LOVE BEGINS AT 40
Men and women have to redefine themselves after a relationship
ends, and reinvent their lives. If they do it well, it can lead to the
most satisfying and successful years they've had. Dating successfully
after divorce or a breakup require several steps to recover from the
breakup.
Understanding what went wrong in the last relationship, so you don't repeat the pattern.
Identifying the kind of partner you're looking for and developing social networks involving these kinds of people.
Some people never date again or don't do so for a long time. People who
wait a long time, or never date are trying to avoid repeating old
mistakes and having hurt feelings, loss, disappointment and grief.
This is akin to not changing anything in your departed partner's
closet, because you don't want to face the pain. A better way to do it
is to work through the pain, and learn from it as you go. You can figure
out what went wrong, what your mistakes were, and how to correct all
that and re-think your idea of relationships. This may require the help
of a therapist.
Once you've taken the steps needed to recover from a breakup ,
finding a new love is simple, because you've changed the odds to be in
your favor. But there are a few tips to help you as you start dating again. LOVE BEGINS AT 40
1. Don't have sex right away with your new partner.
Keep in mind that, if you have sex right away, it usually brands the
relationship as sex -only and you don't get taken seriously. So, if you
want to see if you can manage it, pick someone you're attracted to, but
realize there's no relationship there. Also, if you are the type who
bonds upon having sex, keep that in mind -- your partner may not be, so
make sure there's some bonding there before you try it.
2. Take precautions when you do have sex.
Safer sex, of course. If you're female, don't just worry about pregnancy
-- make sure you're informed about disease, as well. Sexually
Transmitted Diseases (STDs) can be deadly and devastating, so always
provide a condom and insist on using it unless you're both tested and in
a committed relationship (with someone you can trust).
3. Deal with the awkwardness of sex with a new partner.
I recommend the zen idea of a beginner's mind: Accept that everything
you’re doing now is new to you, and open yourself to learning
about it. Wide-eyed wonder at whatever happens is very attractive. I’m
not talking about being brainless or thoughtless. On the contrary. A
beginner’s mind is alert, observing, and open to new ideas. Your
objective is to learn — about what people are doing, who they are, what
the possibilities are and how it all fits in to your goals.
Everything you’ve learned about relationships and dating
in your past is certainly useful, and you’ll draw on it as we go along,
but your general approach to this process is as a beginner -- 'I’m new
at this, I want to learn.' Because you are a beginner, you can open
lots of conversations by simply asking questions about what’s going on.
LOVE BEGINS AT 40
One reason your relationships tend to fail is that you start out well
enough, but then slowly, without realizing it, you start to give away
your power. This process is insidious and before you know it, instead of
having a healthy give and take, the relationship has lost its balance.
When you give your power away it erodes your self-esteem
and you start to feel a sense of unease and resentment. This affects
how you show up as half of a couple and can’t help but create tension
and dissatisfaction.
Giving up your power never feels good, though it may feel comfortable. It’s a habit you may be repeating without your awareness.
How you’re giving your power away in relationships:
1. You avoid conflict: No one enjoys conflict in a relationship,
but all too often a woman will ask me, “How do I confront him with
this?” I then ask her why she’s using the word “confront?” Why not
consider how you may have an adult discussion about a problem. If you
frame it in your mind as a confrontation, of course you’ll want to avoid
that. If you think you’re someone who avoids conflicts, you might want
to learn some new skills on how to appropriately present your needs.
2. You’re afraid of what others will think: If you find yourself not quite being honest to your friends and family
about the state of your relationship, you’re doing yourself a great
disservice. You’re at risk of starting to believe your “lies” and not
facing the truth about what is hurting you. You may be embarrassed or
you may be afraid they’ll be mad at you — so you fake what you’re
feeling to avoid their judgment. When you conduct your life worried
about what others think, you will never be true to yourself and always
feel unfulfilled in love.
3. You compare yourself to others: Comparing yourself to others
will only cause you misery and pain. Anytime you look outside yourself
for validation you will be disappointed. If you see a loving couple out
in public, you might compare by asking yourself, “Maybe he doesn’t love
me enough, why doesn’t do that with me?” A better response is to let
them inspire you to be more like that yourself. One response adds more
love to your life while the other replaces it with a complaints.
