Is There Sex After 60? (Navigating Single Life After 60)

Author Archives: istheresexaftersixty

• Just Chipped

  Posted at 11:14 pm by istheresexaftersixty, on February 8, 2018

   

  (“LOSS: a noun the fact or process of losing something or someone. The state of feeling of grief when deprived of someone or something of value. A person or thing that is badly missed when lost. An amount of money lost by a business or organization. A reduction of power within or among circuits, measured as a ratio of power input to power output.”)

  … When deprived of someone or something of value… of value, reduction of power, badly missed when lost…. There are all kinds of loss. If you are privileged to live over the age of 60 then you too have experienced loss. There is the loss of a lover or friend or relative, husband, or wife, and maybe the very worst loss of all is the loss of a child. There is the loss of a pet, a house, and a job, of money and of a marriage, even the loss of one’s health.   These are all hard to live though; some are devastating and temporarily heartbreaking but live through them we must. Actually, maybe we have to somehow live with the loss. Maybe it doesn’t go away.

  Deprived of something or someone of value.   This is narrowing it down … we have lost something or someone of value.   A value that makes life better, worth living, more fun, helps to keep us looking forward to the future, something that makes waking up in the morning worth doing.

  I have been taken-a-back lately. This is the first time in 35 years that I have lived alone. No husband, no roommate, no children, no pets, not even a plant to water. This is a loss … not one I totally even considered happening right now and so fast. I am not unhappy and actually there are lots of parts of living alone that I really love. I am neat and clean and enjoy a clean apartment. I got to decorate to my own taste and wishes. I don’t have to make dinner if I am not in the mood or even eat if I don’t feel like it. I can listen to the news all day in the background without anyone complaining. I love staying up to all hours working on my computer or often binge watching TV shows on Netflix or watching old movies to my heart’s content. However, I have also had to wonder if having been married for 35 years was all a dream or a big mistake? How can you be married to someone and live with them and then break it off? You don’t see or speak to each other and if you do it is quick, a quick conversation that is either about money or some problem that neither of you want to discuss. What has happened with loss in general is that your vision of life and your vision of the future, has been altered. I have decided that this is the hardest part of loss. We have to change that vision, toss it out or maybe lock it away not to be looked at or thought about again because if we constantly look at what we wished for or the joy or happiness that no longer exists, we lose the present and our future. This is a hard lesson but a lesson that we must learn.

  In my other posts I have spoken about my first love and my husband who was my last love. This is my middle love.

  Many years ago I fell madly in love with a tall, handsome, young man, who was smart, funny, interesting and interested in me.   I might add that I fell in love at first sight. He was continuing his studies in a very respected field at the best Universities in the country. Life was made beautiful overnight …life sparkled and everything became important, more fun and the future was all wrapped up in gold and silver.   He had to move to another city far away to attend another university to complete his difficult studies. There were visits, back and forth, magical visits in my view. As in many long distance romances ours ended. He came back to Chicago (my home at the time) to tell me in person that he met someone and was thinking about marrying this woman. He actually put it in a question to me. He said, “I met someone and I am thinking about getting married. What do you think?   Do you think I should get married?” Of course, I tried not to disappear and slide in-between the cracks of the sidewalk.   Thinking on my feet I tried to tell him the truth. I said, “Maybe if you have to ask me… maybe you aren’t ready.” I won’t go into the rest of the story. He did ask to stay with me that night and I let him but I had enough self-esteem not to have sex. I sat on a chair and smoked cigarettes and felt my heart leave my body. (BTW I stopped smoking 33 years ago.) Not sure I ever connected with my whole heart again … lost at least a small part of it at our last goodbye. We parted in front of my apartment building and he waved from the back of a taxi as I waited for my bus on the way to work. Strangely enough one of the last things he said to me in person was to ask me this, “Will you think about me sometime?” THINK ABOUT HIM SOMETIME? Well, Jack (not his real name) … you will be glad to know that sometimes I did think about you… and like all lost loves I moved on to love again.

