The Arc of Love

by Aaron Ben-Ze'ev

  JOHN CIARDI

  A common view considers old people to be incapable of experiencing strong love, as their sexual desire and physical abilities are expected to have declined with age. This is a simplistic and distorted idea. It is often the case that love in old age is deeper than love at a young age.

  Carstensen informs us that although chronological age is an excellent (albeit imperfect) predictor of cognitive abilities and behavior, it is a poorer predictor in later age. An additional temporal aspect that becomes more important than the time since our birth is the subjective sense of our remaining time until death. The temporal extent of our horizons plays a key role in motivation. Carstensen argues that as people age and increasingly experience time as finite and their horizons as being gradually narrowed, they change their priorities. For example, they attach less importance to goals that expand their horizons and greater importance to goals from which they derive present emotional meaning. When time is seen as short, we tend to focus on short-term goals. Older people have smaller social networks, are less drawn to novelty than younger people, and reduce their spheres of interest. Nevertheless, they appear as happy as (if not happier than) younger people. This makes sense, as in a situation of decreasing horizons, people prioritize deepening existing relationships and developing expertise in already satisfying areas of life.3

  Carstensen notes a preference for emotionally positive information over emotionally negative information in older adults’ memories. This, she contends, is particularly intriguing because it has long been known that younger people find negative information more attention-grabbing and memorable than positive information. In contrast, older people process negative information less deeply than they do positive information, and at the very early stages of processing, older adults also engage in less encoding of negative material. Carstensen concludes that when people, young or old, see time as finite, they attach greater importance to emotional meaning and satisfaction from life and invest fewer resources in gathering information and expanding horizons. Thus, although their social networks grow smaller, older adults grow more satisfied.4

  Elderly couples indeed more readily take the attitude of being happy with their lot. Consider the following confession of a single mother in her fifties: “I am looking for perfection and I have been mistaken in my choices. I turn down opportunities to be with men because I judge these men as far from perfect. As I get older, I seem to be softening, but I also seem to be getting clearer on what I like and want. I don’t want superficiality—but for the first time in my life, I am considering having sex with someone I don’t see as partner material!” An apparent exception to shrinking horizons in older ages is the benefit and joy derived from grandchildren that in part come from the expanding new horizons that grandchildren both provide and represent. Many grandparents talk about experiencing a “new lease on life” with their grandkids, and even observe, as the old saying goes, that “if I had known grandchildren were this much fun, I would have had them first!”

  We have supporting evidence for these anecdotal comments. Older individuals often experience their spouses as affectionate both when disagreeing and when performing joint tasks, and they report high marital satisfaction. Older married couples have fewer marital conflicts than their younger counterparts do, although they report that erotic bonds are less central in their lives. Companionate love, which is based on friendship, appears to be the cardinal feature of their interactions. Intimate relationships in old age are largely harmonious and satisfying.5

  Romantic compromises become less of an issue as we age. Over time, people become used to their spouse’s negative traits. They learn to live with them, while minimizing their negative impact. When we realize that our time is running out and that our alternatives are decreasing, we are more likely to accept our limitations and not feel compromised by not pursuing an attractive option. Moreover, as older people are more dependent on each other, the marital chains tend to turn into helping hands. Despite feeling as much negativity as younger people, older individuals may be more resilient in the face of tensions in their closest relationships. Older adults are less likely to argue and often let issues go. They are better able to place conflict in perspective and to think that it is not worth fighting over issues.6

  It seems that in old age, when cognitive and physical capacities tend to decline, the ability to be satisfied with one’s own lot increases; this reduces marital conflicts as well as the experience of romantic compromise. Older people are more likely to adopt the constructive attitude of making the most of what they already (or still) have. Their concern is not with having more, but with losing less.

  Love after Death

  Broken crayons still color.

  SHELLEY HITZ

  While most of us have had romantic predicaments, those of widows and widowers seem particularly poignant. Should they actively search for another lover? And if they find another lover while still loving their late spouse, how can these two loves coexist in their hearts? Is loving again worth the effort of having to adjust to another person? And what is the proper time to fall in love again? (In what follows, when I refer to widows, I mean it to include widowers’ experiences too.)

  The End of Love and Death

  For many people, romantic love forms an essential aspect of their lives; without love, life may seem worthless. Romantic love is a central expression of a meaningful and flourishing life. Without it, people can feel that an important part of them is dead. The lover is perceived as the sunshine in their life, and for many, without such sunshine, decay and death are all around. Even during one of the darkest periods of history, the Holocaust, people fell in love despite the risks they had to take to express it. People did not relinquish love, and love even enabled some of them to survive the horrors of the death camps.