LOVE BEGINS AT 40
4. You diminish yourself to please someone else: As women we are
more powerful than we know. Women who feel their power will sometimes be
attracted to “weaker” men. At first the imbalance of power feels good
but it soon becomes frustrating. But to show your displeasure will make
the man feel bad just for being who he is. So you resign yourself and
put a barrel over your “light” so you don’t show him up. This happens in
many subtle ways, by acquiescing to his needs and feelings and
discounting your own.
Giving your power away hurts YOU the most.
Take a good look at how you’re showing up in your relationships. If
any of these examples feel like you, do the work you need to stop giving
your power away in love and then hopefully find a healthy balance that
works for you in your relationships.
It is always very hard to break up. A break up is one devastating moment that one can ever experience. The unbearable pain and the harsh emotions that come along with it
quantify many times over especially you are still actually very much in
love.
All is not lost, indeed, as you can certainly repair your
relationship provided that you are aware that all relationships are
built on love and faith and honor for each other. These are the things you have to work into your relationship as well.
Here are some of the things that you must and should do in your quest to mend your love affair….
Be honest – with yourself and your partner. Understand why you two
broke off the relationships in the first place and be honest about it,
especially you were the one who messed things up. Own up to your
mistakes and resolve that it will never happen again.
LOVE BEGINS AT 40
Accept differences, accept responsibilities - Realize that both of
you aren’t perfect people— and both have various faults as well. That’s
why both parties should accept each other as they are, with their faults
and limitations. Remember, it is probably these differences that made
the two of you drifted apart.
Be practical – Do not expect miracles to happen. You both need to work
on the relationships to make it happen. And realise each other’s
shortcomings and work from there to strengthen the relationships. Do
expect perfection... you’ll never get it. Think of the things that kicked off your relationship. Be truthful
about them. Work at being more loving, faithful, compassionate and
caring. Learn to forget and forgive. Mistakes will be done by both of
you; you have to realize that.
Communicate – Most couples break up due to lack of communications.
Therefore, its pertinent to keep the conversation lines open at all
times. You have to be frank with each other when you talk. If there is
something haunting you, do make sure to share it with each other. Don’t
push anything back—bring it to the fore and discuss it. Any skeletons
that you sweep under the already dusty carpet are sure to spring up and
haunt you later. It is always better to bring them out when there is
still time and talk about it.
However, if talking is simply compounding matters, then it might be a
good idea to shut up for a while. Stay away from each other when things
get too heated and think about things. When you do that, you aren’t
retreating; you are actually behaving like a sensible and respectable
person. It also helps because you can clear your mind for a while and
get the larger picture in your mind.
Show your feelings - Be grateful for your partner, for what they mean
to you, for what they do to you. It is best to live with each other
amicably and make the most of the time you have with each other. Support
them in everything, and they will reciprocate with their support as
well. Share in their joys and sorrows. Praise them on their
achievements, whether big or small.
Do things that you like to do together - This is a notable method to
save a relationship. A lot of people who have been together for sometime
often could not recall why they got together in the first place. Think
about the time when you were attracted to your partner the first time.
Try to rediscover that attraction.
Some of these methods may seems very petty in order to save your
relationship, but they are quite practical and something you could use
without worrying about any harm being done.
Get inspired from these simple strategies and you will find how they
work for you. With great effort, you will be able to rescue your
relationship. When that happens, make sure nothing happens to make it
again.
LOVE BEGINS AT 40
We all grow with our age; with nearly all of us turn serious and
reserved when they reach at the age of forties, fifties and sixties. However, you
would find people whose heart remains young and energetic, these just
tend to live with their grown up styles. They are also seen expanding
their social networks to an intense degree. And the nearly all
appropriate place for such people could be the senior dating
sites. But when it comes to using these sites, you should know the ways
of using them. The below is the list of key instructions to use these
websites.