  The hardest part of love loss is to forget the past but even harder…. is to forget the future… the future that was envisioned in your dreams. So now, after I have lost the past, and lost my parents and grandparents and my beloved sister, and one of my best friends and pets and money and lost lovers, and lost a marriage, what do I do? I have learned to put those losses away…. they still exist but they are locked in a small place in my heart. I am looking forward to the future. We all have to see the future as bright and push the losses back into that small part of our hearts.

  I have a lovely red crystal heart that I wear on a gold chain. It is cut so that it sparkles in the light. It is lovely but if you look very closely at it under a magnifying glass it has a few very tiny chips that are hardly noticeable. You see it is just chipped but it isn’t broken.

  Until Next Week…

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• My Mysterious First Lost Love

  Posted at 9:13 pm by istheresexaftersixty, on February 1, 2018

   

  (There is a very good book with the title “How to Survive the Loss of a Love” by Melba Colgrove PHD, Harold H. Bloomfield MD and Peter Mc Williams. I suggest that anyone who is having a problem surviving a loss and finding it hard to function after your loss…please, go to your library or book store and read this book. It helps.)

  The very first serious love of my life was Paul McCartney, yes, of the Beatles. I walked around in a daze madly in love from the age of eleven to about seventeen. Listen, when I fall, I really fall. Really no one could come close. Oh I had a slight crush or two but I was waiting for Paul. When Paul married Linda Eastman that was the end of our love story. After Paul … there was Oscar Warner, a serious German actor. I saw him as a passionate, misunderstood, tragic figure. Here is a weird (but for me normal) experience that I often have had in my life. Oscar Warner lived on my street … on a tiny little street, when I was a college student in Paris. Here I had been in love with him since I was a teenager when I saw him in the movie “A Ship Of Fools” … and at 20 years old I walked into a café with my roommate. In walked Oscar Warner. I am not kidding … I knew it was him from the back of his head. I saw him several times since we lived on the same street… and once he even walked up to my roommate and me to translate what the bartender in our local cafe was asking me in French… that I didn’t understand. Oscar walked up to me and said; “He is asking if you would rather have your beer on tap or in the bottle.” I don’t know what I said or did … I couldn’t speak. I often thought about walking up to him at one of our local shops and asking him to attend one of our college parties, but I never did. He was a tragic figure … I did see him very, very, tipsy a time or two in our local café. Not too many years later he died of alcoholism.

  The first real feelings I ever had for a real person was in my darling little college in Iowa. There were a group of students that came from Chicago and New York, we found each other and became the “In Crowd” and called ourselves “The New Yorkers”.   My best friend, (I later found out) was the daughter of a rather well know New York mobster. Another of our friends in our group from New York, years later became a pretty famous television, movie and Broadway star. In the middle of my first year in college I spotted a young man that had just arrived from a college in Colorado. He seemed and looked a little older than all of us. It was rumored that he was kicked out of his last college. He was quiet and I noticed that he just watched everyone … as if he was studying all of us. Then somehow overnight he became one of the group and maybe the most popular one of the group. He started talking to me. He was interesting and somehow mysterious. His father was a famous businessman, who’s picture, if you read the Wall Street Journal, was drawn in ink (which is a big deal) on the front page of the Journal with an article about my young man’s father. My mother who spent a good part of her day reading the Journal and the stock pages cut the article out and saved it in her top drawer with her jewelry. Many years later (when I had married someone else) she showed this to me as she suspected that I was going to marry this famous businessman’s son. I fell for this young man and fell very hard. We had deep conversations … he was full of fun and high spirits but with me he was very serious and we had several serious conversations. He was also the man people went to, to buy drugs. You might have guessed by now that I was not and am not a wild person or one who took or takes drugs. Although I have a very adventurous sprit I am not personally wild or a drug taker. I found out through my friends (who BTW smoked pot and took light drugs as college kids from the 70’s did and I imagine still do) that he wouldn’t allow anyone to give me any drug even if I asked to try one. I was the “goody two shoes” of the group and I didn’t even swear, which was a constant joke among my New York big city friends. We mostly did things as a group however; everyone could see that we were a couple. One day we had an argument and I can’t remember what it was about … I cried and left my boyfriend and the party. That night he arrived at my dorm; I was in my long white nightgown. When I opened the door of my room he said, ”The body that launched a thousand ships.” Still is one of my favorite compliments of my life, because that was just like him, smart and funny. He became very serious. He locked the door and sat across from me. He then said something that I will never forget and I have questioned off and on from then on. He said, “If I could date anyone in this school, I would date you, but I can’t and I can’t tell you why.” I knew him for a year and a half … this happened half way through our sophomore year. I don’t know why I didn’t question him more. I somehow knew that I couldn’t. Later we had a very big argument for some reason I have blocked out of my mind. I can’t remember what it was about but we stopped talking.   I walked around in a sad depression and stayed far away from him until the end of the semester. I never went back to that college in Iowa.

