Does Infidelity Ever Die?

Talk to anyone who has ever been caught in an affair, admitted to an affair, or seriously accused of being in an affair and one thing you will hear over and over is that nothing they do or don't do seems to make any difference. It is always hanging over them.


Talk to anyone who has caught their partner in an affair, had their partner admit to an affair, or who has seriously thought their partner was having an affair without being able to prove it or get a confession and the one thing that you will hear over and over is that there seem to be nothing that makes them feel safe again.


Apparently, how surprised you are by your partner cheating correlates directly with how bad it is for you, how hard it is to move on.


This is why finding out that your partner, lover, spouse has been unfaithful to you leads to a form of post traumatic stress disorder. The theory goes something like this - -

• We live in a very uncertain and dangerous world and there isn't much we can do about it. The incidence of bad things happening may be low, but it is always there.


• To survive and manage the uncertainty, we act as if it isn't going to happen to us. As long as it doesn't, this strategy works pretty well.


• When the unimaginable does happen to us or to someone close to us and this strategy is torn from us, our internal environment becomes very unstable. In other words our mind/body/emotional system freaks out.


• Getting back is possible, but tough.

Moral to the story? If you decide to mess around, if you allow yourself to be convinced to cheat, if you think that you are just too wonderful for only one person, if you find yourself slipping into infidelity and don't do anything to stop it, you are setting yourself for disaster.


You will probably blow your relationship up and if you avoid that you'll be taking on baggage that you'll lug around for a long long time. Ask anyone who's tried it.

Relationship Problems: Solvable or Perpetual?

"Relationship problems" is apparently an oxymoron. Relationship means problems according to John Gottman, PhD.


Some of those problems are solvable and well worth the effort to solve, but others are not solvable and efforts to change those things can actually be destructive.


How so? Aren't there lots of perfectly happy couples who have been together for a very long time? Are they just hiding these problems?


Yes, there certainly are lots of happy couples, but they aren't without their disagreements. It looks like one of the big things those couples have accomplished is finding ways that the inevitable frictions from two people of two different backgrounds and/or personal styles can be together without having to solve unsolvable problems.


The key seems to be in knowing the difference between problems you can change and those that you can't. From there, a sense of humor helps a lot as well as having effective ways of defusing anger and moving back toward each other after a conflict.


A particularly noteworthy bit of data from Gottman's studies is that 69% of problems that couples have are of the non-solvable, perpetual type. Hmm.




A sense of humor and mutual respect. . . . Don't come home without them.

Senior RelationshipsNarcissism?

Saying that someone is simply narcissistic has always been a good conversation ender. Works like a charm, but what the heck does it mean?


Is it simply intended to be a longer word for selfish?


Or, is it an effort a psychologizing?


I fear that if you are really dealing with a person with a narcissistic personality disorder or even a narcissistic personality style, it is probably a waste of time to tell them this because they don't care what you think. Of course if we have it wrong, we probably will hurt the recipient's feelings and damage the relationship.


Selfish is something that I can be at a particular time or on a particular topic, but is something that can be transitory. Labeling a person as "one of those" be it narcissistic, paranoid, or sociopathic is a dead end. Better left alone.

Senior Relationships' Self-Talk

One of the really dangerous things about senior relationships is that we have such a storehouse of self-talk that we've developed over the years that our automatic cognitive/emotional central computer figures that it knows what just about everything means.


Notice that I said that our automatic processing figures it knows. It does have a lot of data from which to make educated guessed. Maybe they are even very educated guesses, but they are still just guesses.


Anything that we can do to stay where we are right now and not get ahead into what we remember about what happened before in a situation just like this one, or what we remember someone told us about a situation just like this one, or what we are sure is going to happen next, is a great accomplishment.


In other words, to get the good stuff, we have to be present.


This was portrayed incredibly in the movie Rainman when Charlie Babbit, one of the two main characters, is being read his wealthy father's will in which he learns that he has been left his father's prize rose bushes and a car with the remainder of the estate going to an unnamed third party. After reading it, the lawyer asks if Charlie has any questions to which Charlie replies that he missed the whole thing and needs it read over. His mind went to the rose bushes, the car, the 3 million dollars that someone else was going to get, what all this meant and completely left where he was.