  Love and death are unlikely partners. Romantic breakups, for example, are often described as a kind of death. In the words of Dusty Springfield, after such a breakup, “Love seems dead and so unreal, all that’s left is loneliness, there’s nothing left to feel.” Personal relationships without love are also often associated with death. We speak about “dead marriages,” “cold husbands,” and “frigid wives.” People within a dull relationship often consider their situation to be a kind of death, and having an affair is described as living again. Thus, a married woman, having her first affair after twenty years, describes her relationship with her husband as being that of roommate. While having the affair, she said, “I felt like I had awoken from a coma. I felt connected to life and the people in it. I felt youthful, confident, and brave.”

  Since love is perceived to be vital to life, the end of love can cause some people to wish to end their lives as well or to kill others for love. In the name of love, there are men who kill their partners and commit suicide when the latter intend to leave them.7

  Despite the crucial role of love in human flourishing, there are people who give up the search for it, believing that they will never find what they seek. These individuals say that they would not reject profound love if it found its way to them, but that they will not actively pursue it. This attitude is understandable—after all, love is not all you need in life—though people are often much happier with love.

  A Widow’s New Romantic Situation

  Is the human heart large enough to hold more than one romantic love? This is entirely possible—both loving one person after another and having two lovers at the same time. Let’s think for a moment of the complicated case of widows’ love. Their love for two people is particularly complex, given the continuing impact of bereavement, even years after the death occurs. Their bond to the deceased can remain a personal defining force. They face the double challenge of loving two people at the same time and a huge practical change: a relationship with a current companion who provides active support and love and with the memory of someone who is no longer alive and cannot be active in their life.

  According to romantic ideology, profound love should last forev
er. The end of love is a sign that it was superficial in the first place. In fact, however, love can end for reasons connected to different circumstances, and such changes do not necessarily indicate that the love was superficial. Profound love is less likely to perish, but it can nevertheless. Hence, there is no reason to assume that one’s heart is not big enough to include several genuine loves during a single lifetime.

  The death of a spouse and the end of love dovetail in different ways. But widowhood is unique. Whether a relationship is average, as most relationships are, or very good or very bad, the ending of any personal relationship changes one’s circumstances. In most cases of widowhood, any positive attitude toward the spouse is enhanced. This is due both to the tendency to idealize the past and to our sense of propriety in not speaking ill of the dead. Although the late spouse is physically absent, the widow’s love for him can remain—and even grow.

  The newly widowed confront different situations when contemplating love. Here I will discuss two situations: (1) adapting to a new love while still loving the late spouse, and (2) falling in love with another person almost immediately.

  Adapting to a New Lover

  A widow’s refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.

  SAMUEL RICHARDSON

  Falling in love again after losing a spouse is not the same as having a new love affair after a previous one has ended. This is especially so if, at the time of the spouse’s death, both partners shared a profound love. In this case, the survivor’s love does not die. Although a new love might develop, from a psychological viewpoint, the widow will now love two people at the same time. Her experience eloquently expresses the nonexclusive nature of love.

  Importantly, love is a shape-changer. Seeking the same love with another partner can be devastating, as no two people are identical. In a sense, the new lover can bring a bereaved partner back to life. One widow told the friend who ignited in her the desire to make love again: “Thank you for bringing me back to life.”

  The widow faces the challenge of entering a new and meaningful romantic relationship without forgetting or negating the old one. Ofri Bar-Nadav and Simon Rubin compare the issues facing bereaved and nonbereaved women when they enter new relationships after a long-term one has ended. The bereaved experienced themselves as having changed more, but the nonbereaved reported the changes they experienced as more positive. The growth experienced by the nonbereaved at this stage of life is likely to be less conflicted, and while the bereaved experience such growth, it lags behind that of their counterparts. Bar-Nadav and Rubin argue that in the wake of loss and its aftermath, widows feel greater hesitancy than their peers do about engaging in intimacy with new partners. These concerns about intimacy arise from fears of further loss, of opening themselves up to new relationships, and of lack of fidelity to the deceased spouse.8

  Our minds work wonders in these situations. While the deceased spouse ceases to disappoint and irritate us, the new (and very much alive) partner continues to do so, reminding us of the richness and challenge of ongoing living relationships. Although love for the deceased spouse might increase as time goes by, it may be less of a preoccupation, easing adaptation to the new relationship. A new loving relationship requires both letting go of and holding on to the previous relationship, creating a new equilibrium.9

  Finding the right partner and learning to live with them can take a lot of time and effort. Some people reach an age at which they doubt whether it is worth the effort, especially when the memory of their late spouse remains ever present as the new relationship develops.

  How Soon Should Widows Fall in Love Again?