  I stayed friends with several of the dear friends from New York. I visited my best friend in New York several times and was friends with her whole family. Her father lived away from the family. Her father would show up for holidays and once while I was visiting my friend in her Long Island home her father arrived in the middle of the night. The curtains were drawn at all times and just like in the movies people would arrive and sit with her dad, bowing and kissing his ring. I over heard them telling him their problems about their businesses … their son’s boss… and on and on. People were ushered in to tell this man their problems. I really had no idea what this was about until I saw the movie “The Godfather” I was after all an upper class Methodist girl from Chicago. What did I know about this type of thing? One couple that lived next door to my friend in New York was constantly over at her house. My friend’s mother would give this young couple advice. Years later my friend said that they were FBI agents and not married at all. Therefore, as one of the only people allowed into my friend’s private circle I imagine I must be in a file somewhere at the FBI along with my friend’s father and family members.

  I was heartbroken over my breakup with my boyfriend and applied to a University in Europe to get as far away as I could from my poor little broken heart. It really helped to be far, far away in Paris for one year and then London for two years. One night this is almost three years later, I was living in London and two of my friends and I went to a play. As I was being seated a young man in a tux came and stood next to me, smiling and saying nothing. He had short hair. Now when I knew my young man from Iowa he had long hair, he wore only jeans and t-shirts and a long green coat and he wore glasses… Round John Lennon looking glasses. This man that stood in front of me now at the theater in London was wearing an expensive tuxedo, he had short cropped hair and we wasn’t wearing glasses … but he looked like my boyfriend from the college in Iowa. He stood next to me staring for a bit … then he stared at me from the back of the theatre, next I turned in my seat and he was staring from the balcony. I told my friends about him and told them that he looked like my lost love. At intermission he was on the side of the theater talking to a few people on a staircase… while, off and on staring at me. I gathered up my courage and walked up to him and called him by name. I said (not his real name) “William, is that you?” He looked at me and smiled and said, “No” Later, I saw him again standing at the balcony staring down at me. Once again a mystery surrounded this person.

  About a year after I graduated from college and had been working I heard from my girlfriend from New York. She told me Bill had died in a car accident. She was afraid to tell me. She also said how she wasn’t sure if he had committed suicide or not because she said not long before he died he had called all of his friends to say hello. She said maybe he was saying goodbye. I cried for over 24 hours even though at the time I had a new serious boyfriend. I wasn’t over Bill and part of me will always care… something about him touched my heart and it took years to get over my first innocent love. I have thought perhaps he was working for the government in some form or other. Perhaps, he was placed in our college to become friends with all of these New York children of important members of the New York Cosa Nostra. Was he really in a car accident or was he in a witness protection program? Spy? I really don’t know? I know he loved Colorado and had worked on a ranch in summers. Years later, I had been married for 15 years and I had two sons… my husband and family were living in Aspen. One day we went to a funny little hamburger joint in Aspen … sitting across the room was a man wearing a cowboy hat and jeans and boots with his arm around a lady. He looked over at me and my stomach jumped. He was older and in another unfamiliar outfit but I could swear it was the same man, my Bill. We didn’t speak. I don’t know … was it my Bill? He stared that was all and I can’t even remember who walked out first. I know I felt nervous and somehow embarrassed. Did I love him? I think so. I did get over him but not over the whole mystery.

