Rediscovering Love After 50: A Gentle Journey

Posted on December 25, 2024 by Sean T. Smith

The sun hangs low over the water, casting long shadows across the bar. She laughs at one of my bad jokes and Buffet plays on the Bluetooth. We are talking about the wedding, and she catches me grinning like a sly old fox. Admiring her, appreciating her. It wasn’t a firecracker kind of love anymore. Not the kind that explodes and leaves you wondering where all the noise came from. This love was steady, like the tide rolling in, quiet but certain.

You don’t chase it when you’re older. You don’t run after it with wild eyes and a pounding heart. Love, after fifty, is something you recognize when it’s there, like the smell of rain or the way a good whiskey feels going down. You know it because you’ve known what it isn’t. You’ve been through the wars—divorces, funerals, long nights when the bed was too big and too cold.

At fifty, you’ve made mistakes. Too many, maybe. You’ve said things you regret and left things unsaid that still hang in the air, decades later. But love now isn’t about regrets. It’s about knowing the weight of them and choosing to stay anyway and not repeat the same mistakes. Now love is about making the very most of the finite time you’ve got left together.

When you’re twenty and in love, the world is an open road with seemingly limitless entrances and exit ramps. The future is wide open and you haven’t been wrecked by bad lane changes. You haven’t had to make those broad detours from your plan where you wind up in a shithole town you never meant to go. There’s an innocence to it. Most of us squander it.

You’ve played the dating game, and even if you got good at it, you know it was never for you. The online chats, the fake profiles, deceptions and illusion of limitless choice gave way to the understanding of just how polluted the dating pool is.

She doesn’t wear perfume. Not like the others. Before, it was all jasmine and rose, too much of it sprayed on wrists and necks. Now, it was soap and clean skin and the faint scent of coffee. It was better this way. Real. No illusions, no pretending to be something you’re not.

You don’t need grand gestures at this age. A shared silence can say everything. The way her hand lingers on yours when she passes you the glass. The way he still looks at you, even when your hair is gray and your laugh lines run deep.

It isn’t the love of poets and songs. It’s the love of mornings spent lounging in bed, the love of knowing how they like their coffee, the love of enduring things together: losses, small triumphs, the soft rhythm of days that blend into years.

It different now because we appreciate it more. It’s precious, fleeting, rare, and not to be squandered. This is the person, your person, that you want to spend the rest of your time on the road with. You want to make them happy and you do everything in your power to make it so and it’s mutual, reciprocated. It’s easy when it’s like that, but you don’t take it for granted.

Love after fifty doesn’t hit like a thunderstorm. It’s a slow rain that waters the roots. It’s the kind of love you can stand under and feel whole.

Divorce Sucks

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Sean T. Smith

Endings and Beginnings

The best stories end with a new beginning. There is a resolution of conflict and the promise of tomorrow. Hollywood love stories often end with crowds cheering, whether it’s on a crowded street, at a church, or a dining room. We’ve seen it over and over again, but the typical romantic comedy doesn’t delve into what happens after that triumphant scene, because that’s when reality kicks in. Nobody wants to watch the doldrums, the long gray of disappointment and work and cold silence and that crushing feeling of loneliness when you share a home with someone who no longer loves you. When couples divorce, it is both an ending and a beginning, and it’s terrible and wonderful, even at its best.

People use the phrase “going through a divorce” because it’s like entering a dark tunnel where the walls crush in and the light on the other side appears eternally distant. But there is that hope of getting “through” to the other side, emerging into a new valley of hope where the sun is warm on your face and the air tastes like hope and the pain and regrets remain in the past where they belong. When you are still going through the darkness, it can feel like it’s forever. It’s not. That’s what my friends keep telling me, and I believe they’re right.

The end of us is the beginning of me

After more than a decade of waking up next to the same woman and kissing her good-morning and raising children, and laughing, fighting, crying, dreaming, destroying, and sharing everything important, I face the task of defining myself apart from her. It’s excruciating, for it is the unraveling of my life, the annihilation of a future I believed in. It is the death of the man I am and the birth of someone new.

I must learn to define myself apart from her, for I was always more than her husband, yet after all these years, it is difficult to recall what I was, because I changed to accommodate her wants and needs and I wanted to see her smile. I wanted to make her happy, I worked really hard to do it, but in the end I wasn’t enough. I didn’t make her happy in the end, and she let me know it. It doesn’t matter anymore, and now I’ve got to see the truth of it, embrace the inherent freedom.

I haven’t been spear-fishing in years. I’m making plans now, with true friends I haven’t been friends to since she and I got together. “It takes a friend to be a friend,” is one of my mantras, and only shared history and the memory of the man I used to be keeps the door open now, and I intend to dive in. The best advice I’ve heard so far on how to deal with divorce is “do the stuff you love to do.” I’m going to reconnect with old friends, repair relationships with family, and become the best version of myself that I can possibly be.

