Prime Time (with Bonus Content)

by Jane Fonda

  The psychologist Carl Jung used the term “individuation,” which is very different from individualism in that it allows one to maintain healthy boundaries—to not lose oneself—while being in an emotionally and physically intimate relationship. Suzanna’s healthy boundaries have allowed her to know that she needs to live alone, have time to herself, and avoid getting caught up in her partner’s “stuff.” Like Suzanna, I found standing on my own two feet more than iffy in my earlier years, when I lacked confidence and an independent identity. I could become what a man wanted me to be, what I thought was required so as to be lovable. I’m probably the only person in the world who thought Woody Allen’s movie Zelig must have been based on a true story. The title character, who literally becomes whomever he is talking to, seemed perfectly plausible to old “I’ll be whatever you want me to be” me. Talk about poor boundaries! But real intimacy, however, requires self-revelation, and that’s problematic if you’re not sure what the “self” is or are scared that your revealed self will be discovered as a fraud and rejected. We speak of falling in love. Maybe that was the problem. Suzanna and I fell because we weren’t standing on our own two feet. Individuation, on the other hand, means you “own” yourself, you are a free-standing, self-validated adult, as opposed to entwined and needy, and this tends to happen to women in their fifties and beyond, enabling them, in their intimate relationships, to “stay in connection without being consumed by the other person,” as Dr. David Schnarch puts it.1 The psychologist Terrence Real says, “There is no aphrodisiac stronger than authentic connection.”2

  Carl Jung also believed that with individuation, people’s maleness and femaleness come into balance. Dr. Jane Loevinger and many other psychologists today agree that the potential to let go of rigid sex roles for both men and women in the last third of life represents the peak of maturity and points the way to achieving individuation, autonomy and “communion.”3 Betty Friedan’s research on aging showed her that “couples facing age with lowest morale and least sense of intimacy are those where the husband still defines himself as family chief and provider, and where the woman still sees her identity only as a housewife/mother.”4

  The social gerontologist and anthropologist David Gutmann has written, “Whereas adult males start from a grounding in Active Mastery and move toward Passive Mastery, women are first grounded in Passive Mastery, characterized by dependence on and even deference to the husband, but surge in later life toward Active Mastery.… Across cultures, and with age, they seem to become more authoritative, more effective, and less willing to trade submission for security.”5 Scientists I interviewed at the Stanford Center on Longevity say there is no empirical scientific evidence to prove that this recalibration of gender roles is the norm, as Gutmann and others claim. But it seems natural that the hormonal changes associated with aging, along with the man’s retirement, would lead to a leveling out of gender differences. And it makes sense that the balancing out of what previously were narrow, socially proscribed gender roles would lead to greater integrity, wholeness, and authenticity for both men and women. Most of the women I have interviewed and read about have experienced this “gender balancing”—with men potentially regaining the humanness they lost in early boyhood and women potentially regaining, with age, the agency and assertiveness they had prior to adolescence. If this androgenization represents the peak of maturity and communion for both genders, why not strive for it?

  Interestingly, my age cohort and the boomer generation immediately following may be the last to experience this late-life androgenization. It appears (and I pray this is true) that sex roles for Generation X women and men are already undergoing the kind of relaxation that may, if psychologists are correct, augur happier partnerships earlier in life. A 2007 Time magazine article said that “the number of stay-at-home fathers has tripled in the past ten years” and that these “new Dads” “are challenging old definitions of masculinity.” “Masculinity has traditionally been associated with work and work-related success, with competition, power, prestige, dominance over women, restrictive emotionality—that’s a big one,” says Aaron Rochlen, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas, who studies fatherhood and masculinity. “Other research shows that fathers who stop being men of the old mold have better adjusted children, better marriages and better work lives—better mental and physical health, even. Basically,” Rochlen concludes, “masculinity is bad for you.”6

  In an article in the New York Times, Tara Parker-Pope reported the results of a study done in 2000 in Vermont after same-sex civil unions were legalized in the state. She noted that “same sex relationships, whether between men or women, were far more egalitarian than heterosexual ones.… While gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll.” Apparently, same-sex couples resolve their conflicts better. In the same article, Robert W. Levenson, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, is quoted as saying, “When they got into these really negative interactions, gay and lesbian couples were able to do things like use humor and affection instead of just exploding.”7 These findings seem to confirm what I have been saying: that democracy within a relationship is key to the long-term happiness of the couple.

  Individuation and androgenization were present in the longterm relationships whose partners I interviewed. You may think, judging from previous chapters, that I am cavalier on the subject of long-term commitment, whether in marriage or in loving partnerships. I am actually a true believer. I regret that I’ve not stayed married to one man for the long haul, but I’ve made some fairly deep transitions over the course of my life so far, and the men I was with either didn’t want to transition with me, or couldn’t, or were transitioning in a different direction. As Lillian Hellman once said, “People change and forget to tell each other.”

