Friendship
A very close friend of mine became ill a few months ago. While he will survive the illness, his recovery is slow and I miss my great friend so much. His illness brought to my attention the fact that this man has been my rock for a couple of years. That rock is missing from my life right now and I am heartbroken about it.
As I was thinking about the effect that Don has had on my life, I came to the realization that no man has ever been my rock. I know that sounds ridiculous but it’s true: not my husband or my father or any other man in my life. I have had no male significant others for support.
As a matter of fact, if I am using the word rock to describe my friend Don and our friendship, I can use the word quicksand to describe pretty much all of my male role models. With the exception of a few, I have spent my life with quicksand.
I love love loved my father, but he faced his own demons and wasn’t a pillar of strength for me. Sadly, I would guess that my daughter might feel the same way about her father, however, I don’t want to put words into her mouth. I can only project my own feelings there. I had no siblings, so no brothers to look up to.
And, now that I have had a rock in my life, I don’t think I can ever go back to the quicksand that I settled for in earlier years. I need that strength around me. I need that settled feeling around me, that comfortable, soft-place-to-land feeling that comes with a man or woman who is a rock.
If I try hard enough I can actually envision sitting on a rock, resting, regrouping. And, quicksand? I am just dancing. Always dancing trying to stay just above the surface, and constantly floundering.
If you can picture yourself in each of these situations, you know what I’m talking about. And you can feel what I am feeling. Never, ever, ever allow yourself to be sucked in by that quicksand. Go with a rock every time.
Do you have a quicksand story? Or a rock story? I would love to hear from you.
Read MoreI have been picking up a few old hobbies that I used to enjoy, but have somehow left my life. A little sewing, a little knitting, you know, just those things that used to bring me some joy. So I wondered what made me stop doing the things that I loved in the first place? Well, I can’t blame this on anybody but myself, but I have learned that being yourself is everything.
So many of the things I loved to do, were not of any interest to my husband. He didn’t care if I made the pillow shams or the baby bumper. I played the guitar a tiny bit, that was a big yawn to him. I can name so many things that slowly drifted out of my life because they weren’t valued by my husband, and in the name of compromise, I just stopped doing them. My focus began to lean more toward the things that I thought would make him like me better, and we all know how that went.
I remember being very tired in my marriage, I was always tired. It’s no wonder! I was so busy trying to be someone, anyone, that my husband would like. And, of course, nothing I did was going to make that happen. I wasn’t who my husband wanted simply because I was his wife: that made me the lowest person on his priority list. He already had me.
Now, I might be the only one who values me and my interests but, so what. Now I sing out loud at home. I can play the guitar anytime I want, badly I might add. I bought a couple of patterns to sew for my grandson and I am knitting him a sweater. Value that!
But, the best part of being myself and doing those things that I love is that I’m not tired anymore. It’s true, I wake up refreshed and alive and looking forward to the day. I look forward to doing the things that I like and not having to do the things that I pretended to like. You won’t find a Sport Illustrated here!
The moral of the story is this: not being yourself is exhausting. It zaps you of the energy you could be spending on something way more fun. Don’t let this happen to you. Do what you love, no matter what it is.
Read MoreIt’s been a long time in the making, but what you are looking at is the new and much-improved startingoveratsixty.com. Everything that you like about the site is still here (weekly blog posts and all the past posts are here for you to read anytime). But, there are more options now:
- Premium, monthly and weekly content for those of you who want to go a little deeper and create change in your life.
- A Private Facebook Page for members who want to be part of a community of single women 50+, to share ideas, issues, struggles, and solutions with each other, but not with the world.
- The opportunity to work one-on-one with Paula to create a roadmap toward living the life you always envisioned for yourself as a single woman 50, 60, 70 and beyond.
Starting Over at Sixty Can Now be Your One-Stop-Shop
I want you to know that you can come here for help and inspiration: this can be the place where you can find some answers and offer solutions for your Sisters.
We are all in this together, so let’s make this the best time of our lives!
Free for You
For the month of April, you can be part of the Sisters Program free! Just drop me an email (paula@startingoveratsixty.com with your email address and name and I will add you to the Facebook Page.
Starting Over at Sixty is fresh and new and lively, just like you! Take a spin and let me know your thoughts, send me an email to get you on the Private Facebook Page and just enjoy the new content.
Welcome!
Read MoreAs single women, we know the importance of friendship. For many of us, our friendships are our primary relationships: we have family and we have friends. That’s it, that’s everything. So, it’s important to be a good friend. But recently I was faced with the fact that I hadn’t been as good a friend as I could have been to a couple of my besties and it made me mad at myself.
For the last 3 to 5 years I was the one who was dealing with something: I was moving out, I was leaving my husband, I was waiting for the divorce to become final, I was moving into my own place. Me, me, me. Honestly, I have never been this interesting in my life! But, what happened was that I became the topic, always, and I got used to it. I got used to feeling like my life was way worse than any of my friends. I was the story, not them, and I became indifferent to what was going on in their lives. I hate to even admit it.
Recently it came to my attention that plenty of my friends were going through transitions, too, and I had stopped being sensitive to that. I had become so used to being the one, the one who needed support. The one who needed a shoulder to cry on. The one who was putting on a brave face through this tough time in her life. That became my identity and my story. And, really, I am sick of being that woman.
So, friends of Paula, look out. I am putting all my effort into being the friend who I haven’t been over the last few years. I am at the other end of the phone just waiting to hear from you. Wait, I’m not waiting for you to call, I am calling you. I want you to get yourselves all worked up about something so I can talk you down. Just kidding.
I am not kidding about being a good friend, though. I want to get better at it and I want you to get better at it, too. As single women, our friendships are everything and those relationships need to be nurtured constantly. Our friendships are not static, but a dynamic, living piece of our lives that we want to remain solid as we change and age.
I hope this spurs you on to think about your friendships and what kind of friend you are. The good news is that you can change how you are as a friend at any time, so give yourself an assessment and if you need to, do better. Just be a better friend.
Read MoreI have been faced with my own prejudice over the last few weeks, my own antiquated mindset, and here it is: I believed that my married friends were happier than I was, or that being married equals happiness. Ugh! I hate to admit it because I know that being married isn’t always better. But the thought is right there in my brain hiding behind the “carbs aren’t that bad,” and the “I still look forty” myths that I tell myself.
I have had the opportunity to get together with lots of friends over the last month (I think we all hunker down after the holidays until cabin fever sets in and we emerge out of hibernation). As we’ve chatted I have been made aware of my feelings that my married friends don’t have problems, that they don’t share the same issues as I do, and of course, that isn’t true. We are all women over 50 or 60 or 70 and we all have relationship issues, we all face health concern
Do You Romanticize Marriage?
But I definitely have a romanticized version of their lives in my head. I had a romanticized version of my own life in my head, while I was actually living an anything-but-romantic life when I was married. And, these are not women complaining about their marriages or who are unhappy in their marriages. They are simply women, who, I had forgotten, need support from
While this time of life is supposed to be full of joy as we move into a “new frontier,” it is also a rough transition, no matter what your marital status. I don’t know anyone, male or female, that isn’t dealing with challenges related to aging. And, my married sisters are no different. My married sisters may even need me, and you, more because they need someone to confide in, they need someone they can trust when opening up about what is happening in their lives.
So, while I am facing my own prejudices, do you think you view your married counterparts as happier? Do you see them as not needing friendship and support? It’s time for you and me to change those thoughts.
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