Starting a
relationship
at 50 entails particularities specific to that stage. Single, separated or perhaps widowed people for whom previous and current life become a combo that can sometimes be difficult to process.
What are
those aged 50 and older looking for in a
sexual-affective bond ? What are the difficulties they encounter? Are the problems of their previous relationships repeated?
Psychologist
Pablo Melicchio
explained that frequently the feeling in that age range is that “it is too difficult to find a stable person, emotionally willing, with life more or less resolved to start a healthy sexual-affective bond.”
As mentioned, financial problems, with ex-partners or children; Fear of failure and even health issues (whether physical or psycho-emotional) are some of the issues that people of that age most perceive as obstacles within this area.
Something that is also experienced among this generation is a certain urgency to label or establish the type of relationship. “Many times people who come from romantic disagreements, who do not want to continue alone, driven by the fear of the passage of time and by anxiety and the desire to be accompanied, accelerate the necessary time to know the other and to know themselves in relation to that another,
thus rushing to define a type of bond
that has not yet matured," said the specialist.
The importance of matching
“I want something serious, I'm not saying get married, but something more than sex, someone to go to the movies with, go out to dinner, talk to. At this age the most important thing is to feel accompanied,”
Mirta, 57,
told
Clarín
. With a few words the woman defined what she expects from that other (something that for now she claims not to find).
For Melicchio, “the passage of time does not irrefutably lead to wisdom or good living. Ailments, disappointments and emotional failures, if they are not faced, if they are not therapeutically addressed and healed, tend to be repeated in the new bond; and then sick or 'toxic' couples arise, as it is often adjectived today."
Another of the inconveniences that sooner or later ends in emotional disagreement is associated with the fact that people often want different things, different ways of bonding. The psychologist exemplified among these contrasting ideas the open couple versus the closed one and those who only seek
sex
and adventure versus those who prefer commitment and
monogamy
over the rest of less traditionalist dynamics.
“If there is no coincidence in what is intended and desired, what is fundamentally incompatible is an obstacle that sooner or later will show its discomfort and the consequent symptoms,” he anticipated.
Links and digital life
Daniel is 53 years old and days ago a woman with whom he began a relationship told him via
that it had come to an end. When he tells it, he is still surprised by the chosen method and explains, a little indignantly, what he suggested by responding: “Luckily I didn't get hooked, because being cut the way you did is not good at all. Keep that in mind for the next one.”
Messaging platforms, dating applications and
social networks
are also chosen by this segment as the privileged ways to meet someone and try to make a connection, highlighted the psychologist. In some cases, this can generate tensions when making the transition from the virtual to the real appointment. To which can be added the difficulties of staging the real body, with all that this implies at that moment in life.
According to the specialist (on Instagram, @pablomelicchio), “it can be traumatic – if it has not been elaborated and accepted – to know that neither one nor the other will be the ideal, but rather people of flesh, bones and
lives pierced by the friction of existence
” .
Certain dynamics of online life can generate doubts and confusion. When to respond to a message, how often to write, how long to wait for a response are some of the unknowns that also hover among the +50s.
"He made me jealous because I didn't answer a message right away. If in two months he asks me these questions, imagine in a year," said Verónica, 50, about a relationship that clearly did not prosper.
Melicchio stated that these are "poses and questions typical of
communication difficulties contaminated by anxiety and the fear
that things will not work, or strategies to not appear vulnerable." Along the same lines, he added that "anxiety, a symptom of the time, drives us to rush, to be intolerant of each person's pauses and times, which makes the beginnings more complex due to so many defensive mechanisms."
In this context,
ghosting
was highlighted as one of the most common and harmful practices of the time. “An abrupt cut, not receiving answers, not knowing what happened is usually very damaging. The person who is abandoned without a prior talk usually feels used, and it is a great damage to their
self-esteem
,” he explained.
Even if it costs or hurts, he assured, it is part of the emotional responsibility to put words and explain the reasons for the breakup. “The causes of a separation or estrangement are a learning process for both parties; Abandonment without explanations or ghosting is
violence
,” she emphasized.
Regarding this last concept, the psychologist concluded: “
Affective responsibility
implies taking into account that in every relationship there must be registration, care and reciprocal respect, contemplating the desires and needs of the other. It is essential to pay attention, take care of yourself, because there is a lot of selfishness and narcissism. We live in times marked by the ideology of the most savage capitalism, where there are those who only seek to consume even people, as another commodity.”