Thursday, January 22, 2009

get hitched later in life


Gloria Steinem never thought it would happen to her, either.
The iconic feminist married at 66 - a decision that shocked not only observers.
"We shocked ourselves," the 74-year-old admitted once in an interview about her marriage to human rights activist David Bale. "Neither one of us thought that we wanted to get married."
Marriage at a young age is widely seen as a rite of passage, a step into settled-down adult life. Which may partly explain the cultural pressure for people to marry in their 20s and 30s - and why many want to. But at a later stage in life, after decades as a single person or after a divorce, the assumption that marriage is in your future often diminishes.
Some don't want to compromise their full, independent lives. Others think that they will never find the right person. Many who are divorced are reluctant to repeat the marital experience. For women of a certain age, the dating pool of eligible men shrinks: Even if they want to get married, they begin to accept the fact that they may not.
In Last Chance Harvey, the latest midlife romance movie - an ever-growing genre (Nights in Rodanthe, Something's Gotta Give) that an audience accustomed to nubile onscreen lovers may term ickflicks - Emma Thompson's character, Kate, tells Harvey (a rumpled Dustin Hoffman) what many older single women feel.
"I think I'm just more comfortable with being disappointed," the fortysomething never-married woman says.
But as the movies would have you believe (and as life sometimes demonstrates), romance can happen when you least expect it.
Last September, business author and veteran columnist Diane Francis attended a dinner at the Fraser Institute in Toronto. She was simply minding her rubber chicken when fate intervened. There were 700 guests at the function, but the only available seat happened to be next to hers, which is where construction baron John Beck sat down. By the end of the evening, they were smitten. Now they are married. "When it's right you just know it," she wrote in an e-mail about the speed of their courtship. "We were happily single but are now happily married," she added.
Many women fear they will never find love again because of their diminishing sexual allure - the midlife invisibility factor. "I had always been cute and I am fit, but suddenly, the men were not seeing me any more. They were looking over my head to see the younger, perky-breasted women," says Joan Price, a 65-year-old author and aerobics instructor in Sebastopol, Calif., near San Francisco. "I was crushed by that. I felt I had so much to give, and that my life experience didn't diminish me in the slightest. Rather, it added to what I could offer ... I was missing the chance to love and be loved. I just hated the thought of it being over."
Still, she refused to give in to Botox-mania. "I saw my wrinkles as a good screening test," she says. "I wanted someone who could look past the wrinkles. And I wasn't willing to lie about my age, either. I have spent decades finding out who my authentic self was, and I wasn't going to hide that to be in a relationship."
When she was 57, she met a 64-year-old divorced man, Robert Rice. "This dashing, silver-haired man walked into my line-dancing class, fastened his ocean-blue eyes on me, and I tried to remember to breathe," she recalls. They were friends for nine months before their romantic relationship began. They married in 2006.
For many, it's a matter of waiting for a partner who matches the self you have come to know very well by midlife. Fully formed, well past the malleable stage, you can't fool yourself about what you aren't any more. Finding someone whose odd-shaped pieces of personality fit (or at least complement) the nooks and crannies of your own can feel as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack. But for others, that certainty of self in midlife is what finally makes the prospect of melding two lives in marriage less threatening.
"It was something about me," Ms. Steinem replied when asked what it was about her husband that made her decide to do what she once considered diminishing to women. "I was 66. I was who I was. I no longer felt that I would have to give myself up in a way."
There is a stage of life that marriage seems to usher in when we are younger, but that is also true of the decision to wed at a later age. "We certainly didn't get married to have children," quips Marlene Hore, a legend in the Canadian advertising world for the past 30 years. After her first husband died, she spent 20 years on her own. Then she met, or rather met again, Bill McLaughlin. They had known each other as friends when they were both married. His marriage had ended in divorce. Three years ago, on Valentine's Day, they wed.
"We are trying to achieve other milestones" as a married couple, she says. "It wasn't for security. It was for the relationship."
They each have grandchildren. "It just seemed that we were a family." Walking into the sunset, married, just felt right.
For some people, the prospect of advancing age can be a marriage motivation, too. Like Last Chance Harvey, they don't want to let someone they connect with slip by, partly because, perhaps, they know how rare that connection is to find. "You only have maybe 20 good years left at this age, if you are lucky," I have heard many fiftysomething people say. And while possible physical frailty is a deterrent for some - "Why would I want to take on an old goat?" one older woman said about men her own age - it is also more reason to love, fully, in the moment.
Ms. Price lost her husband to cancer last August. And Ms. Steinem, too, lost Mr. Bale to cancer after three years of marriage. "Even if I knew what was going to happen, I would have chosen to go through with it," Ms. Steinem says.
Ms. Price echoes the sentiment. "I was deeply saddened over the loss

