Love, Risk
&
Resolution
You’re in love. It’s going great, and you’ve moved
from thinking about your next date to considering a long-term commitment. When you’re over 60 and over the moon, though, there’s a lot more to think about than bridesmaids’ dresses. “I think the feeling of love is universal, but it’s also matched to where we are in life and how we show up,” says Ross Kling, a marriage and family therapist in Seattle. “The beauty of falling in love at any age is that it creates a new future for you.” That new future takes a bit of work. Older adults have spent decades forming patterns for themselves. How do you honor someone else’s life patterns, experiences, and choices and blend them with your own? “There are two aspects to patterns,” says Kling. “The ones that support
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3rd Act magazine | fall 2022
our individuality, and the ones that keep us from growing—as in, being in a rut.” As a therapist, Kling suggests embracing things that define your partner and weaving them together with your own patterns. Take a hard look at behaviors that don’t support the relationship, though. You might not be able to change them, but with communication, there could be adjustment and compromise. “Important questions absolutely should be talked about, but the answers can be really hard and will vary from one couple to the
next,” says Judith Gordon, a Seattle psychologist. “It’s a very challenging time to be in a relationship.” At any age, a relationship’s lifespan can be affected by many things that might, or might not, happen. For older adults, though, the actual human lifespan is a factor. There are risks involved. The possibility of physical or mental decline is real. Gordon started her own laterin-life relationship in her early 60s. “When I met Lance, age didn’t matter. I was vital, he was vital. We didn’t have limitations. We hadn’t experienced loss.” Now, at 80 and 79, age is starting to affect the choices they make as a couple, even things that used to be simple. For example, they used to have three cats that lived out happy lives. Now they’d like to get more cats, but kittens might outlive
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