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Ten Things You Must Do To Save Your Mid-Life
Marriage and Live Happily Ever After, Part I
Developing a successful mid-life marriage is one of
the most difficult tasks human beings ever engage.
It’s also the most rewarding. Whether we are
straight or gay, legally married or living
together, these are difficult times for long-term
relationships. In 1996 the census bureau recorded a
significant spike in divorce rates among
leading-edge Baby Boomers born between 1945 and
1954. Although we think of mid-life men leaving
their middle-aged wives for a younger woman, it is
actually the women who are leaving in increasing
numbers.
According to Gail Sheehy’s new book, Sex
and the Seasoned Woman, among women who left their
first marriages sometime between the ages of 40 and
74, almost three-quarters left in their 40s. A 2004
AARP study found the following surprising facts
about mid-life divorce:
- Two-thirds of divorces among couples over
age 40 are initiated by the wives.
- One-third of divorced or single women over
40 are dating younger men—a reversal of
past behavior.
- The single woman in their 50s is much more
likely to be divorced or never married than
widowed.
But most of us would still prefer to find a good
partner, get married, have a relationship that
continues to grow closer and more intimate as we
age, and remain together until at death we do part.
So how do we accomplish this seemingly impossible
task? Here are my suggestions:
1. Recognize the hidden stressors that keep
us hypersensitive and irritable.
There is a reality we learned in biology class.
If you put a frog in boiling water, he immediately
jumps out. However, if you put him in cool water
and slowly heat it up, he swims around until he
cooks to death. The truth is we live in a world
that is slowly (well, not so slowly any more)
heating up. Global warming and all the attendant
stresses of modern life are building up in us. We
often aren’t consciously aware of the
“heat,” but deep inside, we know. We
become more sensitive and irritable, frustrated and
worried. Not realizing it is our deteriorating
environment that is stressing us, we often get down
on our partner. When we recognize the real source
of the problem, we can focus our energies in the
right direction and quit blaming each other for our
unhappiness.
2. Run for your life and give thanks.
For most of human history stresses came from
such things as wild animals coming into the camp to
eat us. We dealt with those crises by running away
and climbing a tree or chasing after the animal and
killing him if we could. Either way, we got our
body moving, burned up the stress chemicals in our
systems and our body/mind/spirit returned to
normal. We sat around the fire at night and told
stories about how lucky we were to still be alive.
The stressors are different today, but the need to
run off the tension and give thanks every day for
being alive hasn’t changed.
3. Tend and befriend for a long life and
joyous relationship.
A landmark UCLA study conducted by Drs. Shelly
Taylor and Laura Klein found that the classic
fight/flight response, thought to be a universal
reaction to stress, was how men responded to
stress. They found that women usually responded
quite differently. Under conditions of stress they
reached out to other women and children. The
researchers called this the “tend and
befriend” response. As we get older and the
world becomes ever more complex, the fight/flight
response doesn’t work so well. Men need to
learn how to make and maintain deep friendships if
we are to have successful marriages. Carlin and I
are both convinced that one of the main reasons we
have a wonderful relationship after being together
for over 25 years is that we are each in a
gender-specific support group. She is in a
women’s group and I have been in a men’s
group for over 26 years.
4. Give up being right and begin being
happy.
If you’ve lived more than 40 years you know
that we develop a sense of what’s right and
wrong. Life teaches us many lessons and we believe
we have a pretty good idea of what’s right,
right? Wrong! I can’t tell you how many fights
Carlin and I have had when one of us was sure we
were right and felt it our marital duty (for the
other’s own good, of course) to point out the
error of their ways. The longer I live, the less
sure I am of what is right or wrong. I can tell you
what feels right for me in this moment, what I
believe will make me happy. When I tell you
“my truth” not “the truth” and
listen to your truth, I find I am much happier and
enjoy our relationship much more fully.
5. Know that no one else can make you
happy.
This is one that has taken me a long time to
learn. For most of my marital life I was convinced
that the only way I could be happily married was if
my wife did things that made be happy. I
wasn’t asking for the moon. Just basic things
that any good wife would want to do for the man she
loved. Like have sex whenever I wanted. O.K., I
didn’t need it whenever I wanted, but most of
the time.
It would make me happy if she would get ready so
that we could leave on time for the party. She
knows how I hate to be late. It would make me happy
if she would rub my back without having to be
asked. She knows how much I like my back rubbed and
after all, I rub her back a lot more than she rubs
mine. I “knew” if she didn’t do
these kind of simple things to make me happy, she
probably didn’t really love me, or at least
not in the way I needed to be loved. It was a great
revelation to me when I discovered that there were
times that she would do all the right things and I
still wasn’t happy and times when she
didn’t do the things I wanted her to do and I
was happy anyway.
What have you found that is most helpful in
enhancing mid-life marriages? Stay tuned next week
for my other 5 suggestions including why I think
you should stop having sex.
©2010 Jed
Diamond
See Books,
Issues
+ Suicide
* * *
Wealth can't buy health, but health can buy
wealth. - Henry David Thoreau
Jed Diamond
is the internationally best-selling author of seven
books including Male
Menopause, now
translated into 17 foreign languages and his
latest book, The
Irritable Male Syndrome: Managing. The 4 Key Causes
of Depression and
Aggression. For over
38 years he has been a leader in the field of men's
health. He is a member of the International
Scientific Board of the World Congress on
Men’s Health and has been on the Board of
Advisors of the Men’s Health Network since its
founding in 1992. His work has been featured in
major newspapers throughout the United States
including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall
Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and USA
Today. He has been featured on more than 1,000
radio and T.V. programs including The View with
Barbara Walters, Good Morning America, Inside
Edition, CBS, NBC, and Fox News, To Tell the Truth,
Extra, Leeza, Geraldo, and Joan Rivers. He also did
a nationally televised special on Male Menopause
for PBS. He looks forward to your feedback.
E-Mail.
You can visit his website at www.menalive.com
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