  I have dated a lot of men and really a group of very nice men. I liked them all and would love to see and talk to them all again. However, there have been three serious loves in my life and I will talk about the other two on the next post. I wonder if we ever really get over the loss of a love? They’re all kinds of loss and all kinds of love, from lovers, to husbands, to friends and family. It is even hard to get over the loss of a pet. I will go into detail about loss on the next post, next week. The older we get and keep living the more we must find out how to live with loss. Until next Thursday!

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• The Non-Complainers

  Posted at 8:07 pm by istheresexaftersixty, on January 25, 2018

  The Non-Complainers

  My family is a family of non-complainers.   I was brought up with this group and so I have tried (somewhat successfully) to be one of the family, however, compared to the rest of them, I am at the bottom of the pile. I note how men and women over the age of sixty often talk about their health and or their grandchildren. I totally understand the undying love a grandparent can have for their grandchildren but if they aren’t my grandchildren (or the grandchildren of my family) I am only slightly interested in hearing about them or seeing photos of them.   Will I be different if or when I become a grandparent? I don’t know? Maybe? I am sure I will be totally involved with them. I love my children and I enjoyed having pets. I occasionally talk about my children and post a photo or two but not ad infinitum. This is going to be very controversial. I understand that this could start a firestorm among my dear friends who are grandparents. Keep reading because…. I might be changing my mind.

  The second thing I have noticed that seniors talk about, is their health. This also is an interesting subject to you and to your family and loved ones but no one else wants to know about your health. It is mostly interesting to you. I have tried not to fall into the above two senior categories.

  Except … this month the GIANT HAND OF THE UNIVERSE CAME DOWN APON ME AND SLAPPED ME RIGHT IN THE THROAT!! I BECAME THE RECEIVER OF the WORST SORE THROAT OF MY ENTIRE LIFE!!! It hurt and burned as if someone had forced me to swallow knives… burning knives. It burned like HELL to swallow my own saliva. Water was nearly impossible to drink. I went to the doctor and she said that I didn’t have STREP THROAT. Of course, I didn’t believe her. She told me to gargle. HA HA Sure … that didn’t help at all. I tried everything. I took every pill I could find just to be able to have a sip of water without tearing up. I took every kind of pill to be able to sleep. AND complain! I complained to anyone and everyone who I could think of complaining to, my children… I sent them emails twice a day, my was-band yep, I texted him daily too. Strangers, yep, I told the concierge, the post lady the teller at the bank and the cashier at the grocery store. I even sent a few emails to friends AND, yes, to my sister, who (or is it whom?) by the way, never ever complains about anything

  I told you before that I come from a family of non-complainers and I do. My younger sister had breast cancer and she was very, very, ill for a long, long time. She had about nineteen or twenty operations and I can’t think of one time that she ever complained about her illness. She was always beautiful … doctors had to be told how ill she was because she looked so terrific all of the time. She was funny and cheerful and stylish to the moment she passed away.

  My father in his last years exercised several hours a day and he would get up at 6:00 A.M. to play tennis with his friend the doctor who was 15 years younger than my father. My dad was forced to stop playing at about 92 or 93 after he had passed out on the court a few times. My father in his late 80’s and 90’s had both knees replaced, both hips replaced, he had a heart attack. I had to really think back about his heart attack because he really had it and never mentioned it again! He had cataracts and had an operation for that and decided to have the eye operation so that he never had to wear glasses again. He had arthritis and his toes folded over so he couldn’t fit into ski boots. What did he do? He had a few toes removed so that he could continue skiing.

  My mother was the same… never complained and my older sister (who looks like she is several years younger than I) also never complains.

  I, therefore, surely do not belong in this family. I totally now understand my fellow seniors … and I will probably complain from now on about my health until I kick the bucket. One, it somehow helps to tell people how you feel. It also doesn’t feel as scary as it might feel if you have to face any illness alone. So please, seniors, forgive me … the universe, once again, has taught me a lesson. I get it and I totally sympathize with you. Wait until I am a Grandmother …. I will probably write daily about them and pictures… yes, did I show you the latest pictures of my boys???

