It’s quite cool this morning, and it has got me thinking. I am married and not looking for another partner. I am 70 years old and I am grateful for having reached this milestone with good physical and mental health. It hasn’t always been this way – being in good physical and mental health. There was a time, a few decades, where my mental health challenged my very physical existence. Midlife can be a very trying time, especially for those who were repeatedly abused in childhood. How did I emerge from this? The short answer is: love, stubbornness, love, therapy, analysis, meditation, writing, naturism, and love.
I had to say love a number of times as there were multiple people involved. The primary agent of love was and remains, my wife. We met 49 years ago and will be married 48 years tomorrow. Those 48 years were a challenge. Since we are opposites in terms of personality type – I’m INFP and she’s ESTJ – with no other challenges, just being so different could have resulted in a short marriage. We’re both stubborn. We made the commitment to each other and to ourselves, and the other be damned, we weren’t going to give in so easily. We were tested by the appearance of others in our lives who would have claimed either of us as partners, yet we resisted. With the onset of my midlife crisis, we both pushed away, and immediately pulled back. Both of us knew, unconsciously, that there was only one way forward, and that was together. This kind of love is passionate, territorial, and life-long.
Love of and from our children was another key to my willing to risk living. And finally, the hardest one, has been to learn self-acceptance of who I have become over the decades. Naturism is a huge part of that journey of self-acceptance and self-healing. As a teenager, I retreated into quiet and isolated pockets of nature to heal. It wasn’t something I thought about or planned. It was instinctual, almost a primitive act. Henry David Thoreau did much the same thing when he retreated into his Little Cabin in the Woods. As I was struggling in midlife, I would risk nudity on isolated beaches while my wife and children were present. Eventually, family skinny-dipping became a thing in the evenings.
Then, with the crisis of retirement, the flight into being naked began in earnest. This is all spelled out in my book, Journey of Healing. Now, today, there is no more major crisis. Life just is. I am nude most of the time in our home and whenever it is possible when out-of-doors [sometimes when it really isn’t possible as well]. With my wife not being a naturist, the passage of time, along with my achieving a healthy psychological balance, we have both adapted with what I can only call as grace. Now to be honest, we are still as different as night and day and that is its own continuing challenge. However, the will to love is still vitally strong in both of us, and so our journey together continues.
Realizing Love is the hardest part
Yes it is, Bob. Thanks for the clarity of your response.
What Bob Neutan just wrote does seem true: but to meditate is, in a sense, to spend time with the “holy One” or with “the Ground of the Universe”, recognizing that one is being embraced in that moment by One by Whom one is loved. That you recognized that love as personified by your wife and family is the more miraculous.
And beyond that one can say with the greater certainty, “It is what it is”, as you wrote yesterday: there’s no need to coerce or manipulate anyone or anything, in order “to get the love that one wants”; for all that one needs is there.
Well spoken, Allen. There always remains the hardest part. The journey to self-love, and I don’t mean that in a narcissistic manner. Self-worth, self-acceptance, self-love …
The ground of being is love .
Thank you, David.
I’m going to order your book on line but in the meantime would you be willing to elaborate on just how retirement is a crisis ? I myself have found being retired not at all what I imagined it once to be and at times how felt less than happy about my present state .
Inspiring words. Matter to be meditated. The richness of other’s experience & life. Thanks for your open words.
Thank you, Vittorio.
To love and be loved. Relationships are often puzzles where we keep looking for the right pieces to fit.
Congratulations on your life together.
I can so relate with what you are saying about differences in the couple dynamic. John and I are working towards are 25 years together and since my forced retirement we’ve had some major ajustments to deal with each other on a daily basis. Your story inspires us to keep on going.
Thanks, Fabien. Twenty-five years together is a major achievement in this modern world. If our story can inspire, then so much the better. 🙂
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Congratulations on your anniversary! Wishing you both many more years of love, stubbornness, love, and good health. And love.
Thank you, John.