep with someone every week, you’re bound to become fond of them."

And the Search and Decide phase questions come up. "What does this mean for us? What do we owe each other?" Often these questions are left unaddressed. Sometime, when sex starts, one of the partners will glom on tightly and one will back off. This often scares both partners. These things have to be talked about. Not all people have the necessary communication skills and good will. Elsewhere we will talk about these intermediate level communications skills so necessary in midlife dating. Often relationships just die in this phase.

Search and Decide is the time between the first flirtation and the decision to come out as a couple. It can take days or months. At midlife it can take years because midlife singles often carry emotional baggage from previous relationships. At midlife people can be so wounded, tired and impatient that they panic and try to rush past this starting up phase. Many relationships collapse from too much too soon.

Emotional baggage makes people less flexible and less resilient. Some midlife singles enter the Search and Decide process with so much emotional baggage that they are only open to a small range of possibilities. After a while, when you meet people in this phase you become able to assess how open they are. Sometimes you decide that the person you meet, as desirable as they are in other respects, simply isn’t ready for the kind of serious relationship you are looking for.

The next stage is Testing It Out. One characteristic of the Testing It Out phase is that people are curious about what is really possible. Time for a test drive. Let’s take this baby out and see how it really works. Is it satisfying enough? Can I unpack my bags? What’s it like to know where I will be sleeping on Saturday nights? Sometimes the test is very short. The sexual tension subsides and there is very little else. But more often a test ride at midlife can last several years.

Testing It Out is what used to be called "going steady." One of the things about going steady that surprised me when I was young was the fights. Every one had them. I didn’t yet understand that going steady was the time to see what things were really about. You don’t have fights when you are seducing each other. Seduction is all winning behaviors, clean clothes and good smells. The fights are the beginning of real intimacy.

In Testing It Out you say to yourself, "Okay, this is how it’s really going to be. Do I like it? Can I live with that? Or am I going to have to demand a change? And what happens if I demand a change? Can I deal with that? Can my partner deal with it?" It’s a big list.

Testing It Out is where the struggles of the midlife transition and the struggles of the dating process really amplify each other. You are testing yourself and your partner. Your partner is testing you. You are both testing the relationship. That is a lot of testing.

At midlife, some people are too caught up working on their own revisions to have a lot of tolerance for the testing stage of relationships. For them, it is too much testing.

Others don’t want to be tested at all. They haven’t yet reached that midlife transition. They don’t want to have to start questioning themselves. In one situation I heard about, a woman broke up with a man because she simply didn’t want any struggles. "I’ve had all the pain I want and I simply don’t want to want a relationship that involves any work." In another situation I know of, a man has said, "It’s woman. And I’m not going to deal with them." These people fall into patterns of serial monogamy. They decide it is easier to abandon the testing crucible and easier to go for a fresh start. They are at midlife. They have the money to support themselves any way they wish. They see no need to strain themselves.

We’ll discuss the elements of this phase in other articles. It’s enough right now to say that I’ve found that many of the powerful emotions that come up in midlife dating resentment, anger, distrust, fatigue, betrayal and many of the peculiar arguments and so-called mixed messages can be sorted by looking to see how the process of the midlife change and the process of dating interact.

In my practice, I find that I can make more sense of what is happening in midlife dating if I am aware of how these twin currents interact, how the process of dating and the process of maturing effect each other. Each is a different force of nature. All one can do is go with the flow. It is easiest to do that when you know where the flow is going.

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What happens when two divorced people with teenage children try to explore a relationship?

By Philip Belove, Ed.D.

Many teens are tactful and withhold their opinions about their parent's dating activities. They worry about us, but they don’t tell us. They can see we are overwhelmed. Instead, they discuss us with their chums and classmates. We do the same. We worry about them more than we admit.

Many Midlife singles with teen children date "discreetly," i.e, "secretively." Midlife dating often involves things about us we would not want to impose on our children. Most of us don’t want them thinking about our sex lives. And if they are, we don't want to know what they are thinking. Open communication is not the norm.

Yet, children of divorce really care about in their parents’ dating life. They are not free-standing adults.They still depend on us to provide a solid foundation. Often we can’t deliver. A divorce is a psychic earthquake.

Children worry about their parents.. They try to help. If they think we are too worried, they find ways to appear more mellow and cool then they actually are. On the other hand, if they think we are being frivolous they make us worry more by being combative, indignant, resentful and depressed. Dating makes them worry because what happens between their parent and this new Date Person can have significant consequences for them.

When two single adults with no children date, there is only one relationship that has to be negotiated. When a child of divorce is involved five then relationships have to be negotiated. And,consciously or unconsciously, vaguely or clearly those relationships will be sorted out. Here are the five (and you can change the sex roles around to fit your situation):

1) How the new guy and mom will get along.

2) How the relationship between mom and daughter will shift with the new guy.

3) How the relationship between the new guy and the daughter will be worked out.

4) How the new guy will change the relationship between mom and biological dad.

5) How the new relationship between mom and dad will affect the relationship between daughter and dad.

Is it any wonder children of divorce get cranky?

When there are children involved in a dating situation, we are not just creating a relationship with an individual; we are joining a family. The more unsettled people they are, the more mixed up they will be when it comes to adding yet another player to the team. The amount of difficulty that arises because of children during dating will depend on the unfinished business of the divorce. The more emotional baggage, the worse it is.

It’s difficult to generalize. Every situation is different. There are no rules, only rules of thumb. Here are five guidelines to follow in midlife dating situations where there are children of divorce involved.

1. Remember and honor your place in the system when your partner’s children are having difficulties. You have the least authority in the group when it’s your partner’s child, not yours, acting out. Remember the weakness of your position and accept it. What you want is less important than what the parent wants, less important than what the absent parent wants, and even less important than what the child wants. You are a visitor in someone else’s world. No matter how incompetent the parent may look to you, the parent is still the one in charge. The parent is also in charge of the relationship with you when the child is present. The more you try to make things go your way, the more you wear out your welcome. The new person will make things worse by making demands and trying to move in too strongly.

2. Remember and honor your place in the system when it is your child. If your child is having problems, you are the one who should handle them. If you try to avoid this, or try to get your dating partner to play the heavy, you child will try to punish you both. If your child believes you are neglecting him or her for your dating life, s/he will make you regret it.

3. You can’t make it up to them for what happened. Don’t try. Give your children of divorce time to grieve and return to normal. A normal life is the best gift you can give. A nicer than normal life is not a gift; it is a distortion. You will be tempted to try to do better than your best. Don’t. All you can do is the best you can. You will only make yourself a burden to them.

4. Do not maneuver the outside date person into the role of amateur family therapist. Leave that to the professionals. Do not try it at home. If things are gnarly enough to make you consistently year for relief, hire a professional. If your new relationship is really a rescue operation, you will not be able to see what that relationship is really like.

5. The key player in most post-divorce stresses with children is the other parent. Divorces happen when two people give up on each other. They are allowed. But giving up on each other as co-parents is a separate matter. Helping them create a working relationship is a job for professionals. As a prospective partner and an outsider, the best contribution you can make is to stay out and recommend professional help.

Expect the presence of children to slow the dating process. You are not establishing a relationship with a single person. You are joining a group, a divided family, in which you will be a second-class member for a long time. The basic dating at midlife advice holds: Take it easy. If it feels complicated, that’s because it is.

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