  Write me … I will send another post next week. It is going to be about lost loves!

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• The Was-band

  Posted at 1:26 am by istheresexaftersixty, on January 19, 2018

   

   

   

   

  ‘THE WASBAND”

  Definition of “Wasband”                             A husband that was. Or…. a husband that you are still married to but the passion is gone.  Sometimes you still live together for convenience sake and or for the kids or for financial reasons. Sometimes the husband may have gone out to buy groceries or wine or cigarettes and he just never comes back. (As was the case of a woman I met with three small children who was selling her home. She is also the woman who coined the phrase … “my was-band”) I am sorry that I don’t remember her name however; I remember her wit and intelligence. I also learned a lesson from her. She had three small children and a husband that left her and her children. She was selling her home and still was clever and funny enough to come up with the perfect name for her husband that … was.

  I was married on October 23, 1982. Met my husband in Monaco. Yes, that Monaco… the Principality of Monaco. Princess Grace was still alive and well and running things beautifully for the tiny Principality. My husband (to be) was 23 years old and a racecar driver. I met him while standing at a bar at Lowes Hotel drinking my favorite drink, honest to goodness, French Champagne. I love France and France Cuisine and French style, French Art and yes Frenchmen.   He was with another (now rather famous) English racecar driver and a man who sold Rolls Royce’s to very wealthy ladies and gentlemen. My girlfriend, Jane, (not her real name) was in charge of a gambling junket. Jane worked for a tourist company that took groups of big spenders who like to gamble their money away in glamorous spots.  I got to come along for a free trip on my spring break while working on my second degree at Loyola University in Chicago. Jane worked this out with her boss because I spoke French and understood a little conversational Italian. I was offered free airfare, free hotel and free food and free French Champagne, for a week in Monaco and day trips to Italy. My Wasband to be, and his friend asked us out for dancing and drinks. We went. It was a nice evening. We said goodbye and my Wasband asked us both out to see the Palace in Monaco the next day. To make a long story short… the very next day we saw the Palace and went out for lunch. My racecar driver asked me if I would like to live in Monaco. He actually hinted at marriage that very day. Two years later, we were married in a gorgeous chapel in 4^th Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue in Chicago with 89 of my friends and family and 10 French friends and family representing my husband’s side of the family and one English Racecar driver.  My husband and I lived in France and then Monaco for several years when I became pregnant with my first-born son we moved back to Chicago. I worked in my husband’s business for 6 years.

  Marriage was good and bad. Like most marriages, ours had good times that were very good and hard times that were very hard. We had two boys that we both love. I won’t go into more of the details. It didn’t work.

  What I miss about marriage.   I miss having someone to go to dinner with. I miss having someone to travel with.  I miss having someone that likes to take pictures of me, while on vacation. I miss getting dressed up, hair, make-up, new outfit, and having someone say how nice I look. I miss having someone there that has your back when the rest of the world has let you down. Sex … yes, I miss sex with someone who knows you, cares if you live or die and someone who you are totally comfortable with. (Yes, I know you shouldn’t end a sentence with, with, but this is my blog so I don’t care.) I have cold feet and always did and I miss having a warm person that I can place my cold feet on to warm them.

  Do I want sex, just to have sex? Actually, a few years ago I thought I did. A handsome, married, much younger, man tried very hard to have an affair. When a very, tall handsome man who spends his time flirting, helping out, moved me from one house to another twice…. young (did I say tall and handsome? Yes, I’ll say it again. Very tall and very handsome) and wealthy and he tries and tries again.   He tried for about two years. It was hard to say no and let’s say I came very close more than once, but, I couldn’t … He was married and I liked him but I knew it was only for sex and sex alone. I was interested and attracted but not in love. It didn’t feel right.  I will say this again too… he was married.

  So, at last I mentioned sex … sometimes I will in this blog. So keep reading. Will I have sex again in the future? I don’t know … how many women over 60 are fighting men off? I know some of my fiends have healthy sex lives. I know I really have to like someone and enjoy talking to him and feel a mutual connection before I even want to have dinner with a man. Frankly, that connection doesn’t happen very often. In the last 35 years of marriage I met only five men that I felt there was a mutual connection … yes, on both sides … didn’t act on it because I was married.

