Aging, Changing Priorities
[Mentat],
My responses to your last letter in this thread are long. So I’ll send them out in separate sections to keep them manageable.
I’ve been reminded that as people age, their priorities change. In fact, aging encourages this change. Those so healthy and independent in their younger years, begin finding the disheartening effects of growing old in themselves. Vision, hearing , and memory fade, not to mention stamina. So they can’t be as independent as before, now requiring help to carry groceries home and to make household repairs. Even reading the paper becomes a frustratingly slow activity. Handicaps befall them, which makes them more like us. They start experiencing firsthand the daily troubles we’ve dealt with our whole lives, and, since our history suggests that we’re “expert” in coping with impairment, many seek us out for advice on how to do it. They value us more, because we now have something they believe will help them live as independently and productively as they can. So, they see less disparagingly our need for extra consideration because now, they need a hand too.
Have you ever noticed how seniors generally greet us with a more zealous willingness to befriend than the younger folks? Perhaps this finding more of us in themselves explains why. Studies show again and again, that people relate best with others who share similar plights. A variation of the golden rule might make this so: Expect of others as you would have others expect of you. As their lists of bodily dysfunctions grow with age, golden rule followers believe implicitly that they can’t rightly expect their mates to be any less afflicted than they are themselves. A cornerstone in our society’s ethical principles, the golden rule may in fact help soften society’s negative judgments, and in so doing, save [you and me] from the loneliness in the future that has characterized my life, and yours to a lesser extent.
Growing maturity can foster this acceptance of us by others [as well]. The theory is that when ladies reach middle-age, they’ve probably had kids and lived those girlish dreams that necessitate a fully-functioning, non handicapped man to help bring about – they’ve experienced guys chauffeuring them around in big cars and buying them dinners, marriage, honeymoons, and vacations in exotic places. They’ve kicked up sand on distant beaches, given birth to at least one child, and so on. Plus, they’ve lived the “successful” life in the suburbs, in a house with white picket fences surrounding two cats, a dog, a swimming pool, and a giant-sized grill on a well-manicured lawn. Their husbands drove the kids to soccer practice, play rehearsals, instrument lessons, and little league, and brought home the bucks, served as male role model for their young, maintained the property, and generally speaking, satisfied the provider function. But once the offspring move out, once the ritzy house becomes too big, or their marriage runs out of romance, ladies often set their sights on different dreams; hopes which demand less of a “provider” type man than before, desires that you and I my friend, are more likely to be able to meet. Certainly, a different sort of fellow pleases them on the silver side of menopause, than who did so on the green side of their 20s.
Life experience regularly shatters a woman’s rich-man ideals, because if today’s radio and TV talk shows are any indication, the ladies living the “mansion on the hill” lifestyle, repeatedly come to regret their choice in their husband that was motivated by his having money or having the potential to make it. They see (after decades sometimes) that affluence was not the prize they imagined it to be as a young adult, and recognize that an ability to acquire riches by no means predicts his adeptness at truly loving them. It may in fact, indicate otherwise.
You’d think that the wife of a rich man would be fulfilled, sanctified, and generally satisfied with her situation. After all, he supplies her a warm, dry house, luxury clothing, cars, education for the children, healthcare, and so on. Yet lots of these “happy housewives” have affairs with men of lesser means. As midlife looms, many females and males alike learn to place less premium on a big wallet, discovering that money does not make the person, and also that having lots of the green stuff doesn’t attain peace in their hearts. True. The deeper their hubby’s pockets, the more they can indulge in the material trappings, most of which they don’t really need. Like a drug addict lusting after his next fix, they seek to satisfy their cravings to shop and spend by pursuing their opium – money.
