Keep the Hits Coming

In our couples work at The San Luis Relationship Institute (www.slrii.com ) we are often asked, “How do we keep the love alive, the fires burning in our relationship?” People write entire books to answer that question, but I want to talk about one thing in particular here that I think is often over-looked. There is a wonderful phrase in Erich Fromm’s 1956 book, The Art of Loving. He says we ought to make loving “a matter of ultimate concern.” And was quite clear, writing 6 decades ago, that he did not believe most people were doing that.

When we’re falling in love, of course love is a matter of ultimate concern. It’s easy to feel that during the romantic phase. We are inebriated with each other. Our brains are marinated in neuro-chemicals. Sweet as that inebriation is, it doesn’t last. Fromm points out that only once can we have the exciting experience of discovering this unique person for the very first time. Only once with this person will our days be full of the delight of the unexpected. But that necessarily comes to an end. The high tide of neuro-chemicals subsides, mainly because we are actually getting to know this person. Now, as I’ve written in the opening poem of Love Over 60, The Choice, we have a choice before us. Having fallen in love, will we choose love? Will we stand up, rather than falling, and walk in love, together? Experience teaches us the obvious—that sometimes we will not feel so good about each other. Sometimes we will hurt and be hurt by each other. Just as when we were children, the person on whom we most depend for safety and who undoubtedly provides it much of the time, is also capable of wrenching it from us. We’ve worked with couples who are newlyweds and some who have been married over fifty years. The experiences follow a common arc. There's closeness and joy...but there is also pain when our connection is ruptured. The big question most of us face at some point is do we stand and work our way back to each other or go off seeking another “love fix” from someone else?

I believe there is more joy when we stand for love and walk in love and accept the reality that human nature involves a full range of emotions and experiences. "Perfect" is a concept for those not well-grounded in reality. I also believe that even in those relationships that seem stuck or parallel without a lot of connection, there are moments when people look at each other and get what I call “a love hit”. Suddenly the deep affection they feel for their partner hits them right in the heart. The question then is, do they express it or just allow it to pass silently?

I said at the outset that I just wanted to talk about one aspect of keeping the fires alive. This is it. When you get a love hit for your partner, no matter where you are, how far from you they might be emotionally or physically at the moment, find a way to let them know. Speak it directly or send a card or flowers or write a poem or letter or give them an unexpected hug for a minute. Don’t keep it a secret. Let your partner know what you are feeling. Try looking in their eyes and just saying something like, “I just got a hit in my heart about how much I appreciate and love you.” No asterisks. No qualifiers. Just say it and let it sink in. This may not be the way you normally express yourself. It may feel uncomfortable, awkward. Do it anyway. The hits are likely to keep coming so you'll have lots of opportunities to practice. Don't get discouraged if it doesn't come out right the first time...although, "I love you" is pretty straightforward.

It may well have been magical when one of you got down on a knee years ago to propose; but these hits are the living breathing proof that you’re both glad the answer was yes.
C 2010 Bob Kamm

How to Find Love Over 60, Part III

How to Find Love Over 60, Part III: The Sites in Your Sights

So what about all these dating websites? Well, I have two very good friends each of whom has a wonderful long-term relationship with someone he met through these sites, one on Match.com and the other on JDate.com. Before I met Andrea, I tried them, principally Match.com. I was not as lucky as my friends. I discovered some things that are probably common knowledge to people who have been working the process for a while…but if you’re a newcomer, this is important news. For example, a lot of people upload pictures of themselves that are not only old, but airbrushed. No kidding. You’d think that people would share images and information that will be validated when you meet face to face, rather than set you up for a shock. But I was on these sites for about six weeks and had about six coffee meetings and was, frankly, astonished at the gap between what I can only call “the sales pitch” and the reality. It was like being on Mr. Toad’s wild ride. I was very open, honest and eager but found myself getting whiplash between interest and disappointment. I came to call online dating “The Bipolar Express.”

So I quickly came to the conclusion that there is an actual skill-set to using online dating sites and it makes sense to go into the process as a student in quest of those skills before you can effectively be in quest of mate. In all likelihood, each of us has to ride that learning curve in his or her own way. But it seems to me there are at least five things we could agree on that are part of the skill-set.

1.    Be rigorously honest about yourself. Rather than making your profile sound like you are special delivery from the angels and love romantic walks on the beach, snuggling by the fireside on a rainy night, traveling to exotic places (who doesn’t?), are the world’s best listener and eager to give foot massages every evening, just tell the truth about yourself. In addition to your good qualities, share something that’s believable because it’s so real, for example, “I can’t claim to be a master of relationships but I am open and always trying to improve how I communicate and listen.”

2.    When you get to the first phone call, be friendly and courteous but don’t be afraid to ask some questions that call for a matching honesty, such as, “What are you best at in relationship…and what are you not so great at?” If your chat is all feathers, petals and fantasy, that’s what you’re likely to get back. Be real. Share real. Ask real questions.

3.    Accept the fact that no matter how well things have gone up to this point, you have no idea what you’re going to feel when you meet face to face. There is a magical “it” factor that has to be present for true love and there’s no way of knowing if it’ll be there till you meet. Physical attraction is such a unique and mysterious thing. So you have to be courageous and be willing to go to coffee after coffee if necessary for weeks or even months. Pace them out so you maintain your optimism and openness. When you can tell you’re not with someone you want to date, get to honesty as quickly and kindly as you can. In this new world, people are getting used to lines like, “You seem like a really good person but I don’t think we’re a match. Thanks for coming to meet me.” You don’t have to explain why. A lot of people are trying this process and discovering the same truths, the main one being there is no sense in wasting anyone’s time.

