Relationships and Dating
Three years ago I ran away from home: I moved out of the home that I shared with my husband before he returned from work at 6 p.m. I moved into a one-room industrial loft, the one in the photo here, that I absolutely loved. The apartment felt small and safe. It was the one little place where I could hide from the world while my marriage was crumbling.
Last Saturday I took a giant step in building a happy life for myself again: I moved again. I now own my own condo (well, of course, the bank owns my condo!). I have lots of space and a wonderful view, two stories and the biggest closet I have ever owned (I will post some pictures when the boxes are unpacked)! And, while it is filled to the brim with boxes right now, it represents a new beginning for me; a new, happy chapter filled with hope and success and family and friends. “All that, just from changing your address,” you might ask. Yes! Yes! Yes! When I moved to my loft, I felt that it was important for it to look like home for my adult children. I wanted them to know that no matter where I lived, it would be their home. It might have been just one room, but it was their home. And that’s what it was, their home.
Now, while this is still their home, it is my home, it is me. My new place is not a miniature replica of my married life: it is a home for a single woman over 60 who has a full, exciting life. It is a place where I can entertain, where my children can sleep in separate rooms when they visit (rather than all in one room) and it is a place where I can really start my life over. There is nothing about it that screams, “I am a sad, sad woman who is having to pick up the pieces of her failed marriage and trudge through life.” Instead, I feel like it says, “Paula has overcome a mountain of obstacles and look at her now!”
Join My New Program!
So, I am launching a test program for Starting Over at Sixty followers designed to build community among women who are 50+ and single and want to live the fullest lives possible. I mention it here because the focus of the group will be how to take steps forward in order to live a life on the outside the way you feel on the inside: vibrant, vital and relevant. I want you to live in alignment! I hope you will join other women who support each other through this chapter of life. Please register here. This test group is 100% free and launches August 1, 2018. I can’t wait to get started!
Read MoreMy son Ryan told me about moviepass and I joined immediately. If you are a big movie goer (and I am and so is he) then this tip is worth its weight in gold. You go to moviepass.com to subscribe for just $9.95/month. My friend Don happened to subscribe when they were having a deal of just $6.95/month but I don’t know how often that happens. You are required to pay for the year when you become a member. That’s it. Just wait for your card to arrive. When you want to go to a movie, go to the moviepass app and look up the movie and theater and times available. When you are walking up to the ticket counter just check in with your moviepass app and hand the ticket seller your card and you are all set. It looks like any other credit card. You are handed a ticket.
The card allows me to see movies that I might otherwise pass up because of the high price of tickets. Or if I really like a certain film I can see it again. You are only allowed one movie per day as if anyone would want to see more than one a day. This is not a commercial or an endorsement and I wasn’t paid to write about this. I just love the product.
You can see more weekly tips on Starting Over at Sixty in the months ahead, so if you have a good one to share please send it to paula@startingoveratsixty.com. It can be about anything: recipes for one, style, entertainment, decorating a smaller space, savings. I just want to hear from you and want to share good ideas with my girlfriends here at Starting Over at Sixty. We are all better and stronger together. Can’t wait to hear from you.
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Do you feel like you keep starting over with the same goals? About this time every winter I realize that I have already given up on many of the things that I wanted to change about myself in the new year. About two weeks in! I can’t believe it. Then I tell myself that next Monday I will kick into gear, and so it goes all year long. I start over at something almost every Monday, 52 times each, in some cases. Then I start with the same goals next year. I get mad at myself for not following through and I stay mad at myself for being so spineless. Rats!
But every once in a blue moon a new behavior takes hold, and I am super proud of myself when it does. Good job. For example, I wanted to drink more water every day and started it in the new year a couple of years ago. That lasted about a week, then I went back to my old ways. But, each Monday I started again trying to drink more water daily until it actually happened. Imagine that. Now I don’t have to try, it just happens. Good for me.
Things that many of us vow to do in the new year are: lose weight (of course), spend more time at the gym, walk 10,000 steps a day, spend less money, floss every day, keep the closet organized, make the bed every day, read more and watch less, clear the clutter at home, learn how to _______ (fill in the blank). You get the picture. If it is any consolation, most of those are on my list every annually.