But is quenching a craving by supplying more drugs, the best answer for the addict? Does the path to the sustained female pleasures run though furnishing them more funds? I think not. Yet countless ladies see the sun for the last time believing the correct answer to these questions is Yes. Poor them. If only they’d learn that the richer man is not the alcoholic with a basement full of wine and whiskey beneath him. It’s not the guy with a freezer full of snuff, and not the business executive with a vault full of securities at the local bank. Rather, the richest among us is the person who gets along well without the stuff, the one who has managed to free himself from his vices by eliminating them, not just by gratifying them.
Fortunately for you and me, some exquisite women agree with this (though admittedly few so far). They see past the short-lived euphoria of quick delight, and seek a more substantial coexistence. They know that lusting after piles of cash is probably addictive in nature, and as such, would likely not peak their contentment over time. This enlightened thinking curbs their desires for the well-to-do provider, blinding them to many “imperfections” like visual impairments. What they saw as show-stopping defects in men as young women, they now view as mere attributes, neither good nor bad. They note them without judging, and therefore, raise their capacity to fully accept a man, shortcomings and all. So, perhaps our chances of finding “heavenly bodies” who feel likewise about us, aren’t decreasing, because while we can’t as easily grant the material gifts that our fully-sighted contemporaries do, we do offer so much in terms of intellectual engagement, coping abilities, and sincerity – gifts which women come to value more as they near old age.
More than one fortune teller has corroborated this, suggesting to me that I’ll meet my special lady later in life. Though I dismiss the psychics’ supernatural powers as nonexistent, I was nonetheless moved by their unwavering conviction on this point. One said, “If people really do grow more wise as they age, then perhaps Tom, your odds of meeting Her will go up, not down, because the older they are, the wiser they are. And the wiser they are, the more they’ll value what you have to offer.“
Well, it sounds good, doesn’t it? Unfortunately though, my experience thus far fails to support this theory. No more older women want to date me than younger ones. In fact, when considering all the ladies who have ever shown interest in me, it’s a pretty even split. The number of older ones roughly equals the younger ones. However, I believe (through an admittedly big leap of faith) that the principles here are sound, based on my own conversations with young and old alike. And so, I hope that my most important dream will one day come true – that I will meet someone with whom I can easily fall in love, and who can do likewise with me. I want a dream girl, who considers me a dream guy. That’s all.
Now to your last point: Yes, it would be nice to have an opportunity to advance far enough in a relationship with a gem of a lady, to finally touch the relevance of the money question. I’ve had a few such a chances, and they weren’t any fun either. When I was working [...], several foreign women approached me, wanting to migrate to America. But neither could they do that immediately nor permanently, unless they married an American man, especially one who would also pay their moving expenses. So I, being an American male with a good job, was exactly what they sought. They were sweet and warm in their letters, quite uncharacteristic of the way ladies typically treat me. And it seemed like they really wanted me, for me. But I knew they weren’t being one hundred percent forthright, and couldn’t help fearing that if I would love them, that they’d up and leave once here. Either that, or they wouldn’t come at all, even after sending them the money. The Internet abounds with stories of men being taken in just this way – guys lose thousands to scams like this every week.
So, knowing this, I wanted to test their loyalty and purity. Thus, I’d tell them (truthfully) that I needed to know them through email and phone for six months to a year before entering such an arrangement. Well, needless to say, absolutely none of them wanted to wait, and their emails, which they sent with precise regularity heretofore, stopped cold. No longer would they answer my emails, and their impatience at my request to move slowly, suggested that I was just a means to an end for them, not the end itself. Believe me, it’s no fun feeling like you’re being used for your resources, where the only reason they’re hanging around is to get your hard-earned money. So while it appears intriguing to trade the loneliness of having no woman at all, for the suspicion of having one who might be a gold digger, neither situation is anywhere near ideal, ‘cause you’re just substituting one pain for another.
But I’m with you. At least, in the latter case, we’d have our sexual needs met even if we couldn’t be sure of her true motivations. I wonder why society still tolerates the devious pursuit of getting others’ money by convincing them that they’ve found their true love, when actually, they’ve found a bonafide leach.
I’ll answer the other parts of your letter in the coming days. Stand by.