  If anyone wants to tell me your stories or give me your ideas and views on life and or love or being single after 60 you can always send me an email or a message on Facebook. Just add that you want to be anonymous. We can discuss without using correct names. See you next Thursday!

   

   

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• Is There Sex After Sixty? Navigating The Single Life.

  Posted at 8:43 pm by istheresexaftersixty, on January 7, 2018

  Last September I moved to Denver leaving my husband and children and pets behind.   This isn’t as daring and selfish as it sounds. My husband and I have been mentally separated, (well let’s just say since he decided to leave one New Year’s Eve to go to a party by himself and he arrived back to our home three days later without an explanation). While living together off and on for the last 12 years mostly for financial reasons as well as keeping the family together for the benefit of the children. My two children are no longer boys (except in my mind) the oldest is 29 and my baby is 21 and a junior in college. This son has an apartment with a roommate in another city, in Colorado.   The oldest son is living (for the time being) with my husband in another city, also in Colorado. The pets (two cats and a dog) have decided that they love living with my husband and son … so for the good of our pets mental stability (they hate change) we have all decided that this will continue for the foreseeable future.   So, now for the first time in 35 years, I am living completely alone. No husband, no children, no pets and right at this moment not even one living plant. I do have one lovely small faux palm in a glass vase with clear plastic faux water. I am for the present only responsible for myself! The first day I awoke looking out on Denver 16 floors above the city my mind went back to my life as a single, young, free, woman in my 20’s in Chicago. I sat up in bed and opened … actually opened, a novel next to my bed, fluffed my pillow and started to read. I can’t remember when I have been able to do that, at least since my boys were born. In my first two weeks in my new apartment I finished two novels. I bought mostly new furniture … four pieces of cream-colored leather, a chair and an ottoman, a loveseat a lounge chair, a new modern silver metal dinning table with modern silver chairs. Paintings cover the walls …. with several of my sculptures placed just where I chose to place them. My apartment is clean and neat a place for everything… and everything in it’s place. Bought new dishes and glasses and everything sparkles and everything matches… like before … like before, I was married, like when I was single and young. Only one thing is different … I’m not young. It is almost as if all those years … those years where everyone and everything was more important ……… than me, didn’t exist. I have so many mixed emotions. I no longer have to make dinner or even eat dinner if I don’t want to. I can work until 3 A.M. I often go to bed at 4 A.M. The other night I had Vinegar Potato Chips and two Martinis for dinner. One day last week I worked all day on my computer and forgot to eat or drink anything until I looked at the clock and tried to remember what I had eaten that day… I realized that I had forgotten to eat.

  Am I happy? I don’t know exactly how I feel? I know one thing. I don’t want my future to be boring or less important than my children’s future. I don’t just want to be a grandmother or a mother-in-law that waits for an invitation. I want to make the last part of my life as important as the beginning of my life. I know it will be different but I don’t want to be a second thought. I don’t want to be sitting and knitting … I love children and yes, I would love to be a grandmother some day if that happens and I actually do know how to knit. I have often forced scarves and blankets on poor unsuspecting friends and family.  Knitting has its place, however, I don’t want knitting a scarf for someone, to be my whole life. I want this rest of my life to be interesting, maybe exciting, maybe fulfilling, maybe learning new things … maybe meeting new people, maybe a little scary.

  Is There Sex After Sixty?

  Is there life after 60? Let’s find out? Who knows? I am going to explore these things and my life as a new 0ver 60 Single Woman. I would love to hear your experiences, your feelings, about life as an adult not just as an old adult. Let’s explore this life…. living  hopefully into our 70’s and 80’s and maybe beyond. I am hoping for new adventures and lots of fun and flowers and Champagne!!! Love again? Who knows? maybe or maybe not?  I want my life to be important to my last breath. So write me and let me know your thoughts, wishes and dreams let’s explore the good and bad of this new life. This Blog is for anyone who has reached the age of 60 or those that hope to.   I will try to write once a week. Until then.

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