Keep Starting Over Until Change Occurs
My point is that without starting, no change will occur. Without beginning to make the change you will never make the change. And the number of times that you begin has nothing to do with it. If I hadn’t begun over and over trying to incorporate more water in my day, it would not have happened. If I don’t make an effort to add some steps into my day, I will not add steps into my day, it’s that simple. What I want to say to you is this: no one achieves progress by not starting somewhere. You may have started a diet on January 2nd, and fell off the wagon on January 5th, but that is no reason to stop trying. And if there are people in your life who tell you anything different, tell them to kindly pipe down. Keep starting over. Yes, keep starting over every week if that is what it takes to get you to that one Monday when you just do it, whatever it is. Keep working toward 10,000 steps daily even if it is one added step each day. You will get there eventually. Keep starting over making your bed every day until you notice one week that you did it for seven days, then do it some more.
And, weight loss, I know it is tough. I have struggled with it for years, but for some reason, this time around I seem to be on a good track. I would not have found this track, however, without starting a diet every Monday 842 times! Who knows whether this time will work or not, but so far so good. I may get rid of a few pounds or I may not. I may get rid of a lot of pounds. And if I don’t, then I will start over.
The people who do not ever reach any goals, no matter how small, are those who do not start to make a change in the first place. They don’t want the personal let down. Or they don’t have the confidence. They don’t take the first step and they let doubting Thomases interfere, they listen to the little devil sitting on one shoulder. Maybe they are insecure or maybe they are perfect, who knows. I am pretty sure I am not either of those.
The moral of this story is this: I had to start my life over at sixty. Didn’t want to, didn’t like it, didn’t know how. And, I failed at every at everything I started, then, cried and screamed and threw a fit, then started over, rinse and repeat! Now, it is finally working. 2018 looks so bright and happy and fun and fulfilling, but it would have never happened if I hadn’t started over a million times.
What Are You Starting New in 2018?
Tell me what goals you have for 2018. Is this the first time you have worked on this particular goal or are you starting over again? It doesn’t matter how many times you have tried to conquer it, start over and do it.
Read MoreI know you have all heard the saying that holding on to anger is like trying to kill your husband by drinking poison yourself; well it is something like that. Last week I received a phone call from a woman who just began to spew anger, not at me, but on me. I was having a perfectly great day and in 20 minutes I was a puddle on the floor. I was a wreck. It was as if I had stepped into quicksand. My mind was transported back to the terrible years I spent living with heartache and anger before I left my marriage. I actually began to sweat, physically sweat, while she was talking to me. I understood her pain, but I didn’t want to be part of that world any longer, and just hearing about it made me so sad. I thought to myself, “how did this just happen? How did I go from happy and looking forward to the weekend, to a red-faced woman with tears and snot running down my face?” I know you can’t make yourself let go of past issues, that happens in its own time. But, you can give yourself some guidelines, or rules, to follow that will help you have more good days than bad. When you are armed with your own “blueprint” of who and what you want in your life you are released from so much of the bad.
My Blueprint
My rules, the ones that I try to live by, are pretty simple. I have learned that if I am dreading seeing someone, whatever the reason, it’s time to give that relationship another look. It may not be a friendship that is worth keeping. Of course, if it’s a relative, there is no getting out of it, good luck with that. But you can move friends who constantly bring you down to a lower “importance” tier on your imaginary chart. If you feel guilty about that, don’t. It puts you in a bad mood and why would you let someone do that to you? You are doing it to yourself!
A more serious matter is betrayal. If I feel that someone has betrayed me, and there are lots of levels of betrayal, I’m most likely out. Once that trust is broken I am probably never going to get it back. I’m just not. Whether it is a friend, spouse or co-worker, we are done. Remember, these are the rules that I follow, and they don’t have to be your rules. One thing about being older is that I know myself and what works for me. I thought I could bring my marriage back from the dead once, but looking back, there was no way. I was sleeping with the enemy, literally. I wasted fifteen years trying to figure out how to like my husband when the answer was right in front of me: I was never going to like him again. Sadly, betrayal won that battle.
That is my blueprint, but it doesn’t have to be yours. You may be a person who is able to work through betrayal and that is great for you. Or you don’t want to sever a relationship that isn’t working, whatever the reason. That’s OK.
Forgive and Move Forward
No matter what rules you live by in the friendship/relationship piece of your life, start to notice how you feel when you are with certain people. Are you excited? That’s perfect. Are you clenching your teeth? You might want to re-think that one. And, what about forgive and forget? Forgiveness is a wonderful quality and one we should all practice. But, forgetting is a mistake in my book. One thing we old girls have is experience, and to forget what we have experienced would be to erase our past. I say, forgive and move forward. You should take what you know and put it in your back pocket for the journey ahead.