  Even if all the above obstacles to being with a new lover are resolved, the widow still faces a whole set of dilemmas. These include the proper period for grieving, whether and when to take off their wedding ring, when to begin dating, when to give away the late partner’s belongings, how to dress for various occasions, how often to talk about the past, and what loving gestures toward the new lover can be shown in public. As widows tend to be judged critically, sensitivity, careful pacing, and moderation are in order. A widow dating a married man will be subject to greater criticism than a divorced or single woman—after all, she should know better what it is to lose a spouse. It seems that, like Julius Caesar’s wife, widows are expected to be “above suspicion.”

  Consider the following true story. A widow who was dating a widower observed that her beau continued to wear his wedding ring—he had not taken it off when his wife died. In due time, the two became engaged and started to plan their wedding. The wedding ring remained on the widower’s finger. Finally, just as the bride-to-be was choosing her new wedding band, her intended turned to her and said: “Would it be okay with you if I wore two wedding rings?” This poignant question (answered, incidentally, in the negative) exposes a deep dilemma—profound love cannot be exclusive in all its aspects. There are things that we cannot, and should not, erase from our partner’s heart.

  And now we come to a particularly contested point: the waiting period before dating. Different cultures have different norms: in some traditions, people wait at least a year; in others, it can be longer or shorter. Michelle Heidstra’s experience is telling. Only four weeks after the death of her husband, Jon, she embarked on a new love affair with his best friend, Adrian, a pallbearer at the funeral. Lost in her grief, she found herself drawn to the man who could comfort her. Adrian was very supportive of both her and her infant. At the end of a day spent with a group of her husband’s friends, including Adrian, Michelle found herself in his house. “We were both in turmoil and we needed each other. We made love,” says Michelle. “We couldn’t help ourselves. It seemed so right.” It is, she says, exactly what Jon would have wanted. She was not even embarrassed to tell her friends about it. Michelle understands those who criticized her, but says, “How can you make rules about people’s emotions? We all love and grieve differently. I have never stopped grieving for Jon. But that doesn’t rule out a new love.” After a year of seeing each other, they felt that the relationship was getting too serious too quickly, and they took a break. A year later, they started dating again. This time the pace was slower, and they moved in together only six months later. They are now engaged to be married. Michelle says, “Blame me if you like, but grief hits people in different ways and I have no regrets.”10

  Such stories are far from rare; many people fall in love with their late partner’s best friend within a short time after the partner’s death. This can be a reasonable response to intense loss, when a supportive friend is the most natural person in the world to be with. The terrible grief can be shared.

  To sum up, widows must manage a unique form of romantic breakup, which involves a final physical separation but not a psychological one. The breakup caused by the spouse’s death is unwelcome and irreversible, and the surviving partner might still be in love with her late spouse. Different people do different things under such circumstances. Although it is often better to find a new lover than to give up and never search for a new love, this option is not always available. It is possible to fall in love again, but new loving relationships are always well populated: the deceased partner is always in the background.

  Love and Dementia

  Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.

  PETER USTINOV

  What is the meaning of love in relationships between couples in which one partner has dementia? This is a question for which the role of time in love is highly relevant, since one of the partners has virtually lost a sense of the past. In such situations, the healthy spouse’s sense of the past is a major factor in maintaining love.

  In old age, the reduced ability to share various activities presents a challenge to the dialogue model, which is based on spouses’ engagement in joint activities and thus creating a meaningful we. Dementia, which severely damages the ability to socialize, and especially the capacity to converse and share interests with others, magnifie
s this problem.

  Orit Shavit and colleagues present a nuanced picture of the romantic attitudes of individuals whose spouses are living with Alzheimer’s disease. They identify five major types of relationship development following the emergence of the disease: love died, love became weaker, love did not change, love was enhanced, and the healthy spouse fell in love again. These types are also common among the loving relationships of other couples in old age. Participants described their love in a compassionate manner and in the context of their daily routines of caring. Most spouses stated that their intimacy gained a new meaning; they reported greater intimacy with their spouses living with the disease. It seems that the increased romantic intimacy experienced by some is related to an enhanced component of care.11

  On the face of it, the dialogue approach would seem to have trouble explaining love in relation to dementia, in which the partners’ interactions decline in quantity and quality. It is the care model, instead, that leaps to mind as most appropriate. Although in old age and with dementia the shared time and activities are more limited and less diverse, they can still be part of love and intimacy. Thus, even if sick people cannot contribute to the loving relation as much as they did before, their loving relation is the continuation of what was before. This is compatible with the dialogue model.

  Concluding Remarks

  Romantic horizons indeed shrink at an older age; certainly, there are fewer possibilities numerically and emotionally. This makes many people too willing to stay in their comfort zone and not engage in a relationship or expect a relationship to just happen to them without doing anything.