People coming to these sites just search for people as travel
companions, senior activities, activity partner etc. So, before you head
to such websites, ensure you simply limit yourself to any competent
site, which allows you to use it for free for limited time duration. In
this way, it will help you a lot understanding the trustworthiness of
these sites with the help of the free services. Once you do so, you
could think of upgrading your membership to the premium ones. Once you
upgrade yourself at such places, you are additional likely to meet
senior friends online.
While using these senior dating sites, make sure you remain polite and guarded while someone contacts
you. You should first communicate with this person via the emails simply
for a while, and when you do so you know about this person and its
nature and after that you can share the contact amount. This exercise
is nothing but checking the patience of the person, anyone who seems to
be impatient would like to meet the person immediately without actually
talking and discussing around him should be avoided for all the known
reasons.
LOVE BEGINS AT 40
Protect your identity: While checking the site senior improved make
sure you do not just display your address, contact numbers or any other
kind of personal information approximately you until and unless you are
ready to meet that person. Once you meet genuine people you can go ahead
and carry out the dates with each other via online activities including
playing games or sharing over a forum or some private chat rooms.
Always bear in mind that these senior sites or communities are very much
vulnerable to scammers; so superior make sure you remain very cautious
to a wide range of profiles which appear fishy. Go for the people who
happen to have their pictures over their profile of their current age.
It is always suggested to meet over a coffee which doesn't last more
than twenty minutes rather than meeting for an hour on a dinner with an
enormous charge and thus find a wrong person.
When the divorce process begins to move along, you may find that your self-esteem is completely gone. You need to learn how to rebuild your self-esteem so that you can move on successfully after the divorce.
Moving on successfully means that you are okay not being married anymore.
LOVE BEGINS AT 40
It may take months or even years to get there, and it is a lot
of work for some. Some people will take it really hard and the shock of
the divorce can be
devastating. You need to learn how to focus on the positive things and
learn how to appreciate what you have. You will feel a lot better about
your life when you learn how to think positively.
You should never beat yourself down. You will want to replace any
thoughts where you doubt yourself by stating something that you like
about yourself and keep telling yourself that you’re okay and everything
will be okay. You should learn to use positive words to describe
yourself like smart, beautiful, ambitious, and so on. Your image of
yourself will affect your life a lot.
To think positively you need to think things to encourage yourself. You should use self-esteem
building activities like talking to yourself in a mirror. Tell your
reflection how you feel about yourself in a positive way. You should
make encouraging statements and you will actually begin to feel better
by doing such things. The first step to rebuilding your esteem after divorce
is to let go. You need to place the past in the past and begin to think
about ways that you can improve the way you feel about yourself.
LOVE BEGINS AT 40
One way to let go of the past is to get dressed up and go to your
favorite restaurant and eat alone. If you can go there by yourself and
have dinner, then you know that you will be okay. You know that you can
be okay with being alone. However, if you feel extremely uncomfortable,
ask yourself why and then tell yourself some encouraging statements so
that you can feel better about the situation and accept being single.
No one will stare at you, no one will notice you and at the end of the
meal you will be much stronger.
You should also let go of any goal of being perfect. This will allow
you to adjust and you will lighten up about the entire situation. This
is when you should tell yourself that you’re perfectly fine being who
you are. If you decide you need to make changes you need to be able to
stand on your own. You should decide what you need to do to find yourself again and then reach out. Your level of success and confidence
will rise.
Tired of making small talk and want to bring up more personal topics
and build more meaningful relationships? Taking conversations beyond the
surface level isn’t always easy. It’s comfortable at the surface and
often moving deeper entails a bit of risk. But the most rewarding relationships and conversations tend to happen when you move beyond the
surface.
How do you take your conversations deeper?
Emotionally Lead First
Any time you want to take a conversation deeper, you’ll usually have to lead first, emotionally.
Let’s say you want to establish more trust with someone. You want
them to feel comfortable confiding in you and sharing their secrets with
you.
Naturally, you can’t ask them to share their secrets with you if that
trust isn’t there yet. So how do you actually get someone to open up?
You do it by opening up first. Take the first step in moving the
relationship to the next level by sharing your secrets and granting your
trust, first.
When the other person really feels like you trust them and have
opened up to them with a deeper part of yourself, they’ll feel
comfortable doing the same.