Grow Younger
Are you still wondering where the grow younger part is? Well, people tell me all the time now how great I look, and I know they aren’t talking about my body! They are talking about my face: I knocked ten years off my face by leaving a bad situation. I can even see it in the mirror, so I know they aren’t blowing smoke up my bottom. Letting go of the muck that I was living in has actually made me look younger, something all the botox and fillers in the world couldn’t do. I promise if you let go of some of the things that are on a reel in your mind running over and over you will look, and feel, younger, too. Take a look at the photo of me above and the photos on the site that were taken more recently. Wow!
Read MoreHaving been in a bad marriage for more than thirty years, I thought I was the biggest loser on the planet. I was certainly not attractive and was unappealing. I was overweight. I was not good at making money. I wasn’t sexy at all and actually had zero sex appeal. I spent too much money. I was the b-word.
Well, guess what I have learned about myself in the last three years since I left my husband: there’s nothing wrong with me after all! That’s right, there is nothing wrong with me. I have a feeling that if you are reading this article, there is nothing wrong with you either. Amazing, right? It took me a long time to get here, though. After years of being beaten up, figuratively, when I left my husband and moved into a one-room loft, I was what I refer to as a hot mess. I was truly broken, and I thought I was all used up. Like I was unlovable, like I had grown thorns on my body. I had definitely built a wall around me to protect myself from the unhappy life that I lead with my husband. I honestly thought that the real me was gone, buried so deep that I wouldn’t get it back.
It took some time, a lot of time, in fact. And, while I worked to be content on the inside, it didn’t hurt when a man paid attention to me, whether as a date or a new friend. It felt good and made me feel like “I’ve still got it.” That is probably the icing on the “new-old Paula.”
Be OK with Yourself First
So, if you are in the position of having to start over, due to divorce or death, follow these steps and you will get it right. First, you need to be OK with yourself. If your life is in transition, this is the best time to take stock of who you are and who you want to be and figure out what changes, if any, need to be made. For me, I was in a business that I despised, and I needed to get out of that no matter what the consequences. I did and it cost me but I did it, because as long as I was trying to be something I was not my life was never going to improve. Getting out of that business allowed me to spend time thinking about what I wanted my life to look like moving forward. It gave me permission to dream. I was out from under a huge boulder.
I started thinking about what I used to like to do, before I met my husband, before I had children and before I was Mrs. Harer. My husband valued popularity: I know it sounds goofy but it is true. So, to make him like me I valued who I was outside myself. I wasn’t happy. I love being a party girl as much as the next person, but that as a constant was not fulfilling. Now I have a great time when I am with people but it does not define me. I knit, I go to the movies alone and I read. I am happy with myself.
When you can find that girl inside who you were many years ago, I think it makes for a more grounded feeling. I know who I am and I know what I like and what I don’t like and I don’t have to change that. How empowering is that?
Then Add in What You Like to Do
When I was first living alone again I joined everything I could in order to meet new people: neighborhood groups, a single women’s social group ( I think I would be more comfortable calling it a gang), a book club, and a couple other meetups. I needed to feel connected. But, after a while, I began to dread some of the meetings and realized that they just weren’t me. I could get to know more new people but I wasn’t enjoying the activities and the people weren’t necessarily a good fit for me. Lesson learned. However, I love singing in a citywide choir and I love volunteering in that choir at the women’s prison near my home. So, I have found out what I like to do and what I can live without and I am making changes in how I spend my time. I don’t want to do what I don’t want to do anymore.
Take the Risk
Now, the hard part. Dating after sixty is horrible. There’s no other way to put it. HORRIBLE! But if having a man in your life is something that you want, and I do like having a man in my life, then you just have to put yourself out there. Here’s how I look at it: I wasn’t going to meet someone by sitting at home and telling myself how gross online dating sites are. They are, it’s true, but they are what is available, so I just had to buck up and get onboard. The point I am making is that whatever method you use to meet a new partner or friend, you have to be proactive. When I was in my twenties I didn’t have to be proactive. Those days are over. And sitting on your couch complaining about how there are no men doesn’t help either.
I have met many frogs. And it’s not like all of them call me back, so I’m a frog too. But, once in a while, I have met a nice guy: he might be a friend or might be more. There are still a few great guys, but I would not have met them without taking the risk, without putting myself out there. So if you want to meet a partner or a friend, put on your big girl pants and get out there.
Going through all these steps have helped me figure out that I am OK exactly as I am, and if you are in the position of having to start over you may need to find out that you are OK just as you are as well. When you do, you will be able to start living life the way you always intended it to be.
What are you doing to find yourself again? What has worked for you and what has not? Can’t wait to hear!
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