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

How to Find Love Over 60, Part I

There's a page on my website with the same title as this blog. It lists a dozen things you can do to make it more likely you'll find love if you're without it now. The fact is, millions of Baby Boomers are single either because they suffered the death of a spouse or have divorced or just not been able to make a relationship work no matter how hard they tried. Any of these is a terrible hit to the heart. It's not easy to recover, especially from a death after a protracted illness. It's a weird paradox of our generation that so many of us will be blessed with longer life, but will also walk our partners to their last doorway long before we approach our own. It may be an equal paradox that even without such losses, we are living long enough to
move through a number of relationships, unlike many of our parents who stayed married for forty, fifty, even sixty plus years (like mine). Finally, those of us who have been married for decades sometimes hit periods during which we're not happy and not sure what to do about it. Andrea and I have seen all of this in our couples workshops...and we've experienced a lot of it firsthand as well. It's understandable that many of us might feel lost for a period of time after a loss, perceived failure or dull or difficult period in a long relationship..
I don't have any magic answers about finding love over 60 but I do have some experience and a point of view and I intend to share those organically over time, rather than working my way from one through twelve
of the list on my website. Those twelve, to the best of my ability, delineate aspects of a whole...but there are also the elements of love and magic in that whole and, as I've said, it's more difficult to talk about them, at least in prose.
In any case, as a way of beginning what I hope will be a long and full conversation with you, I wanted to share just one main thought right now. It is this: If you are willing to fully experience the grief you may have suffered, rather than run from it or deny it, there is a very good likelihood you will surface from it and discover that you are actually feeling very good about being you and being alive. It might well strike you that you've lived for at least six decades and you've really learned some important things. You might well have learned, as I have, that you are not brilliant at intimate relationships...not in small part because you probably had no real formal path to walk towards mastery. You have probably also learned, however, that you can be more resilient than you might have ever guessed in your twenties or thirties. You've learned that you have some social skills that can still serve you well in meeting new people. And, above all, you may well have learned that there are not good odds in trying to second-guess what life might send your way. In spite of a rather difficult first three decades, my own life has been far more blessed over the last three than I ever could have imagined. Three and a-half years ago, I had an instinct I was going to meet someone to spend the
rest of my days with. But there is no way, with all the imaginative energy in my being, that I could have dreamed up the life I am now living with my darling Andrea.
So, of course there are no guarantees. There never were. We didn't realize that when we were young. Ignorance was bliss. That's one of the lessons you've learned. Now, of course, you might not fall in love again despite your best efforts to find someone. And then again, you might...and it might not work out. Yes, you might get hurt again. But you also might not. It might well be that the odds really are in favor of an extraordinary connection unfolding between you and another human being now that you have lived so much and are so much more capable today than even ten years ago of co-creating something real and beautiful and true. As the old saying goes, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." I believe in the courage to try. I hope you do, too.
C 2010 Bob Kamm

The Cost of Criticism

 Criticism, blame and shame--the Big 3 Negatives--can be deadly to a relationship. Why do we engage in them? The next time you have the impulse to visit either of these on your partner, try to catch yourself and check in with what's really going on under the surface. My bet is you'll discover a need and a set of feelings that you are not fully owning, and certainly not expressing in a direct and clean manner. Why is it so difficult for most of us to just ask for what we need...and why are we so quick to shift responsibility for our well-being to our partner...which really puts us in the position of being a victim, in spite of all our huffing and puffing to the contrary?
We might say that we criticize, shame and blame others precisely to avoid being on the receiving end of same, to avoid feeling wrong or bad. Feeling wrong or bad tends to light up the central brain and brainstem...we feel threatened and with very little participation from our executive centers in the neocortex,
react because those parts of the brain are designed specifically for that kind of quick reaction, to save our lives. But our lives are not actually in danger in the overwhelming majority of situations where we perpetrate the Big 3. So what's up?
Well, think about the consequences to us when we are little children and are made to feel wrong or bad. As children, we actually have little or no power. The power legitimately resides outside us in the hands of our caregivers. To anger them often yields consequences that are very difficult for little people to absorb. To be wrong or bad might mean we get spanked or yelled at and put down, ignored or isolated, or not fed when we're hungry, not changed when we're wet, not moved to a cooler or warmer environment when we're uncomfortable. It might mean privileges or prized toys or tools are taken away. The people to whom we look for safety, nurturance and love suddenly remove all of that. Most of the time, they don't do this because they're bad people...but because they're just not able to rise to the best possible version of themselves for some reason--a terrible economy pressing in on them, a natural catastrophe, war or the surfacing of some demon from their own emotional heritage.
In this situation, our system is likely to be overwhelmed and the feeling of emotional violation, loss, even a kind of temporary emotional death--these are all palpable and real to a child. The younger and smaller we are at the moment, the more dependent, the more dependent, the more likely the experience is authentically traumatic. No child can live with a continuing awareness that his or her caregivers are capable of this kind of reversal from the loving beings we need them to be. It's a genuinely shocking turn of events. In order to adapt to such an environment, those feelings of shock and loss get stuffed into the back pocket of the brain--the unconscious mind. They are held in the limbic system of the brain, the brainstem and in all likelihood, on a cellular level throughout the body. But they are not dead...far from it. Years later, as adults, no matter how old and experienced we are, when we find ourselves in a relationship whose intimacy resonates with those early intimate and dependent relationships, those feelings get stirred up. They hijack our consciousness and our behavior in the moment. This is why a six foot five inch 250 lb man can react as if he has no power when his five foot, 100 lb partner says something that touches the early emotional heritage. Next thing you know, he is using all his adult language and conceptual skills to respond by lambasting her with a ferocious verbal attack...or he is withdrawing and sulking like a three year-old. In either case, he is not his grownup self. He is incapable of seeing that whatever his partner has said is arising either from an innocent and real need for more closeness in the present, or may also be underpinned by her own old hurt. In short, we criticize, blame and shame because we are unconsciously triggered into an early scenario in which the power really did reside outside of us. We lose our grip on the present moment. This is a painful and divisive dynamic. It's cost is enormous--broken hearts, abandoned children, ugly battles over money, property and custody.
How do we get out of this? With the proper tools and coaching and commitment to be self-aware and use them, we gradually learn to speak directly from the feeling that is arising in a non-aggressive manner. "That hurts me." "I feel sad when you talk to me that way." "I'm scared when you do that." "I'm feeling engulfed, overwhelmed, like a little kid." Such openness and honesty is not easily achieved in a culture that worships supermen and superwomen...but it can be achieved. When it is, it brings grieving for both members of a couple, and in that grieving there is healing; and from that grieving is born a newer, deeper empathetic connection...and, sometimes, poetry.
C 2011 Bob Kamm

