Pamela Madsen is in her fifties, stands five-foot three inches tall, and describes herself as “the slightly chubby woman next door.” She further describes herself as a Sex Goddess, and says she can teach any other woman to become one, too.
Last month, I wrote a piece on the differences between what men worried about when they were dating in their teens (“Will she laugh at my peach fuzz?”) compared to their concerns when dating Over 50 (“Will she laugh at my back hair?”). You can read the other 24 here.
When it comes to overall changes in the world of dating between then and now, the very best improvement has to be online dating. Truly, it’s an historic innovation that ranks up there with the cotton gin, penicillin, and those lights in the parking garages that show you which spaces are empty.
Online dating just makes everything so simple.
We got divorced. That’s a fact.
But there’s also a story of our divorces. It’s what we tell ourselves about it.
So the question arises: Can we change that story, and in so doing change how we feel about it?
Going through a Divorce Over 50 isn’t ideal. And it isn’t easy. There’s pain, and sadness, and loneliness.
But, eventually, things improve, and you find you’re able to embrace your situation and move forward toward a brighter, happier future.
So, what steps can you take to get through the darkness and into the light as quickly as possible?
Did you stay in your marriage longer than you wanted to in order to protect your children? Or are you currently staying in your marriage for that same reason?
You think you’re helping them, but are you really? Is it possible that a divorce can actually be the best thing for your kids?
Plenty of things about middle-age really suck. Waistlines expand, hair thins, skin sags. And then there’s all that stuff with the nether regions.
If you’re middle-aged and recently became single, issues like those not only affect how you see yourself, they can also impact your search for a new partner. There’s an understandable anxiety about the future, a lack of confidence in yourself, and a very natural inclination to grab on to someone, anyone, so as to not be alone.
This leads to the fairly common situation of a newly divorced person jumping right into another relationship, quite often with someone just like his or her former spouse. Chances are good you could point to a friend or family member who “remarried their ex.”
Rather than fear the effects of time and race to get ahead of them, I’d argue that single Boomers should slow down, embrace their circumstance, and appreciate the great gift that time has given them. A gift that, if used correctly, makes their search for a new partner so much more likely to be fruitful, and result in an excellent match.
As we all know all too well, there is plenty of pain associated with going through a divorce. And when you’re hurting, it’s only natural to blame someone else. The obvious target, of course, is your ex-spouse.
But the anger is justified, right? He or she may have betrayed you, or mistreated you, or just fallen out of love with you. And you have every right to be furious at what that bitch or bastard did to you.
There’s just one little problem: your ex could not care less. And your anger is only hurting yourself.
If you were a good boy or girl during your marriage and never cheated, going through a Divorce Over 50 means you’ll (hopefully, eventually) be having sex with someone new for the first time in a few decades. And, depending on how long and how acrimonious the break up of your marriage was, it may be the first time having sex with anyone in a year or more. Creating a situation not unlike losing your virginity all over again.
You know the old saying, “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”? Well, since we’ve all survived our Divorces Over 50, has that process made us stronger? Are we tougher, more resilient, better able to cope with the vicissitudes of life we’ll face going forward?
We recently highlighted a piece by Robin Korth about the difficulties she experiences in having sex as a postmenopausal woman in her sixties. Interestingly and admirably, she found the positive in her situation, discovering that it’s led to deeper, more honest relationships.
Erica Jagger (a pen name, and a good one…), who runs the A Sexy Woman of a Certain Age blog, wrote a piece concerning Korth’s article. Jagger was pleased to note she had not experienced any of the problems that Korth had — until she realized she hadn’t gone through menopause yet. Uh-oh.