It was so clear what was happening in that scene. Alas, it is almost never so clear in intimate relationships. We're always hearing things that weren't said, missing things that were said, and "knowing" what it all means and what we "should" do based on automatic retrievals and processing that is going on all the time and that in many cases has very little to do with what is right in front of us.


What to do? Well,. . .

• it helps a lot just to realize that this is something that the human mind, the human organism tends to do


• it is possible to change it by just noticing when it is happening


• using listening skills can make a difference


• and, . . . regular mindfulness practice can make us better and better at it

"Be here now" just about sums it up. There is lots of good stuff that we miss when we let ourselves go on autopilot; especially as we get older and our autopilot gets more and more data in its memory banks.

Erectile Dysfunction, ED and Relationships

Getting beyond platitudes and generally good, but relatively unusable, advice about how to cope with erectile dysfunction in an ongoing relationship is difficult. If I hear myself or someone else say something about communication being vital, I may just throw up.


Of course, if your aren't in an ongoing relationship but would like to be and you can't get it up, you're really out there on your own. At least you don't have to hear about how important good communication is or get helpful advice from a partner.


Not that that isn't true that good communication is vital. It is, but that knowledge and $2 will get you a cup of coffee that tastes like they forgot to clean the coffee maker, which is probably true too.


Communication is basically just a pipe. You can run good things through it. You can run bad things through it. Things that help. Things that hurt.


They say that you can't use a map to get where you want to go until you know where you are. You can't use communication to get where you want to go until you know where you are too. And if you aren't really sure where it is you want to go in more than broad terms, the trip can get really interesting, . . . or overwhelming.


Maybe coming at it in a non-threatening, low pressure way. How about word association? Or maybe description of inkblots? Maybe a set of cards with cartoon situations on them where each person talks about what's going on, like in the old Stanford Binet IQ test, "put these cards in order." Just some ideas to do something different.


Can a female partner really understand just how incredibly confusing and upsetting erectile dysfunction is? I suppose so. I hope so. Depends on how committed and patient and curious she as she talks and listens.


On the other hand, I can't help but feel that if you haven't had one of these live things with a mind of its own in your pants for forty, fifty, sixty years, it seems unlikely that you'll be able to really understand the effects of it suddenly just lying there. (I know, I know, that kind of statement goes both ways. And that's true, but the subject is ED here.)


Guys have been getting erections since they were in the womb. Everyone manages that in different ways and it is not without its ambivalences, but when it goes it is a major loss.


I think one factor is that guys often are told that they need to communicate better with their partners, but don't really get into it.


As long as we have a hard part of us that is looking for something to be pushed into, communication may stay marginal from our point of view. But, lose that and now the only way anything is going to happen is with good communication, give and take, using a more feminine approach if you will, and we're in a whole new ball game. Very likely a ballgame that we never would have chosen, don't know how to play, and one that we're very tempted to sit out.


So, what to do? How to learn a new game that we don't even want to admit we have to play?


Or, do I have this all wrong? Really. What do you think?

When All Else Fails Re-read Byron Katie

When it comes to sticking with what is, with staying in the present, the work of Byron Katie described in Loving What Is is just the ticket.


Sometimes all this be-here-now stuff gets to be a bit hard to grasp. When that happens to me, I reach for my well worn copy of Byron Katie and just start reading about anywhere the book falls open. The common sense, the uncommon sense, and the humor can help me get myself going most every time.


The older we get, the more it seems we need to keep our attention right here right now. Maybe this is because there is more "back there in time" with each advancing year. I for one find it hard not to compare what's happening now with what happened before and before that and before that in an effort to make sense of what's going on now. Actually it doesn't help, but I still try it.


A bigger dose of loving what is and less attention on memories of what was is a darned good prescription for just about any relationship issue.