Beyond Compare

This is a poem I wrote for Annie recently, after Love Over 60 had already gone to press. Bob

Beyond Compare

for Annie

You look at me

differently

than you do

anyone else

on earth.

And I see your eyes

as I see no other’s…

for they are

like no other’s

and no other thing,

yet many others

and many other things

are like them.

Like

but not equal to

or the same as

--the dark wondering

of a

child

studying

her first

falling leaves;

rain puddles

holding the sky

within their small borders;

the fierce stare

of a painter

churning her pallet

into purples and reds;

the high sun

of summer

the low sun

of winter;

the moon

so full

with song

even the deaf

can hear her

--all strive

to be worthy

but end up

on their knees

as do I

before your

fierce

and tender royalty

…but unlike them

I hope to rise

when you

tap my shoulder,

reborn

incomparable

in your incomparable

gaze.

Original Welcome

Welcome to my blog.
So...love. What is it? Is it a liquid? A solid? A gas? Is it a state of being or a transcendence beyond anything science or religion can touch? Plato called it "divine madness". So is it a form of madness? An addiction or compulsion? Or a divinely outrageous creation of two souls gyrating and dancing within and beyond their bodies? My suspicion is "all of the above" and I don't see that as an easy way out of the conundrum. Rather it is an embracing of it.
Love is both knowable and unknowable. Some of it can be described behaviorally and scientifically, but to do so doesn't touch the actual personal and interpersonal experience of falling in love and being in love. So I'm fine with neuropsychiatrists talking about
the limbic system, oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin and hormones--the electrochemical
mighty mischief. I find the micro-architecture and processes of the brain enormously interesting, even poetic. But in the last analysis--if there ever is one--the language required to describe the inner experience of love is poetry, not science. Thus, my book, Love Over 60...love poetry that, I hope, speaks to lovers of all ages, and to scientists, philosophers and therapists. Finding myself at 60 single once again, I didn't think I could find love. I mourned for weeks about this. Then, I guess I got past that critical tear--the tear beyond which enough grieving has occurred to change our inner dynamics. I awoke one morning quite certain that I was indeed going to find love again. I called my son, Ben, and said, "I'm going to wake up a year from now next to the woman I love. I just haven't met her yet." Six weeks later, I met Andrea and, in the parlance of today, it was an OMG to the tenth power. Can science explain all this magic? I doubt it. But poetry can.
We have had an extraordinary three plus years together now and are just really getting started. Andrea is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and I am a leadership consultant with two certifications in Imago Relationship Therapy, the model Andrea uses. We both have been working in the realm of the heart for many years, although I certainly would not call myself an expert...and am not sure there is a person truly worthy of that term.

I have taken an avid interest in the brain, studying the works of Damasio, Le Doux, Schore, Siegel and others. So all through our romantic period, I had a joyful sense of irony knowing what parts of my brain were sucking up all the oxygen! Now that we are really creating a life together, I still find it fascinating, even as I write a poem, to feel, actually feel, what part of my brain is engaged. One of Damasio's books is titled, "The Feeling of What Happens". What a great phrase. The feeling of what happens throughout my body in this love is at least to some degree, what I hope I have mapped in Love Over 60.
So my intention in this blog is to explore the geography and geology of love, the science and the poetry of it, and above all, the personal experience of it from the sunlight to the shadows and back again. I invite you to join me in this joyful exploration.
C 2010 Bob Kamm

Posted by Love Over 60 Bob's Blog at 11/24/2010 7:25 PM | View Comments (37) | Add Comment

The Listening

As I write this, I'm sitting in a condo in Costa Rica, right on the Pacific. It's about 1:30 in the afternoon which means sane Norte Americanos are safely hunkered down in the a/c...unless you're a surfer, of course.

