© Margaret Emerson

I was in on another of those conversations about middle-aged men passing up women their own age and choosing to be with much younger women. This is considered a bad thing for postmenopausal women. I think it’s a good thing.

Here’s the disclaimer. I’ve always had a strong streak of the hermit in me and it’s widening and crowding out other parts as I get older. All along I’ve chosen solitary pursuits—working in my potter’s studio, writing, practicing T’ai Chi and meditation, drawing and painting. Even though I’ve been married twice and cohabited twice, I’ve lived alone—by choice—for thirty-three of the forty years that have passed since I was eighteen. It’s true that right up into my midforties I funneled plenty of energy into relationships with men. But I never wanted to raise children, and marriage has never held the aura of security and prestige for me that it has—and does—for many women. Not all women are made the way I am.

Still, some are. And we all do get older. We change. Our chemistry alters at menopause. My sex drive isn’t nearly as importunate as it used to be. This frees up enormous energy that naturally flows into other interests. I look more deeply inward and I look outward in a different, broader way. My mind is clearer, less agitated, and my work has more force behind it. Over the last ten years in particular, I’ve become more emotionally self-sufficient. I don’t look to someone else to validate me or confirm the value of who I am or what I do. I have become my own measure.

People talk about “something missing” or “feeling incomplete” without a partner. I feel more complete without a relationship than I do within one. The fact is I always have, but I’ve used romantic love to avoid facing my incompleteness. I’ve used it to mask my loneliness for myself and I’ve used it as an antidepressant. By now I know that stapling someone else into my hollow places doesn’t remedy the hollowness.

Several years ago, when I told a friend I was in a serious relationship, she said she was glad that I had love in my life. I went along with her during that phone conversation, but her words didn’t sit right. Was there no love in my life before that man came along? I was in my life and I was coming around to loving myself. I had a few true friends. I had trees against sky, walks in moonlight, the rolling, breaking ocean waves—I was embraced by the natural world every day. That man is gone from my life but love is not.

Eventually it’s time to move on. It’s not just the body that changes. Emotion and spirit evolve with it. Entering a new, unfamiliar phase of life and leaving an old, familiar one behind does take awareness and courage. I have to be perceptive enough to know myself, to know my intuition. And I have to be bold enough to act on it. But there’s mystery and adventure in exploring a new phase, a new self. It’s a different form of stimulation that takes over from the old one.

Because middle-aged (or older) men often prefer women that are ten to thirty years younger, postmenopausal single women are seen as ignored, rejected, stripped of their power, and left on the sidelines of life. This is true if a woman views herself as such. Often it wholly misses the mark—many women are single at middle age by choice. They may not make as much money as men do, but they support themselves and want a relationship with a man only if it enhances life in nonmaterial ways. “Enhance” is the key word. Taking on someone who is not at her emotional level is draining, distracting, and boring. Once a woman reaches a degree of hard-earned awareness, she doesn’t want to go backward.

The very fact that a man needs to be with a much younger woman means he’s not mature enough for a woman his age. Life experience counts. If he chooses a woman with far fewer years on her than he has, he hasn’t learned from his own history and requires a partner who is equally in the dark. (Her experience with him will likely turn her into the sort of woman he won’t want to be with.)

If a woman feels she must have a male partner in order to be happy, and there are fewer and fewer possibilities as she ages, then the compromises she must make to have a man in her life become greater and greater. It’s a downhill spiral that leads to a loss of dignity, a loss of self, and a loss of any real fulfillment or happiness.

And what about the middle-aged men? They’re seen as potent sexual beings that get to be perpetual “players,” never excluded from the game. What does this mean for them? The reality is that they’re often getting in over their heads—they’re having a hard time keeping up with a younger woman’s energy and sex drive. (Witness the Viagra craze.) They live with the fear that a younger man will draw their lover away. If it happens, they have to deal with the ego-bruising heartbreak. Should they marry and start having babies, possibly for the second or third time, they’re expected to share in the exhausting work of raising those babies. (The current wife expects more from her husband in the way of domestic duties than the earlier one did.) Not doing so means they’re living with a resentful woman. It’s exhausting just writing about it.

But to each his own. I only know that I’m headed in a different direction. What is that direction? It’s hard to put into words the magnet toward which all my filings are aligned. It has concrete manifestations such as my writing and T’ai Chi teaching and finger painting. But ultimately I want to figure things out, discover how things work—within me and within all the people and things on the other side of my skin. This requires time and quiet.

Everything has its season. The scarcity of men interested in postmenopausal women is just a factor nudging many of those women in the direction in which their bodies and spirits want to go anyway. It’s a good thing.