  Richard and me in 2009.

  Then again, on my side, I think that up until my sixties I was challenged in the intimacy department because I lacked the individuation and androgenization factors. I knew that I risked dying without ever really experiencing the kind of deeply intimate relationship with a man that I have experienced with women. That would be my big regret. (I am speaking not of sex but of emotional intimacy!) So I’ve worked on myself. Writing my memoirs was part of it. I am in a relationship now that has the potential I seek. I cannot know for sure. It’s only been sixteen months, as of this writing. I am with a man who is not at all in a spiritual transition. We are actually very different. But he isn’t afraid of intimacy, and I have become a freestanding adult, and maybe, just maybe, this relationship can be a crucible in which I get to heal myself even further.8 He’s younger than I by five years, but old enough to feel the need, as I do, of doing all he can to forge something real and—well, not long-lasting; it’s not like there’s all that much time left! Something real and meaningful is what we’re after. We’ve both had a lot of experience with relationships. We’ve both either chosen inappropriately or lacked the know-how to work through what was wrong and get it to work. Time is running out … there’s twenty years or a bit more at best.

  It takes being intentional to keep passionate intimacy alive and well. For example, romantic time needs to be scheduled. So does talking things through. In the past, I would often stuff down my feelings about things my partner did that I didn’t like, because I was scared he’d leave, and then where would I be? Now when something my partner has done upsets me, I schedule a sit-down to talk about it … or he forces us to talk about it when he feels something’s not right. Invariably we come away from these talks stronger than before. I’ve told him what I like about him and what I have problems with. I am realistic enough to know that there are things he can’t change and things I’m too old to want to fix. Like Suzanna, I’m tired of trying to fix a mate. (Not that I don’t bite my tongue sometimes!) But I feel that at this point
, if he wants this to work enough, he will make an effort to do certain things differently if they are deal breakers for me, and I am prepared to do the same for him.

  I sometimes feel guilty because I want so much in a relationship. In my grandparents’ day, couples seemed to accept that after a while romance would be replaced by companionship. But back then companionship didn’t get that old, because people didn’t get that old. They died. Instead of getting bored and divorcing, people died and the remaining spouse remarried—or not. Terrence Real, in his wonderful book The New Rules of Marriage, suggests that the change in the nature of what was desired in long-term relationships really began in the 1970s with the women’s movement. Women entered the workplace, became more financially independent, attended consciousness-raising groups, gained a modicum of political power, and discovered in the process that when they brought their innate gifts of empathy and intimacy into their workplaces and relationships, healing would happen, problems would be solved—differently, more easily—and it felt good. Who doesn’t want to feel good? Real says, “We have grafted onto the companionship marriage of the previous century the expectations and mores of a lover relationship—the kind of passion, attention, and emotional closeness that we most commonly associate with youth, and with the early stages of a relationship.”9 The five tactics he suggests for cultivating this kind of relationship are:

  Reclaim romantic space. (This is easier to do now, when the children have left home and there is more time and job flexibility.)

  Tell the truth. (This is easier for a woman to do if she has confidence and individuation.)

  Cultivate sharing. (Intellectually, emotionally, physically, sexually, and spiritually.)

  Cherish your partner. (Develop your “lover energy”—the energy that goes into loving. Don’t just feel it; act on it.)

  Become partners in health. (Share a commitment to relational practice. As I have said, an intimate, passionate, long-term relationship doesn’t happen spontaneously. It requires commitment to engaging in relational practice.)10

  Sociologists say that marriage seems to encourage stability, a sense of obligation to the other, a barrier to loneliness, more financial security because of pooled resources, and better health. “Married people are less likely to get pneumonia, have surgery, develop cancer or have heart attacks. A group of Swedish researchers has found that being married or co-habitating at midlife is associated with lower risk for dementia,” notes Tara Parker-Pope, who writes the Well blog for the New York Times. Parker-Pope goes on to say, however, that a bad, stressful marriage can leave a person far worse off than if they’d never married at all. In fact, it can be “as bad for the heart as a regular smoking habit.”11

  Obviously, though, marriage is not for everyone. If you have found that there is no room in your marriage for a fully awakened, authentic you, it may be far healthier to leave than to swallow your unhappiness and shrink yourself back into a half life. If along the way you’ve stopped facing your real feelings and needs, stopped being truthful to yourself, you will inevitably go numb—the best, most potentially vital parts of you will shut off. You will also be angry, although this, too, may be covered over. Studies show that a bad marriage, with its potentially toxic stress, is especially bad for the wife’s health. A fifteen-year Oregon study cited by Suzanne Braun Levine in Inventing the Rest of Our Lives found that “having unequal decision-making power was associated with higher health risks for women, but not for men, perhaps,” Levine conjectures, “because women don’t have the other opportunities to exercise power that men traditionally do. Powerlessness is a major contributor to stress and depression.”12 Marriage brings more benefits to men than it does to women, since women do the lion’s share of the emotional nurturing, child rearing, housekeeping, and meal cooking—which, perhaps, is why married men live longer than single men and divorced women do better than divorced men. Despite the emotional, financial, and social hardships that divorce can entail, “increasingly,” Suzanne Brown Levine notes, “women are initiating divorce and regretting it less.”13