Alcohol Problems Can Sneak Up On Seniors

Alcohol problems don't go away with age. In fact, the bar seems to get lower for the amount of alcohol that causes problems as we age.


If you look at a simple alcohol problem self-screening questionnaire, you will notice a rather cruel twist - - ->> males under 65 are warned to check further if they have more that 14 drinks per day or more than 5 on any one day, but over 65 the threshold drops to 7 drinks per week.


It must be that same metabolism thing that causes us to need fewer calories as we get older. Still, think of it. If I am cruising along at 9 drinks a week, it's likely ok, but let a few years pass and those same 9 drinks per week start to spell trouble.


The thing a alcohol use is that we are usually the last one to figure out that we have a problem.


If any of the screening questions raise a red flag, take the time to check it out with a professional.


Senior sex and senior relationships are very vulnerable to alcohol problems. If continuing your sex life is of interest, then a hard look at alcohol use is in order.

Putting Off Retirement?

AARP has sent out an article about people deciding that they are not going to retire as soon as they thought and that many who have retired are looking for work. What's the deal and how does it affect relationships?


The "deal" is that lots of us simply don't have enough money to stop working -- or, we feel as though we don't. With the values of housing and the stock market going down and the prices of things the government doesn't count in inflation like food and gasoline going up, our general mood about our prospects isn't so hot for quite understandable reasons. At this point in a financial cycle, it isn't easy to see any silver linings.


On the other hand, I suppose that in many cases it helps relationships in the short run. It is no secret that the first couple of years of not filling most of your waking hours with work can put stresses on relationships. Eventually people seem to find new ways to fit together, but for a while it can be a bit rough.


Of course this represents a real opportunity to do something better and is a great chance for a more conscious relationship; if we'll take up the challenge.


But, what about just working longer? Probably that isn't unlike have the foresight and self-discipline necessary to put aside enough money that we can retire. The negatives are in the short term and the positives are in the long term and most of us respond to what we are experiencing right now.


Can we do better with money? with relationships?


It probably depends on how well we learned to defer gratification or on how we learned to define gratification a long long time ago. Or, maybe we can make some mid-course corrections. Who knows? Is this finally a strong enough reason for us to engage in a regular mindfulness practice ?

Senior Sex Senior STDs

Senior sex didn't become risk free when pregnancy was no longer an issue. Remember the risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).


According to the Centers for Disease Control, older people are at increasing risk for HIV/AIDS and other STDs. A growing number of older people now have HIV/AIDS. About 19 percent of all people with HIV/AIDS in this country are age 50 and older. Because older people don't get tested for HIV/AIDS on a regular basis, there may be even more cases than currently known.

Many factors contribute to the increasing risk of infection in older people.

• In general, older Americans know less about HIV/AIDS and STDs than younger age groups because the elderly have been neglected by those responsible for education and prevention messages.


• In addition, older people are less likely than younger people to talk about their sex lives or drug use with their doctors, and doctors don't tend to ask their older patients about sex or drug use.


• Finally, older people often mistake the symptoms of HIV/AIDS for the aches and pains of normal aging, so they are less likely to get tested.

You can find links to more information here.

More Senior Sex Surveys

Another senior sex survey, this time in the British Journal of Medicine, has found that grandma and grampa are still doing it. Wow! Or is that "no duh"?


It isn't really a flash from Dr. Freud that people tend to do things that feel good.


Still, it is good to get some validation on this topic from sources that the more staid among us might believe. Maybe this will help when doctors get out the prescription pad for them to consider the effects on libido of the various choices for adults of all ages. Also, perhaps some prudish offspring will take it as a clue to stick to their own business on this and other topics relating to aging.

Side Effects

The older we get, the more likely we are to be taking some kind of medicine or another and the more likely we are to being subject to drug side effects and interactions.


When prescribed a medicine,

• ask the doctor what the side effects and possible drug interactions are.


• When you pick it up ask the pharmacist about side effects and drug interactions.


• If possible, get all your drugs at the same place so that they can tell you about possible interactions.


• Ask for the complete set of notes that comes with the medicine and hope that the printer wasn't using the latest in nano-typesetting.