I’m not ready to jump into a long-term relationship, and I know it. I still love scent of the ocean at dawn and the sun going down on the beach, long kisses beside the juke-box, the taste of salt on a women’s neck, and that whisper of hope in my ear.

Phoenix

From destruction comes rebirth. The fire burns along the mountain slopes of Yellowstone, and the forest emerges better and stronger and more vibrant. The undergrowth burns away, the stout trees remain, and the canopy emerges again.

Character and strength burst forth in the wake of destruction, and the things that try to kill us make us more resilient, even though it doesn’t feel that way when we are crushed. We are destroyed in divorce, and can either surrender to the past, or be reborn.

I yearn to share a sunrise with a woman who grins, sand between her toes and music in her soul and goodness in her heart who lights up when she sees me, and shares the feeling that everything is right when she is beside me. I want to drink red wine and joy with her long into the night until the sun comes up, and hear that song in my chest, for that is the glory, those moments of peace and promise where the air is sweet and the world is right and tomorrow is better because we are together.

When we find each other, we will know.

Of Music and Memories

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Sean T. Smith

I’ve heard that smell is the sense most tied to memory. I don’t doubt that, but for me, a certain melody can bring the past flooding back in a way that nothing else can. Music has been an integral part of my life since Junior High, so at my age, that’s a prettty long soundtrack.

The perfect song at the right moment leaves an indellible imprint on me. If I’m in a pensive mood and hear that song again, there is a kind of echo in my soul and I can feel the sun on my face, taste the wine, or catch a whisper of perfume.

When I hear Jimmy Buffet, sometimes I’m back in college on a leaky boat with my old friends, that lazy warmth of sunshine, salt water, and laughter shining strong. Back when I knew I could do anything and the world was my oyster and real problems were things other people had. My biggest concern then was whether we would catch fish or get caught by the Marine Patrol. (We were always in violation of something.)

Rock You Like A Hurricane takes me back to high school, getting pumped up before a big basketball game, and I can smell the gym floor and feel the adrenaline and sweat and anticipation. Basketball was a huge part of my life, and like so many things, it’s faded from my consciousness, something I once did that I no longer do. I miss it sometimes, especially when I hear that song.

The Song Remembers When brings me out west to Jackson Hole and Yellowstone when the air was crisp and the light was golden and tasted like hope. We heard that song on the radio as we drove over the Great Divide, the sun slipping below snow-tipped peaks around us and the sky painted a glory of pink and orange, and I recall that moment, knowing how rare and precisous it was, holding on to it for as long as I could. She and the moment slipped away like old loves always do.

My wife recently turned me on to Van Morrison, songs like Into the Mystic, and I can feel those songs wraping around my soul as we make new memories that one day we will look back on with deep fondness. I am in a season of gratitude and love, keenly aware of the often fleeting nature of peace and passion. It’s priceless, a sensation to be savoured, an emotion to be relished in the moment.

Because the memory is only an echo.

Marriage, Love, Loss and Redemption

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Sean T. Smith

“Happily ever after “is the perfect ending for a fairy tale. Anyone who has been married longer than the honeymoon knows this is utter nonsense. The work is just beginning. Many of us put on wedding rings,hearing the vows which include “sickness and health, for better or worse,” but glossing over those truths with false expectations which can undermine, even destroy unions meant to last. Lord knows I’m no expert on marriage, but I know quite a bit about screwing them up.

The chivalric love of the middle ages, that era of glorious unrequited love and a glimpse of a pale ankle which would send a knight into fits of passion has made its way to the twenty-first century; it’s not quite the same now, but the underpinnings are still there. The romantic notions of “love at first sight,” a “damsel in distress,” and “prince charming” won’t die easily. Despite the shift in gender roles and the feminist revolution, these archaic ideas continue to affect both men and women in different ways.

Many young girls are raised to find a man, get married, and have children, subverting her own needs and dreams to his. There is nothing inherently wrong with getting married and having children, obviously, but the subverting part gets dicey. Before women could vote, work, and be successful in their own right, this paradigm worked on its surface, because women had little choice and therefore small expectations; being trapped in a loveless marriage in a subservient role chaffed and burned, yet divorce was generally not an option. It is now, though, and as women have entered the workforce and become CEOs and Senators, we’ve seen divorce rates climb. It’s partly because of absurd expectations, and mixed messages in our culture.

Women are objectified one moment, placed on a pedestal the next, either the whore, the princess, or the mother. In childhood, young girls are barraged by Disney movies where Cinderella is saved by her prince, where Barbi dolls have enormous breasts and wear glitzy clothes to find Ken. In young adulthood and the teen years, music comes into the mix, with songs of maudlin co-dependence, or upbeat songs of empowerment which are generally about promiscuity rather than brains or will. Then there are the “chick flicks,” the same movie made a hundred times with the “meet-cute,” the initial awkwardness, the falling in love, the break-up and then the reunion, often with people clapping around them. Ugh.

