COMMON MISBELIEFS ABOUT AGING
The most obvious explanation centers in our false thinking about aging and our misunderstanding of what maturity means. We have bought into many myths that distort our attitudes and create dread or dissatisfaction. Here are some of the most toxic misbelieves and the truths that dispute them:
1. Youth rules and old age stinks. We must maintain our youthfulness at all costs.
Truth: Like most things in life, a debit and credit column exists with positives and negatives during both youth and aging. Youth has more vitality and old age has more physical debilitation. Old age has a contemplative wisdom with the ability to slow down, while youth can be shortsighted and frantic.
Truth: Tight skin and firmer bodies may define youth-fullness; but this does not equate to true beauty and sexiness as our youth-worshiping culture falsely thinks. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder; wrinkles and softer bodies reflect a sign of maturity with its own sensuality. A constant striving for youthfulness can actually be immature and quite silly.
2. We can define the stages of middle- and older-age maturity using the same ideas and vocabulary with which we define younger stages.
Truth: This new phenomenon, higher levels of development, and greater skills of older years demand new vocabulary and concepts. An adolescent cannot be described with the concepts of infancy. What sixteen-year-old would want to be called cute and cuddly because he or she toddled around in such a precious way? Older age needs new lenses that extend beyond the way we would describe a thirty-year-old.
Truth: As will be developed in the rest of this introduction and book, old age presents new horizons and new levels of development and intimacy. Gray hair, years of living life and maturity require a totally different way of looking at life and intimacy.
3. Sexual desire and a longing for erotic connection are for the young and fade rapidly in our fifties and sixties.
Truth: The body and hormones change, but couples can enjoy sexual interacting into their nineties. Sexual desire can stem from a caring and intimate relationship and has much more complexity than being totally hormonally based. Desire depends on the interaction of the body, soul, and spirit.
Truth: The lessons of maturity involve an ability to accept the imperfect, put a higher priority on companionship, and live in the moment. This can become a powerful catalyst for deeper sexual intimacy and meaningful lovemaking. True passion and enjoyable sexual connecting can increase with the empty-nest days and postmenopausal freedom.
4. Great lovemaking depends on healthy youthful bodies with staminay flexibility, and exuberant intercourse and orgasms.
Truth: Fulfilling lovemaking is about 20 percent physical and about 80 percent mental and emotional. Intimate sexual connecting involves much more than wild intercourse and explosive orgasms. "Playful, tender, trusting, and sensual" describe wonderful sex better than "intense, acrobatic, or all night."
Truth: It can be argued that to truly learn to make love, one must be at least fifty. Lovemaking involves a comfortable intimacy based on knowledge, acceptance, and tender eye-to-eye enjoyment of our lover. This grows with time together and a mature way of thinking and responding to life.
5. Pain and mishaps, which totally impede happiness and contentment, must be avoided at all costs.
Truth: The reality is that pain is a part of life and can be coped with graciously. We know that life, marriage, and love are complicated. Maturity can live with ambiguity and still experience joy and contentment. There's always plenty of ibuprofen, hot baths, and some contentment in the midst of pain and imperfection.
Truth: Many of the most important lessons grow out of experiences of physical or psychological pain and loss. The times of less pain become more enjoyable. Adapting to our limitations is a part of this adventure of aging.
6. Mortality should be feared, and aging bodies are a curse.
Truth: Understanding and accepting that we are in the last third of our lives makes every day more precious. We have different values, and quality of life becomes more crucial. The ability to slow down, relax, and enjoy recreation and relationships takes on special significance. Our aging bodies help create this important realization.
Truth: Mortality can be feared or embraced. Wisdom and maturity give us an ability to face this demon and gain a peaceful, godly understanding and acceptance. We are closer to death, but these deteriorating bodies are a sign our Creator is calling us home. This gives us new ways of looking at time, eternity, and the importance of relationships.
7. Eternity and eternal values have little impact on this present life.
Truth: We know our days are limited. A new realization occurs when we are faced with our mortality. These eighty-plus earth years are just a small part of our existence when we pair them with everlasting eternity.
Truth: God and the eternal values of living in His presence encourage us to build deeply intimate relationships. Maturity gives us new depth and perspective so that we can practice God s love (patient, kind, forgiving) in ways that will have eternal impact.
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