By Suzanne Braun Levine
Valentine’s Day celebrates loving and being loved. But, for much of our lives, the festivities commemorated a kind of Romance that our own relationships could only approximate – a sticky sweetness that the classic heart-shaped box of candy symbolized. I don’t know about you, but I could never finish one of those chocolates with the syrupy inside. “Romance” as it was understood back then is also more sweet dream than nourishing reality. In Second Adulthood, though, reality is becoming a priority. We find ourselves on a quest for personal authenticity, and in the process, we are rediscovering the many sources of real love in our lives.
The image of Romantic love we grew up with is about as far away from authenticity as you can get. The ideal partners – the Mr. Right and me – were people that we never knew. Many of the euphoric emotions we were supposed to feel were scripted by others who wrote novels and movies and song lyrics. Aspiring to that scenario’s ideals sent many of us off in the wrong direction.
As I interviewed women for my new book on love at midlife I heard over and over again that authenticity means experiencing The Real Thing on each woman’s own terms. Not by any other measure.
We’ve all heard about women our age who meet up with their old boyfriends, and fall in love with them big time when they have a second chance. Why didn’t they make it the first time? One reason is that the second time around a woman is looking for qualities that she may not have appreciated before. A big one is “niceness.”
Twenty or thirty years ago when most of my friends were “courting,” they would often admit with dismay, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, he’s just too nice.” or “I m not attracted to him, he’s too nice.” What does that mean? “Niceness” doesn’t conform to the Romantic standard – being swept of your feet by a slightly bad boy, who always keeps you guessing. My friends’ confusion also reflected their own doubts about being loveable; anybody who is nice to you has to be some kind of jerk.
With the growing self-confidence and self-awareness that we are now relishing, we can begin to appreciate that being loved – for our less-than-perfect selves – is at least as important a condition for true romance (with a lower-case “L”) as is loving someone else for their own (less-than-perfect) self. Now that’s a notion worth celebrating.
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We will be talking about Love, Romance, “Niceness” and Second Adulthood on Feisty Side of Fifty Radio. Join our conversation.
Date: 2/5/2011
Time: 2:00 PM (Eastern), 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Click here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/feisty-side-of-fifty