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Interesting love serums


hmmmm..... so I guess, while the love serum was based on women giving it to men to get them to be committed.
Science has answered one of my many quiries- why do women get so attached after 'intimacy' and men may or may not. (Sorry, many women 'say' they can have casual sex--- but from my observation if they do - and the guy does not call back or appear interested after the woman does get upset---) It would seem to me that many women actually use sex to snare men-- .Not that that is news.
What is interesting is that even at this middle-age- men still want casual sex- then --again- get upset with women who are not interested in supplying that-- (I know old subject but one that does not seem to go away- I am hoping with the last post and this one we will have the answers for this and can move onto what makes dating fun for each sex)
1) Women who do not 'give it up easy'--- a) not interested in you
b) playing hard to get to ensure you are interested in
them as people
c) have no interest in sex
d) understand they are subject to the surge of oxtyocin
and make poor mate choices based on sex too early
in a relationship-- they have grown up!
2) Men just want sex with anyone--- jeezzzzh guys could you give me something to work with here- even I am getting jaded with you guys-- and I actually adore men!
Need some 'good guys' to step in here and help me- defend yourselves- please you cannot all be beasts--- I know some good guys----(I think)

love serums- how to get an interest to commit

ANNE MCILROY
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
January 8, 2009 at 8:58 AM EST
She's a woman in love, but her prince isn't ready to settle down. So she crumbles a love drug into his beer, and soon he is talking about marriage and children.
Love potions have long been the stuff of fairy tales, but a U.S. scientist who studies the brain chemistry of social relationships says real-life versions may not be far off.
"Recent advances in the biology of pair bonding mean it won't be long before an unscrupulous suitor could slip a pharmaceutical 'love potion' into our drink," writes Larry Young, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta, in an essay in today's edition of the journal Nature.
Dr. Young and his colleagues are not love doctors, but they are trying to tease out the role genes and hormones play in social bonding in mammals. They hope their work leads to new ways to treat autism, a condition that can disrupt social relationships.
And when it comes to a "love potion," there are ethical as well as strategic issues to consider, Dr. Young said in a telephone interview.
What happens if a partner finds out he or she has been drugged to the altar? Or if the effect of such a potion wears off?
"It is one thing if you voluntarily use something like this to enhance your marriage, but if you are trying to give it to someone else, that is unethical," he said.
The science of love may be a sideline for the researchers, but in 2004 they made headlines when they reported that they had turned naturally promiscuous voles into monogamous ones by tinkering with a single gene.
Since then, there have been a number of steps toward a commitment pill.
Humans have the same gene - known as AVPR1A - that Dr. Young works with in voles. In September, Swedish researchers reported that men with a particular version of it are twice as likely to remain unmarried as other men. Guys with the gene who had tied the knot were twice as likely to report a recent crisis in their marriage.
How could one gene influence something as complex as a romantic relationship?
In voles, it plays a role in how the male brain responds to a hormone called vasopressin, which is associated with pleasure and reward. It is released after they have sex.
Voles have receptors that help the brain process vasopressin. Those with more of the receptors are more likely to be monogamous.
The gene Dr. Young is studying affects the number of receptors the animals have. Prairie voles tend to get attached to one female; they have more receptors. Meadow voles like to play the field; they have fewer of them. Dr. Young and his colleagues were able to change meadow voles' natural propensity to philander by getting the gene to produce more receptors.
Scientists aren't sure exactly how AVPR1A works in humans.
"If there are more receptors in certain parts of the brain that elicit certain types of emotion, it would make that individual feel differently when they are with another person," Dr. Young said.
A love potion would somehow alter this circuitry. It could be as simple as giving men more vasopressin, he says. But it might not be that easy; the number and location of the receptors might be more important than the amount of hormone.
It is a little bit more straightforward with the so-called love hormone, oxytocin. Produced during orgasm and childbirth, the hormone promotes bonding.
In prairie voles, oxytocin is released in the brains of females during mating. Dr. Young says a female with a brain infused with the hormone rapidly becomes attached to the nearest male.
The hormone also plays a role in social bonding in humans. Experiments have shown that people given a nasal squirt of oxytocin are more trusting and more in tune with the emotions of others.
But does it offer a chemical fix for romantic difficulties?
At the University of Sydney in Australia, researchers are conducting an experiment to see if sniffing oxytocin can help couples during marital counselling.
There are probably many hormones - and genes - that affect pair bonding in humans, and one day genetic screening could offer a new way to assess a prospective partner.
"If, in 20 years, we could come up with a list of 25 genes that predicted 50 per cent of the variability in human relationships, then you could have a decent predictor of relationship quality," Dr. Young said.
But DNA testing could thwart Cupid. Genes don't predict how an individual will behave, he says. At best, genetic screening would help people make a better guess about what the future could hold.
What if you find your soulmate, Dr. Young asked, but end the relationship because genetic profiling suggests they may not stick around?
"You could miss out on your perfect partner."