Enduring Heart – love at 16 or 60 feels the same
Think you’re too old to fall in love at 60 or over? Well, here is Enduring Heart to prove you wrong and debunk some myths about older people. Read her experience of passion and romance at 60.
Posted by Elderjuice
on August 21, 2012. Filed under Lifestyle.
Posted with the tags:love, relationshipsYou can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Courtesy of Candida Performa
Think you’re too old to fall in love at 60 or over? Well, here is Enduring Heart to prove you wrong and debunk some myths about older people. Read her experience of passion and romance at 60. Catch up with part one.
Thanks to the internet and social networking, I was able to re-connect with an old flame. My first old flame, actually.
But R and I weren’t typical high school sweethearts – not that we didn’t try.
We were flower power babies and American West Coast teens in the time of Woodstock and Jimi Hendrix, peace and love.
It was all about free love and exploring sex back then. Except it didn’t quite work out like that for us.
Chasing
I spent an entire year relentlessly chasing R, as only a silly teenage girl can.
These days there are not many 16 year old girls as clueless as I was, nor 17 year old boys as backwards as R.
It took him that entire year to work up to even kissing me, despite my many blatant attempts to make it happen.
I was crazy for R. I dreamt about him and wrote in my journal every night about the progress, or lack of, in our ‘relationship’.
I was a lovesick child. And R? Well he liked me… or did he? I was never really sure. Not until the very end when we finally attempted to lose our virginity to each other – and failed.
R and I laugh about that now – the sexual climate in our current relationship is so incredibly intense.
First timers at sexting and phone sex, in a way it’s like we’ve lost a new kind of virginity to each other, 43 years after that first attempt.
Life
After we lost touch life went on for both of us. College, marriages, kids, divorce… the usual.
And then this sudden reconnection – our friendship re-ignited, not to mention this crazy passion blooming almost instantly.
It has turned out that though we both moved across the country years ago, we are only a couple of hundred miles apart these days.
We haven’t been together in the real, physical sense yet, but we both know it’s only a matter of time.
Lovesick
For now, I find myself feeling like a lovesick teen again. I’m mooning around and wondering if I should call him.
Even writing this is a symptom of my foolishness – and believe me sometimes I do feel foolish.
I’m 60 years old and I’ve been married for a long, long time. R is divorced, has a lot of personal demons and, except for his sexual side, seems to have aged an awful lot in the past 40+ years. I’m sure I seem to have aged a lot too.
We are not the teenagers we were and yet love feels the same. Sixteen or 61 – it feels the same.
Lifetime
And why shouldn’t it? Who says we are only allowed a certain amount of love and passion in a lifetime?
These days to be 60 or 70 or 80 or even 90 is not the same as it was in our grandparents time.
Overall we are younger in outlook and in health. I’m sure there are plenty of studies to show how aging has changed over the years but it truly doesn’t matter to me what they say.
All that matters is what I feel. I’m a 60-year-old woman and I’m as crazy over a man as I was over the boy long ago. Sixteen or 61 – it feels the same.
- I’m sure my story is not unique so please respond if you find anything strikes a chord. Or if you have an alternative experience of love and relationships in your 50s, 60s and beyond, please share it – it can only help everyone. Perhaps together we can dispel some myths and gain the confidence to enjoy a part of our lives that is not usually publicised.
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3 Responses to Enduring Heart – love at 16 or 60 feels the same
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Charles Beresford
August 21, 2012 at 7:43 am
I am much amused by the article “The enduring heart”. Believe me, the year’s number has little to
do with it. My friend Betty is 91 and I am 84, but she says we behave like a couple of teen-
agers. There seems no point in a marriage ceremony as we each are of independent means,
and can break it off if we wanted to, but we don’t want. Otherwise we care for each other as
if we were married. I spend a long weekend at her retirement home, and weekdays here.
katie
August 21, 2012 at 12:56 pm
about 3 years ago, I reunited with my high school sweetheart, too. We are both 64 and had gone together for 4 years back in the 60′s. Like the author, our teen age sexual exploits were cautious and fumbling. Also like the author, our feelings ignited in a hurry when we met again and continue in spite of the ED which, of course, strikes at our age. My best hopes and wishes for you and R. B and I have found such joy “between the sheets”, I hope the same for you!!
Enduring Heart
August 22, 2012 at 7:45 pm
Charles and Katie, I’m glad to see from the comments that I’m not alone in my situation! And that even at 94 love isn’t dead. But we knew that, didn’t we?
Katie, thanks so much for the good wishes for R and I!
I hope you both continue to read and comment–I think the more the subject of love and sex for older couples is openly discussed the less misunderstood the subject will become.
EH