Long Lived Love

Halloween was just ten days ago, and today is Veterans Day. A big thank you to all those military service people past and present. We owe you a debt of gratitude for your investment in democracy and freedom. It is because of you, brave men and women, that we have the freedoms we hold so dear and hope to preserve for generations. But today I am in the throes of “love stuff”.

We celebrated my parents’ 70^th wedding anniversary the last week of October. Seventy years is a lifetime! My 89 and 88-year-old parents have been granted the gift of a real romance that began for them in junior high school and has spanned these many decades. They remain relatively healthy into their golden years, living independently.

My step-sister-in-law just remarried. She found love again in her seventies. After she and her spouse amicably ended their forty-one-year marriage two years ago, she rekindled an old friendship from her high school days. They quickly realized they had a special thing going on. It was love. Their motto, scripted in icing on their wedding cake was, “If not now, when?”

Gay marriage weighed heavily on my heart these past months, especially this week with the potential of the Supreme Court reviewing the efficacy of the Equality of Marriage Act. We all slept a little better last night when we got news that the Supreme Court passed on its review of the case brought by the clerk who didn’t want to grant a marriage license to a same-sex couple. For all those we know and love who have been married to their gay partners, and for the many couples biting their nails and crying in their pillows, wondering if they would be able to marry their loves in the future, the heat is turned down on this part of Gay rights. Hopefully forever, but at least for now.

And lastly, but certainly not the least for me, my husband and I have resumed our living separately part of the year arrangement that we had enjoyed for a couple of years prior to the devastating effects hurricanes Helene and Milton had on both of our hometowns, both of our homes, and several of our commercial investment properties. It was a challenging year for both of us and we were together, literally 24/7 solving problems and pulling the proverbial oar together, with very few breaks from the work. Our separate living arrangements are by mutual choice and bring us individual freedom we would otherwise have been unable to enjoy as self-employed, type “A” personalities whose offices are home based. We have loved each other for over four decades and will be celebrating our forty-first anniversary in eight weeks. We are best friends but have matured into different iterations of ourselves than we were when we met at twenty-one and twenty-six. We have different interests, hobbies, eating patterns, sleep patterns, to name a few idiosyncratic issues. But we also share a rich aesthetic life, we love to read and discuss books, to watch documentaries, travel, and most importantly, to share the loves of our lives, our two adult daughters. We also have many old and dear friends. We love our big, blended-by-marriage extended families with many siblings and their families, and we still have three parents whom we love and care for together. We are business partners and each other’s most trusted advisor.

All of these love partnerships are on my mind.

Mom and dad met in junior high and were married following high school. I was born the first year of their marriage, giving me a front row seat to their love affair. It is indeed that: an affair of the heart. I’ve witnessed the good, the bad, and the in between. There were years when I thought I wouldn’t make it through their marriage, the corollary being, there were times when I believed I could never find anyone to love me the way they love each other. And I didn’t. I found my own brand of romantic love by observing many other relationships, and through trial and error in my own marriage. There are as many ways to love as there are stars in the heavens. But the common ingredient for love is less about that warm fuzzy feeling we get when our special someone is approaching, or when we spot them across a crowded room. The unique identifier of true love is how we feel about the iteration of ourselves we strive for when we love someone. And that quality is present for all kinds of love—romantic, familial, plutonic, and spiritual. We strive to be our best selves when love is our inspiration.

There are industries built around counseling marrieds, lovers, and romantic hopefuls to be better at meeting each other’s needs. Everything from communication, sex, repair, reconciliation, intersections of commonality, or untethering completely. This is a generalization of what most theorists work with and around. I mean no disrespect to my friends and family members who are therapists by over-simplifying the work required to guide couples into meaningful behaviors. There is much to delve into regarding the love counseling industry, but that is not my objective. My observation is that there is no formula for success because love is an individual process. I am not denying the efficacy of therapeutic interventions, or that there are “love languages”, attachment theories, and childhood developmental exigencies that all impact our ability to love. While we are hardwired for love and attachment, there is no elixir to finding it, and no cure when it fails. Perhaps the long-held approach to couples’ advice for a successful relationship isn’t about focusing on the couple per se, but rather on how each person is motivated to be the best version of him or herself.