  If a woman does decide later in life to take another chance at love, it is commonly with someone she knew previously. I met my current mate, Richard Perry, thirty-seven years ago, when he helped arrange for the musical group The Manhattan Transfer, which he was producing, to perform a fund-raising concert for my then-husband, Tom Hayden, who was campaigning for U.S. Senate. Here we all are in his recording studio in 1975. Richard is kneeling next to my son, Troy, and me. Tom is standing between Janis Siegel and Laurel Massey.

  Me, Troy, Richard, and Tom (back row, center) with Tim Hauser, Janis Siegel, Laurel Massey, and Alan Paul of The Manhattan Transfer.

  Long-Term Relationships

  I have long been fascinated by how couples in long-term marriages have managed to adjust to the dramatic shifts that occur over the years, especially in the final third. It was one thing when our life span was twenty years shorter; I find it truly miraculous when a man who was “Mr. Right” during the years of building a family and raising children is still the right partner thirty, forty, or fifty years later. I am in awe, frankly.

  One such story is that of Bill and Kathy Stayton, who have been married for fifty-five years and have four children. Bill, seventy-six when I interviewed him, is an impish, courageous Baptist minister and sex therapist. I first met him a number of years ago, when I asked him to speak at a workshop on gender, sexuality, and religion at an annual conference of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention.

  Kathy Stayton, seventy-four, was an athlete in her younger days, and a school leader, and has kept her trim figure and natural beauty. Sitting next to Bill, quiet and attentive, she seemed the image of an old-fashioned, take-the-backseat homemaker. During our three hours together, however, I discovered a woman who, inspired by the peace activism of her family of origin, has, from girlhood, had her own firm voice.

  I interviewed Kathy and Bill in their bright, one-story home in a newish development in Atlanta’s growing suburbs.

  For eleven years, Bill had been a Baptist minister in Massachusetts. He found himself unprepared for the sexuality issues that came to him from his parishioners and from people in the community. He told me, “Sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, sexual dysfunction, multiple relationships, polyamory, and open marriage were life’s experiences presented to me—stories of things I didn’t even know existed and I was not prepared to help with. I’d go home and say, ‘Kathy, do you know people who do this?’ ” They both laughed at the memory. “I became really passionate about clergy being trained in human sexuality, no matter what,” Bill said. “So, I started taking courses in sexuality myself, became a doctor of theology in the field of psychology. I helped to found the Center for Sexuality and Religion. In 1997, the faculty and students voted to move the human sexuality program to Widener University, in Chester, Pennsylvania, where I served as professor and director. In 2006, I became the executive director of the Center for Sexuality and Religion, eventually at the University of Pennsylvania.”

  In 2008, former U.S. surgeon general Dr. David Satcher invited Bill to come to Atlanta and merge the Center for Sexuality and Religion with the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine. Bill recently retired from being a professor at the medical school and assistant director of its Center of Excellence for Sexual Health.

  Reverend Bill Stayton and his bride, Kathy.

  “Tell me about your relationship,” I prompted.

  “Well, first of all, I fell in love the minute I saw her,” Bill answered with relish. “It was at freshman orientation; I was a sophomore and Kathy was a freshman. I was entertaining at a church youth group at the school and I saw her. It took several weeks to find out who she was so I could ask her out.”

  After their first date, Bill said, “I wrote my parents and said, ‘I have met the person.’ ”

  “How long did it take you to fall in love with Bill, Kathy?”

  “O
h, gosh. Six months?” They both laughed.

  “She went home to meet my parents at Christmas,” Bill recalled. “Then we got engaged in February and married in September of the next year. So, we knew each other just a year. We often say we got married to have sex.” They had both been virgins.

  Kathy added, “That’s not really the right reason.… You know, though, it worked out for us.”

  The Long Haul

  I wanted to know what they credited their longevity as a couple to. “Fifty-five years!” I exclaimed, “It’s hard to find one person who is not only good for the early, family-building stage but is still good in the post-children stage.”

  “I always knew, right from the beginning,” Kathy said, “that people didn’t expect young people’s marriages to last. So I was determined I wasn’t going to be like what people expected.”

  “We had some tears in there, and conflicts,” Bill interjected, wanting me to know that it hadn’t all been an easy run.

  “Yes,” said Kathy, “but we knew our love for each other was strong, even though, at times, we may not have liked each other. When we had differences I could always say to myself, ‘This too shall pass,’ and not worry that our love was threatened. Besides, we have shared values, we enjoy the same types of entertainment—theater, classical music, art museums, film—and we’ve never harbored jealousy of the friends of the opposite sex each of us have.”