• Then get a magnifier so that you can read the tiny tiny print, or look it up on the internet and set the print size on "gigantic" again so that you can read it.

There are so many things about medicines, herbs, spices, etc. that no one ever thinks to tell people that can mess things up.


For example, I just read today that garlic might be really good for circulation, cholesterol, and blood pressure (the scientific jury is still out and the anecdotal evidence depends on who you're talking to), but that it should be stopped before surgery and dental procedures as it can make blood clotting slower. Wow! I've had surgery and I've had teeth pulled and I've never had anyone ask about my garlic intake.


Maybe it isn't a big factor, maybe it is, I don't know. But, I do know that it is easy enough to lay off the garlic for a few days just in case. I'd like to decide something like that for myself. Can't hurt. Might be unnecessary. Might really help, especially if I am taking other things that thin blood or something like that.


I guess that the more we know, the better we can take care of ourselves.

Sex After Prostate Surgery

It looks to me as though the standard advice about sex after prostate surgery is that you have to talk about it with your partner. I think that I've said that myself so I really can't argue with it nor do I want to, but I do think that it is more than a bit simplistic.


Without knowing the exact numbers, it seems safe to guess that the majority of men who have prostate surgery are over 50. If this is true, then it means that those of us who have undergone this surgery have a pretty well developed set of patterns, habits, and beliefs related to how we participate in and enjoy sex. If you want to read that as being in a rut, feel free.


After prostate surgery, if there is any change in ability to attain and/or maintain an erection, the whole balance of the experience is thrown off. Relationships within our minds, emotions, and bodies that have been setting up going all the way back to solitary sexual explorations of youth are going to be disrupted.


Now, back to the comment about being in a rut. While it can be that changes can open our eyes and our hearts to things that we would have missed otherwise, it doesn't necessarily come easy. We're talking about old friends here. Habits and sensations that have been with us for much of our lives.


There's likely to be a process of letting go of the old ways that no longer work, mourning if you prefer, before the new can be embraced. And this calls for some consciousness and acceptance within onesself to go along with talking with a partner.


If you have some mindfulness practice in place this can be a lot easier. If you don't and are finding accepting what is and moving forward a challenge, then it may be a great time to adopt one.

Senior Friends With Benefits?

Is the concept of friends with benefits something that is workable for older folks? It would seem as though being retired with children out and on their own would be a perfect situation to enjoy sex without all the deep entanglements. Hence, "friends with benefits".


But is this so for everyone? for some? for anyone?


Given the responses given on the study of elderly sexual behavior published in the New England Journal of Medicine, August 2007, it doesn't seem to me that casual sex is likely to be for very many people in the over 50 set.


Why do I say that? Well, mostly based on the consistent broadening of just what the term "sex" covers to include more cuddling and quiet time together sometimes in addition to and also instead of coitus.


DISCLAIMER: I do have an ax to grind here and that is the belief that sex and everything else is better within the context of a rewarding relationship.


What do you think?

Senior Sex Movie

Finally found a movie with an ongoing theme of senior sex (not just a short bit) and it was a comedy!?! Oh my! Oh well! I guess something is better than nothing.


Meet the Fockers casts Barbra Streisand as the senior sex therapist mother of one of the characters. A senior sex therapist. What the heck is that? Is there any science that supports specific interventions that a senior sex therapist might initiate? I'll bet there isn't.


Should there be? Well, I see no reason why not. The recent survey of senior sexual behavior published last August in the New England Journal of Medicine got more than a few notices in the mainstream media, but was it respectful? Was it reported with a bit of discomfort? Is anyone truly comfortable with images of their mother or grandmother with her heels in the air squealing with delight? I don't know.


You can type "senior sex therapy" into your search box and find an article like this one. It's a good article, but notice how much of it is aimed at correcting physical ailments that curtail sex and how little is about the emotional/relational components. I suspect that says as much about the current state of knowledge as it does any conscious decision of what to report on.


Anyone know where to get one of those mats they used in the movie?