Boys are raised playing army and football, where aggression is rewarded and competition is fierce and the key to any sort of success. They hear the same songs, watch the same movies, and the message of strength, even dominance finds its way into their souls. No man or boy wants to be the “Beta.” Everyone wants to be the Alpha male, because that’s what the girls and women like, too. Be stronger, don’t cry, hit harder, run faster. And later, make more money. For in adulthood, this is how males measure their prowess.

It’s a wonder anybody stays married at all.

Women are taught by society to want a man who is strong and fierce, but who is also sensitive and compliant, who will shed a tear during Sense and Sensibility and listen patiently to her problems, but who will also throat-punch the jerk who disrespects her. Men are taught to suppress their feelings, to be stoic and strong, and internalize their stress and problems. Couples enter into marriages with these presets programmed into us, and when things go south, wonder what the hell happened.

Marriage is hard work. The hardest work there is. People change and grow, and hopefully they can do this together; this is usually a choice, whether conscious or not, and when a couple doesn’t grow together, they will inevitably grow apart. When things get close and mean, when the walls are pressing in, it’s easy to look around and decide that there is an easier way, that you’d be better off where the grass is a deeper shade of green. This is the message our culture continually bombards us with, through music, movies, and social media, this facade of pretty lies. People break and lives are destroyed as a result.

The fairy tale was never real. But marriage can be glorious and fulfilling. I’ve been through the crud and the blood and the muck, and I’ve had seasons where I woke up in the morning with an elephant on my chest.For some people, there is no other way, and my heart breaks for them. I’m glad that my wife and I didn’t break, though. That we’ve decided that we’re going to grow together rather than apart. And in making it through the terrible, we’ve learned some important things about ourselves and each other. We look at one another now and say “till the wheels come off.”

We’ve made a conscious effort to make each other better. With God’s help we’re going to make it. Partners, for better or worse, and that’s better than the fairy tale.

The Last Thing I’ll Ever See

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Sean T. Smith

Her face was the last thing John saw there in that hospital bed with the beeping sounds and sad thin sheets. Her eyes were the placid blue of the reef in the afternoon, a kind of wistful hope shining from her while she held his hand at the end. Her hair was close cropped and grey and her oval face lined with worry and years and the love of a man she’d walked through hell and back with.

John’s eyes remained open, and he saw her for who she was, for who she had always been, and he perceived this not with his eyes but with his soul, floating, unfettered now and able to walk through a door to yesterday, lingering above each memory, tasting the truth of each moment as though for the first time, savoring the fleeting preciousness in a way he wished he had before.

A tumble of long dark hair falling over her shoulders the first night they’d met so long ago, sultry and whispering, her skin smooth and pale in the night, an eager vulnerability about her which seemed to fill a deep need in John, a missing piece he hadn’t known existed until he met her. The rush of falling in love, the wedding down in the Keys beside the ocean, when she put on his ring and life stretched out before them full of possibility.

He saw their first child born, her lying on the table of this very hospital, on a different floor, a happy place of life and rebirth. Her face shimmering with sweat and the tears in her eyes when John placed the infant against her breast. He saw her on the beach, the waves surging while she held a small child’s hand, giggling and laughing, the sun bright and warm and good.

The journey darkened then, and John found himself drifting through a murk he would rather not face, a certain truth which makes a man hurt. He saw her anguished tears and heard her sobs and felt a deep pain emanating from her wounded spirit. There was a bitter taste to that time, to those memories which wrapped around each other until they became years interspersed with moments of light, but which were not well lit, and there was a heaviness in that time, and the darkness had a kind of weight. There were demons there, and they were mean and bent upon destruction.

He heard the angry accusations, the shouting and the denials and felt a loneliness creeping cold into his bones, for it was in both her and him back then, and now it felt worse than it did at the time. Perhaps because it was done and there are things a man can’t take back even though he wishes he could, and sometimes it’s years and that’s a hard thing to face, there at the end. There was an eroding of the soul, a depletion of spirit which caused her to retreat into herself, and neither of them knew it until it was almost too late.

The journey was not yet finished.

There was rebirth and renewal, and he saw her shedding the weight she’d gained over the course of four children and a decade and she was emerging again like a rose which has lain dormant through the cold hard winter, only to blossom once more under the kiss of the warm spring sun. She laughed and sang and danced and looked upon him with eyes bright again. Her canvas was fulll of color and swirls of crazy dreams and she found a truth and validation in her art because it was meaningful and good and true and there was healing in it.

Her childish nature radiated from her, not in a petulant way, but in the way of wonder and glory, and she grew, becoming herself at last, transforming into the woman she’d always wanted to be because she was finally discovering who that woman was. He watched her gaze in awe upon the streets of Florence, a glass of red wine in one hand and her head tilted back to embrace the gentle sun. He felt the wind rushing at his face, top down, her singing beside him as they crested the Golden Gate Bridge, driving without a destination in mind for the journey then was the purpose, the little things and shining moments of glory. The years were happy and tinged with a sort of golden light and they went by too fast.

Her face was the last thing John saw, and that was how it should be.