The essential behaviors required to build a loving relationship are accountability, communication, consistency, reliability, and vulnerability. Our superpower is the ability to bring all these attributes to our relationships. Forever. That’s a long time—forever. But that’s what it takes. And sometimes we are so “other” focused, we don’t even recognize ourselves in relationships because we have been overly involved in making our partner happy, comfortable, seen, and supported. I believe we cannot do any of these things unless we are in the practice of a healthy dance with each other—that we are gliding through our moves in life easily because we have practiced good self-care, reported our needs throughout the course of our marriage or long term relationship, and have been met with good communications, responses, and like-mindedness, so we feel safe to continue making ourselves vulnerable to change and showing up as the best iteration of ourselves. Or, if things aren’t going great, we have the courage to communicate our desires in the hope that our spouse, or partner, also wants to be the best version of him or herself, and will respond accordingly.

So back to my focus on all these different love scenarios over these last two weeks—my parents’ seventieth anniversary, my moving back here to Sarasota while my husband (who I also refer to as my partner-in-the-possible) is living in Asheville, my sister-in-law’s remarriage in her seventies, and the many Gay couples who cried, sighed, and hugged their spouses a little tighter last night—these couples, these lovers, these long-term friends—what about love? Does is require more than what I’ve mentioned above: accountability, communication, consistency, reliability, and vulnerability? Yes, there is more required.  I have observed this additive ingredient in others’ relationships, too: friends, family members, neighbors, younger people in serious relationships, Gay and Straight couples, old and young alike. Successful relationships are also about inspiration. Does this person still inspire me, others and herself? Am I an inspiration to myself and others? Am I showing up with integrity and courage? Am I being honest with myself and my partner? Is there space for error in the relationship? Can I say I’m sorry and move on? Am I trustworthy and do I implicitly trust my partner? Are there unique circumstances that allow me to overlook slips in values? How do I hold myself accountable? Do I know how to play, unwind, rejoice, give praise, complements, be a lover of myself and my partner? Do my partner and I encourage joy, love, and growth transformation in each other?

My partner-in-the-possible and I have had many blessings, as well as several devastating losses. What I have learned from my own experiences and from observing my parents’ relationship is that trust is all there is at the end of the day. You can build, rebuild, and learn all different kinds of new tools. If you do not have trust, you have nothing. My parents totally trust each other, and they have been through some big life challenges over seventy years together. But they stick together like bad spaghetti, hold hands, pray, and always say “we’re in this together”. As I’ve witnessed their journey over the years, especially when things have gone wrong, they never blame the other. They have always been a team. And they share successes the same way. They trust each other.

Love is less about long-term as it is about long-life. If you are just putting one foot in front of the other and have forgotten how to have fun together, and how to have your needs met, what difference does it make if you are married seven years or seventy? Having a long-term relationship can be suffocating, humiliating, depressing, and shorten your actual years if you are not seen, known, and unable to be authentic. But a long-life love is joyful living with  having your deepest desires and needs met—either inside or outside of the marriage (with consent and transparency), so when you are together you are showing up whole and complete.

As people live longer and we evolve and grow individually, it becomes challenging to maintain joyful companionships, partnerships, and marriages. Silver divorces, defined as long-term marriages for people over fifty, are the largest growing demographic for divorce in the country. But there is a lot between all or nothing—married or divorced. Many couples are experimenting with more space, open marriages, mixing up household responsibilities, changing the power of the purse to enable each partner to gain equanimity over decision making, among other options. The list is long, but it always revolves around trust. And each marriage is unique. What works in my relationship with my partner-in-the-possible looks scary to some of our friends. But we are better for each other when we each have breathing room. We are each other’s first go-to in all matters. Period. Full-stop.

"Happy Anniversary Crazy Cake"

My hope is that as my generation collectively ages into our golden years we can find joy in many models of loving relationships that have maintained good communication, consistency, reliability, accountability, and vulnerability, so when a change-up is essential for the survival of the relationship—of love—the trust has been laid firm in the foundation.

Let me know your thoughts on Long Lived Love.

With Gratitude.