Middle Aged Love

I think middle-aged love is far superior to young love. When I was young, I probably thought it was gross for people my current age to be cavorting about, having sex and kissing in public....they’re just too old for that stuff. Imagine my surprise when I reached 40 and 50 and realized that love is love is love is love. It just doesn’t matter what age we are.

When we fall in love, our body creates all these crazy chemicals that basically, well….make us crazy. The good news is…..that doesn’t change with age. The bad news is….that doesn’t change with age. It’s about the only thing that doesn’t change. Our bodies change for one thing. Everything is looser, flabbier, succumbing to gravity.

The other thing that changes is everything. In our youth, we bring our parents and our upbringing into our relationships. We can’t help it. We haven’t worked through our “stuff.” In fact, most people don’t even know they have “stuff” at that point. In middle-age, your parents may be a part of the mix, but they are not as much a part as when we were young. The problem is there’s a whole different group of people that have joined the mix – ex-wives, ex-husbands, kids, step-kids and even, god forbid, grand-kids. It just all becomes more complicated.

Somewhere around 40 or 50, most of us figure out who we are. In our youth, we spend our time pretending to be who we want to be. We build our relationships on that. When we find out that we’re really something different, something less than that in some ways and something far better in other ways, we usually look at that other person and say,WTF? Either the relationship makes it because both people can make it work, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, we’re back on the playing field, but with a significant advantage. You now know who you are – what you like and don’t like, what your faults and strengths are, what you can tolerate and what you can’t. It makes it harder to find a person to fall in love with because the criteria is more stringent, but, if you’re lucky to find it, it’s sweet.

I think anyone that finds love at any time is lucky. I have and I consider myself very lucky and blessed. As I get older, I realize how fleeting life is and the fragility of romantic love. When I was young, I didn’t appreciate it. There was so much life to live. Now, as I look at myself in the mirror, I see age walking all over my face.

When young people find love, life is so innocent. They have energy. They don’t need sleep. They are in a building process where they may be excitedly thinking about kids and having families and building fortunes and careers. Everything is so full of promise.

When middle-aged people find love, we are at a spot where we are starting to see our lives wind down. We are nearing retirement, paying off mortgages, and sometimes having health issues. Regrets litter our past and and has impacted our current mind.

When we find love at middle-age, it IS the fountain of youth. Sex becomes fun again. No matter how old the body, it works…..and, if it doesn’t work, there’s stuff that’ll fix that these days. Our eyes light up. We giggle. We send flirty texts, even if we have to put on our glasses to see them. When we find time to be together, it’s exponentially wonderful because it’s so hard to find the time. It’s much easier to be in the moment these days. It’s much easier to love a flawed person when you know they fit so beautifully in your flawed nooks and crannies . The thing about love is it is life-giving. People at middle age know what that means. Because, we’ve had life taken away a number of times through death, divorce, failed relationships and other life failures.

First love is definitely sweet. I think that the last love is even sweeter.