This principle applies to just about any aspect of taking
conversations deeper. It applies to trust, vulnerability, realness, respect and so on. Give first, before asking the other
person to do the same.
Deliberately Choose Deeper Topics
When you initially start dating, most people have about 10 questions or topics they tend to gravitate
back to. Questions like “how is your day?” “how are the kids?”and
“what’s new at work?” aren’t bad questions, but they won’t help you move
conversations beyond the surface.
Once you start seeing the person on a more regular bases, experiment with trying to move topics to a deeper level by asking
more important questions and sharing more impacting stories and facts
about yourself.
Ask others about their passions. Share yours. Ask them about their
life philosophy, or their 10 year goals. What makes them feel most
alive? What are the three most important things they want to do before
they die?
Naturally, don’t pile these questions one on top of another. Ask them
when it feels natural and when it feels like you already have rapport
with one another.
Start conversations at the surface level and naturally work your way
to deeper and more meaningful conversations. Start with the “autopilot”
questions, then ask slightly more meaningful yet unobtrusive questions.
Then when those conversations start to flow naturally, ask even more
intimate questions.
Remember also that these kinds of conversations are a two way street.
For someone to feel comfortable answering a question like these, you
also need to be sharing similarly intimate details about yourself.
There are few things more rewarding than a great conversation and a great friendship.
By leading first emotionally and deliberately choosing deeper and more
intimate topics, you’ll pave the road to having relationships that are
truly fulfilling.
LOVE BEGINS AT 40
LOVE BEGINS AT 40
Practically everyone whose been in a serious romantic relationship
with all of the deliciously intense and passionate feelings that go with
it, have at one time or another experienced jealousy, which is really
the fear that ---to some degree--- your partner is not being exclusive
to you either physically or emotionally. But it’s what you do with your
feelings of jealousy that can bring you closer together or ultimately
tear your relationship apart.
Jealousy arising from the thought of your loved one with someone else
can trigger many feelings. You may believe your jealousy is an
indicator that you care about your partner. In this case, you see it as a
sign of strength in your relationship; and perhaps it even elicits
romantic feelings. On the other hand, jealousy can trigger feelings of
sadness, anxiety,
anger or even intense rage. That rage could be directed toward a person
perceived as the ‘object of your partner’s affections’, your partner or
yourself (in the form of putting yourself down because of your
perception of not “measuring up” to that ‘other person’). In addition,
jealousy can naturally lead to mistrust, which can wreak havoc in every
aspect of your relationship.
One of the biggest problems with your feelings of jealousy is that
they can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, there’s no
guarantee that a relationship will stay intact forever, or that your
partner might not fall for someone else; but jealousy can be the
catalyst in a chain of events that makes one of these possibilities
become a reality.
Handling jealousy requires a look at how much you trust your partner.
The fact is that it’s normal for him or her to find others attractive
from time to time, just as you do, while understanding that this is not
really a threat to the relationship unless acted upon. In other words,
mental exclusivity is a very high, perhaps impossible standard.
Obsessing about this only leads to needless pain.
Overcoming your jealously also requires you to look inside yourself.
If you’re constantly worried by the idea of being compared to others
your partner may find attractive, chances are your self-esteem
could use a boost. Ask yourself where is the evidence that I am not
good enough to withstand the comparison? Is this completely true? One
resource for helping you to overcome these types of negative attitudes
and beliefs about yourself is my book Stage Climbing: The Shortest Path
to Your Highest Potential.
LOVE BEGINS AT 40
Of course, there are some situations where jealousy is a sign that
there is a realistic threat of your partner being involved with others,
despite denials. In this case, jealousy is more or less a wake-up call
and a signal to you either to have a talk with your partner or seek
professional help to overcome what may be a much bigger issue in your
relationship.
Only you can decide if your jealous is insecurity, or an indication
that something in your relationship needs a closer look. Before
jealousy makes your biggest relationship fears a reality, you have the
power to make a change, either within yourself or with your partner, to
get your relationship back on the right track. And remember, most
people have experienced jealousy at one time or another. It’s what you
do with it that dictates the outcome!
