I want to say something very honest about finding love later in life. Something I think many of us feel, but rarely talk about.
Why do I pull away when I start developing feelings for someone? But then I had to stop and think about that. Do I actually do that? I’m not sure. I think maybe I do something else. I let my head make decisions before I fully let my heart in.
And that sounds very sensible. Until you start wondering whether it might also be a very effective way of protecting yourself.
Because finding love later in life isn’t just about meeting someone you like. We’ve lived. We know what a relationship can cost. Not just in time and compromise, but in worry, stress, uncertainty and upheaval.
I was married for 24 years, and many of those years were wonderful. Truly wonderful. But there was also drama. Uncertainty. Periods when I was afraid of what might happen to him and to us. And I didn’t fully understand how much stress my body had been carrying until several months after we were divorced.
Suddenly, I could feel something letting go. And to be honest, it felt incredibly good. Maybe my mind has already made sense of the past and put it where it belongs, while my body still remembers what it felt like.
Because there is one thing I know: I don’t want to live like that again.
So when I meet a man now, the question isn’t only: Do I like him? The next question arrives almost immediately: How will this person affect my life?
Will my life become bigger? Calmer? Safer? Or will more uncertainty walk through the door with him?
And I think this is where love later in life becomes a little complicated. We often talk about how we need to be brave enough to open our hearts. But some of us have spent many years building a life we genuinely like — a life we also get to decide over ourselves.
So letting someone into that life isn’t only romantic. It’s also a risk assessment.
And here comes the slightly embarrassing part. I rarely experience heartbreak. Not because I’m necessarily stronger than anyone else, but because I rarely manage to invest very deeply emotionally before my head has already examined the man rather thoroughly.
Does his life fit with mine? Does he have room for me? Do I have room for him? How does he handle conflict? How does he live? And what comes with him?
And if the calculation starts looking bad, I’m often gone before my heart has had much time to protest.
That can be smart. But it can also become a trap.
Because there is no love without risk. There is no guarantee that the person we choose will stay.
And perhaps that is something we women also have to admit. If we look reasonably good and function reasonably well socially, we can still get quite a lot of attention from men even after we’ve passed 60.
That can almost create the feeling that we’re still the ones doing the choosing. And yes, we can choose who we go on a date with. We can choose who we allow closer. We can choose who we say yes or no to.
But we cannot choose whether the other person will love us back. We cannot choose whether he stays. And the man we choose actually gets to choose too.
That sounds completely obvious. But perhaps emotionally, it isn’t always quite as obvious as we think.
Rejection still exists when you’re older. And maybe it’s healthy to be reminded of that sometimes. Not because being rejected means there is something wrong with us, but because love isn’t a marketplace where the person with the most options wins.
In the end, it comes down to two people choosing each other. At the same time.
And perhaps even more difficult than that: they have to keep choosing each other after the infatuation has settled down and everyday life has walked through the door.
Maybe that’s why I’ve written so much about how we make love last.
Because the hardest part isn’t always finding someone. The hardest part may be finding someone you’re willing to invest in — and who is willing to invest just as much in you.
So do I pull away when I start developing feelings? Maybe sometimes. But I don’t think that’s the whole truth. I think I’ve learned to be careful about who I allow to have the power to disturb the balance in my life.
And I’m not necessarily going to stop doing that.
But perhaps there is one thing I need to watch out for: that experience doesn’t become so good at protecting me from pain that it also protects me from love.
Because if I want love again, I will probably have to tolerate something I don’t particularly like: not having complete control over how the story ends.
Because love may not be something you can organize.
In fact, love has a rather annoying habit of setting fire to the plans you so carefully organized in the first place.