Whether you're in the States, Central America, Europe, wherever, the issues and challenges of keeping an intimate relationship worthy of that word are universally interesting to people. We're pretty friendly travelers. We like meeting new people and when we happen to share with someone that we have The San Luis Relationship Institute and do a lot of work with couples, they get curious and often end up sharing about their own relationships and asking for advice. Some are coy about how they approach the topic. Some will get straight to the point. Last night, a young man in his mid-thirties we happened to be doing a little business with down here didn't waste a moment. He was passionately interested in having a deeper connection with his wife...but the way that interest emerged was in his expressing some frustration over his wife not being as interested in doing many of the things they did together when they were courting, things in the outdoors he particularly liked. He asked what he might do to reignite her interest.

I took him out on the balcony to watch the sunset as I gathered my thoughts, looking for something in my Imago toolbox that might work for him (I'm a certified Imago Educator and Workshop Presenter). He is a very bright, hard working young fellow and was quite earnest in his question. We talk a lot in our practice about fully appreciating our partner as a separate individual with a unique point of view that will not always align with our own. When we're able to cross that open space between us--what we call the relational field--and see the world through their eyes instead of trying to get them to see things our way, we experience a shift of energy, often for the better, and often more empathy centered. So I asked my young acquaintance this question: "Do you think there are things your wife wishes you were still interested in doing with her...that you used to do more of when you were courting?"
He laughed, then dropped his head, then poked me in the chest in a friendly manner. "Wow, that's a really good point. So maybe we're both missing something."
"Chances are pretty good it's a mutual thing," I said. Now, we were in each other's company to do some business. This was not a counseling session and he was not my client. So I thought I'd just give him one suggestion in the form of a set of questions. "Do you really listen to her? Are you really attuned to her? Can you listen to her without judgment and without rushing ahead to a solution?"

He shook his head and readily admitted he wasn't doing his best work in that area...and that he did tend to rush ahead to find solutions instead of just letting her express herself.

"If you want your wife to do more of those things with you that you love, make sure, first of all, that you really show up for her, that you hear her and respond to her. If you do that, you'll likely find she'll be a lot more interested in rekindling some of those activities that used to give you so much pleasure."

As Harville Hendrix, our mentor, says, you could call this "the listening cure". We all want to be heard. Early in our relationships, we listen from a very deep place to everything our lover tells us. This ability resides in almost all of us, long after the romantic phase of our relationship has ended. The thing is to rejuvenate it and embrace it as a sacred practice, moment by moment, day by day. Practice...that says exactly what is called for. Practice listening empathetically with the same commitment you might apply to mastering your profession or your favorite past-time (golf is the obvious example that comes to mind).

This fellow was a young man, but we hear the same pain in folks who've been married for decades and over all have pretty good relationships. No matter your age, may you ask with love for the things you desire. May you listen with love to the things your partner desires...and may you both say, "Yes!" as much as possible.

C 2010 Bob Kamm

Posted by Love Over 60 Bob's Blog at 11/24/2010 7:11 PM | Add Comment

 

Mourning in America, September 2011

In vast stretches

of the nation's heart
               --desert--
    no poetry
                metaphor
                                song
                           or
                                     sacrament.
Water, sky, earth and wind
are commodities now.
Bottle, sell, buy, cut, exploit.

For all the houses of worship,

                holiness goes homeless.
Who rises to face the dawn?
Who pulls off the freeway to
                bid the sun adieu?
Who daily dips hands in water...
                weeps
                      at wonders?

Children

                are weaned quickly
from the language of the leaves,
their eyes turned to tiny screens
              of screaming electrons.
      The true songs
                swirling so near
are lost to their hearing.

 The loudest preachers

                leech
blood and money
                from the frightened.
God and our ancestors are
the ultimate commodities,
used when
                advantageous,
invoked
but not summoned
                for fear of
what their eyes will speak.

In truth,

God has left us to our own devices,
knowing
devices
bring no virtue...
                only  widen the divides               
even as they offer the illusion
of communion.

The industrial dragon's hunger

                can never be satisfied.
It eats its way
                toward famine
and then,
      only then,
                perhaps...

My silver husky, Sofie, knows the songs.

She heard them in her mother's womb,
          handed down by the old dog spirits
                who learned them
                                from wolves, fires,
                                       tall trees,
                thawing meadows
                         and men still as ice.                              
She sings, rumbles, warbles, wails and whispers
                the shamans' secret tongue.

I will rise with her to face the dawn
                and take my mantra from the morning wind.
I will lay with her under the jacaranda
                and howl
                     at the setting sun,
hoping
    that when the new moon rises
                                Americans
                                                will also
                                     rise anew.

 C2011 Bob Kamm