On November 30, the New York Times offered an Op-Ed from Cathi Hanauer with the title of today’s blog post. Cathi co-founded the NYT “Modern Love” with her husband Daniel Jones and they navigated a 33-year marriage with kids, compatible writing careers, and all. I’m going to quote a couple of the passages including this one that may be familiar to many of you:
“Every marriage has its issues, and the empty nest catapults them to the surface. We had different ways of feeling and expressing intimacy. Dan was working harder than ever, but now with a new team that didn’t include me — and the more he (understandably) devoted himself to that world, the more I both escaped into my own projects and expanded into the sweet peace of autonomy again. When we did hang out, we didn’t want to do or talk about the same things. A couples therapist suggested we might not make it. “No!” we said, stunned. Still, we drifted further, each feeling less loved and less loving. We had always laughed, and now we didn’t. At least, not enough.
No one was cheating, swearing, slinging plates. We could’ve tried to put Band-Aids on our issues until they healed, or didn’t-heal-but-whatever. Instead, we made an increasingly common choice: We hugged, apologized for our shortcomings and freed each other. To me, it was — and still is — less a failure than the end of a long, productive, good marriage.”
Over the course of eight years leading MEA, I’ve heard this story hundreds of times and have lived it myself. Our TQ (Transitional Intelligence) model for understanding The Anatomy of a Transition helps us navigate midlife transitions more effectively once we identify the three stages – the ending, the messy middle, and the beginning – and the coping mechanisms for each. Given that “gray divorces” (couples 50 and older) are the only age demographic of marriage dissolutions that is growing in the U.S. and that two-thirds of these are initiated by women, this is one more reason why our new Golden Girls Homes program makes sense (our upcoming workshop in Santa Fe is Jan 15-18)
Here are two final passages from the article that may have you nodding your head and saying, “yes, sister!”
“I’ve relished seeing who I am outside of decades-long wife and mother: how much income I need (and how I endeavor to earn it), where I travel, what social life and schedule I prefer. My friend group has changed — more singles, male and female. And I enjoy the romance and sex I’ve found — yes, even into my 60s — which of course many people turn off to in marriage: what the writer D.H. Lawrence called “the great cage of our domesticity.”
“I love living alone again, now in a modest city apartment: choosing my surroundings, knowing the fridge contents, sleeping uninterrupted. Feeling pared down but efficient. Coming home to solitude and, yes, unfolding…overall, my experience has cemented my view that when wedlock no longer feels right or healthy later in life — and if, like us, you’re fortunate enough to have careers, adult kids and a willingness to do the work of a good split (not unlike being in a good marriage!) — then unlocking, becoming separate again, can be a fine option…Maybe some of our luck came because we faced the truth before it wrecked us. Our marriage no longer felt right, and we lacked the optimism to fix it. So rather than endure or ignore, we parted mutually and amicably — and work to stay that way. If anything, we appreciate each other more now; we’re no longer depriving each other, and we can laugh together again.”
If you’re in the dating market again, you might want to learn more about celebrity matchmaker Rachel Greenwald’s upcoming MEA Santa Fe workshop Modern Love: A Matchmaker’s Secrets to Find Your Perfect Match February 19-22. A perfect post-Valentine’s Day gift to yourself!
-Chip
P.S. Goldie Hawn celebrated Diane Keaton’s too-short life on stage recently and, in this short video, laughed about the fact that Goldie and Diane might be Golden Girls someday (or “Goldie Girls”), living in a big home together.