What They Say About Love
We can all be lucky in love. Surely by now we’ve had two chances: either to stick with the love we found the first time, or to find love a second time … or more. Baby Boomer Larry Lefkowitz has felt the pain of love lost … and is now working out his search for love again.
They say that old love is the best love, and that bad love is no love. There are also other things ‘they’ say about love, but all I am discovering is that it is as funny and fickle as it has ever been.
I am the product of two divorces, evidence that love changes and comes back to you … and leaves you again … and maybe comes back. Someone like me can never know if there is such a thing as everlasting love. But I am relearning what anyone would forget during a marriage. It is hard to get to know people, and harder as you get older. So much of what we know about ourselves becomes lost or compressed with age. When you converse with someone you are attracted to, it sort of comes out in an abridged version.
After all, most of us boomers probably have lived two-thirds of our lives already, and why would anyone want the detailed version? However, each person’s past has a direct effect on what a new couple’s future will be. I think it is important to share doubts, misgivings, and desires with a prospective new mate. Now visiting again with ladies who are complete strangers to me, I find I am reluctant to discuss the things that led to my divorces. Yet, some of those discussions are necessary for two important reasons: to be fair and provide information for them to evaluate, and to make clear that it is my intention to avoid any repetition of those things. While I have not found this to be a problem with women I have met, I have found it a problem with myself.
I don’t believe the circumstances of divorce are necessarily common, yet they are seldom unique. How to present one’s self objectively to a new friend of the opposite sex without running up red flags for them? To their abundant credit, I find women more willing to start fresh without lesions than men I have spoken to about this. Still, there is the common belief that a leopard never changes its spots, which means women will consider men on their current merits, but not without a degree of apprehension. I can’t say I blame them.
But how can one ever prove himself? My guess is that in time, fears and apprehensions will dissipate, but men have difficulty with the idea of ‘in time.’ We are notoriously impatient for all things, particularly for a relationship to progress. This comes from the burnt walnuts in our skulls. All of which is a deterrent, and gives us reason to avoid future relationships after failed marriages. But I believe that treating it that way is wrong and is to be discouraged. At our age, everyone has bags, misgivings, and apprehensions about innumerable issues. It is the ability to follow the voices inside that say ‘stop’ and ‘go’ that will determine whether there is love in your future. The problem is filtering those voices from all the other ones.
No one can do it but us.
Filed Under: Baby Boomers • Larry Lefkowitz