4.    Remember your own pattern of mistakes. We all have them and the point is to learn from them. If you quickly feel yourself falling into a familiar trap, for example, of being a rescuer or a victim, don’t pursue the relationship. Your gut is probably right that you’re headed for the same spin cycle you’ve been trying to exit.

5.    Read Harville Hendrix’s Getting the Love You Want and Eric Fromm’s The Art of Loving. Both are full of wisdom. If you are fortunate enough to meet someone you really click with, be oriented toward doing some work with a talented therapist, especially an Imago therapist (Hendrix’s process) once you come out of the white heat of the romantic phase. Living for fifty or sixty years doesn’t necessarily confer on us the exact skills necessary to have a deep, constant intimate relationship. Having the humility to recognize this is a huge advantage. At our age, we don’t want to waste time falling back into old hurtful patterns. Working with the right therapist can be a vital and rewarding experience told that will help us move beyond the old dynamics that might have limited or even ended past relationships.

There might be tips others would give you but I’m not intending to write a primer on Online Dating. If you go at this in earnest, you really might meet someone…and you might not. You might get exhausted and decide to stay home for a while and give your dog more love than she can stand. And there really still are other ways to meet people, old-fashioned ways, like at work, in the grocery line, at a coffee shop, chess or bird-watching club, hiking your favorite trail, on a singles cruise or zip-lining in Costa Rica! One of the most beautiful things about life is that it has things in store for us we did not imagine. Andrea and I could never have imagined the series of events that unfolded between us, which I’ve described in the introduction of Love Over 60. Again, stay open, optimistic and ready to walk right through the doorway of a new opportunity, expected or not!
C 2010 Bob Kamm

How to Find Love Over 60, Part II

My relationship with Andrea is the center of my life. Since we met in our sixties, neither of us was a novice when we came to it. Yet, frankly, I was still naive in a rather important way. I had never experienced a relationship that I felt was more important than either of us, once the initial romantic stage was over.
But just over a year into my relationship with Andrea, I remember very clearly hearing in my mind's ear John F. Kennedy's famous exhortation, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country," and thinking that all we need do is substitute the word "relationship" for the word "country" and you would have exact and succinct guidance for a deeply satisfying intimate relationship. Put even more concisely, "Serve the relationship." Serve it, nurture it, support it, revere it and do so in a constant stream of consciousness throughout your days.
It's embarrassing to admit, but the truth is that I acted most of the time as if the main purpose of my past relationships was to serve me. My moods, obsessions, imperfections and rantings were to be understood with deep empathy and even indulged because I had "an artist's disposition." While I did make an effort to be present to my previous partners, I often was quietly indignant that they seemed to need as much empathy and understanding as I did. And as I think about the many relationships I've witnessed in my life, it strikes me that I have not been alone in this imbalance.
These days, I regularly ask myself, "What serves the US? What serves our greater good as a couple? What does Andrea need from me?" This is not to say that I've swung from self-absorption to self-denial. The benefits of both of those are over-rated What has happend is that I'm in a very different spiritual and energetic state than the one in which I've spent much of my adult life. I find myself seeing the relationship itself as a work of art, worthy of my deepest creativity, even in what may seem the smallest moment. I find myself working to find a way to say, "Yes!" to things I used to say no to. Many of these, on the surface, seem like small things. But much of the glue in a relationship solidifies through small gestures whose core message is, "This is concrete evidence of my caring." And, by contrast, so many of the battles in relationships are over small things because one of us feels the absence of that kind of evidence of love.
Yes, Love wants reality. Love wants proof and ultimately lives or dies in the accumulated meanings of small moments. We all get reactive and defensive. The question is, "What happens next?" Do we stay in that state or try to shake free of it, become conscious, make better choices.
I do not claim to be a master in the art of the intimate relationship. In fact, in many ways, I'm just a beginner. The poem, Sunlight and Shadows, in Love Over 60 offers plenty of evidence of that. But I think I'm in a very big club. I frequently work to move from reactive defensiveness to intentionally serving our relationship. Of course, this is sometimes very difficult and when it is, it takes a little longer to come to full consciousness about a given issue. The blathering, defensive chatter in my head sometimes has to run its course until quiet returns long enough for the heart to be heard. But that calm does come and the small sweet voice of the heart speaks its simple truth. Then, what seemed like such a big, principled issue reveals itself as insignificant in the great scheme of things. Why did it seem like such a big deal for those moments? That question deserves at least one separate blog post, which I'll write soon...but for now, suffice it to say that early childhood wounds that lay unresolved below the surface of consciousness get triggered. When that happens, they tend to hijack the moment and we lose ourselves in an old scenario.
Beyond that, let me say simply for now that by honoring the small moments and filling them with evidence of love, we become more flexible, more open and more connected.
So when you think about finding love over 60, or rejuvenating love in a long-term relationship, it is good to take a look in the mirror and ask yourself what habits you might have developed over decades which, if left to reign, will slowly but surely push your partner away. There are people who have been together for decades and fallen into routines that are far too comfortable, routines that allow them to avoid conflict. Avoiding conflict when you have very few communication tools may have a certain wisdom to it. But avoiding conflict when you do have some decent tools truncates opportunities to grow and deepen your relationship. Conflict is a call to growth, which is to say, you can have pain without growth but you can't have growth without some pain.
It is good to follow reaction with inquiry as to where the reaction came from and who it really serves. It is good to open our hearts to ask every day, several times a day, "What am I called to do today, how am I called to grow to help this relationship flourish?" It is good to see the intimate relationship as calling forth your deepest creativity. It is good to be patient with yourself and your partner as you commit to a long journey of learning. It is good to be forgiving with yourself and your partner when you temporarily get caught up in hurting each other. And it is good to show up for the smallest moment and pour something into that leaves no doubt in your partner's mind that you truly love them.
C 2010 Bob Kamm