After 50. Is Shacking up, living together, and marriage worth it?

There seems to be little discussion of the late bloomers starting unions and marriages after the age of 50.  As a couples counselor and marriage therapist in the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills area I do not hear about the aging process among the happily elder couple. With magazines and Film industry’s emphasis on youth is there a place for the aging in love? The individuals that joined the marital wedding party upon their own invitation vs. crashing into a disastrous union might have merit.  Who are the people who just married late or who found good matches late in the game?  Are there any thoughts other than “going down to city hall" in middle age?

12 Secrets -- Life

Let's keep this simple.  We all want to have life go the way we want it.  Despite our wants things just do not go as planned.  Whether in family, education, career, love (Ugh!  Who was the comedian who gave the story of the wife who was stuck with the husband realizing the husband was not her first choice and sees her husband every day  -- Chris Rock) it never goes perfectly.

Ahhh the Male Baby Boomer and His Testerone - or is it EGO! Or is it the Generation That is Saying 50 is the New 30?

I have had several male Baby Boomer (BB) client who are having children for the first time in their 50's.  It is provocative; powerful; daunting; challenging; exciting.  There are also the apprehensions; concerns; doubts; social pressures, and medical questions that surface in session.  It is nothing new that men and women are facing a paradigm in roles and life circumstances making this a vocal discussion of whit and reflecting psychological parenting.  There is that shock value New Yorker article Is She Just Too Old For This addressing whether a woman at 50 is too old to bear children.  The celebrities with the money and resources can pull it off.  Can we, as everyday HMO customers accomplish pregnancy so late in middle-aged life? Insurance and HMO/PPO's aside, is this new trend a part of the male drive to propagate and if so is there a financial and intellectual discussion that is

Look Ahead Baby Boomers: There is a colorful mosiac blending in America's tapestry.

Look Ahead Baby Boomers: There is a colorful mosaic blending in America's tapestry.

—By 2039, racial and ethnic minorities will make up a majority of the U.S. working-age population, helping to support a disproportionately elderly white population through Social Security and other payroll taxes. More than 1 in 4 people ages 18-64 will be Latino.

Several years ago I stated in a graduate paper “The metaphorical catching of the big fish has a process that can only happen after the relationship between the elder and youth symbolically become meshed.”  Taking this thought into a global mindset leads us to question the benefit of community. Yesterday I was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s #1 best seller Outliers in which he chronicles Roseto, Pennsylvania, a small town of Italian immigrants, in the late 1800’s. What made this town/group so fascinating was that they were all dying of “old age.”  There were no heart diseases or illness. Why? Their community was close, and their support system, extended families, and third generational bonds within nuclear families, created such a strong bond in the communal relationships that people were not just functioning better but they were happy – imagine?  What an idea! After reading an on-line article that is laced with statistics on immigration and Baby Boomers and the new face of America a thought crossed my mind.  Regardless of one’s beliefs, or politics on immigration and different cultures in the United States, we, as a country, can not move forward in a positive until we move forward with an open mind; an appreciation of our TRUE history; an appreciation for difference; an appreciation for the amends that must be made (which might be nothing more than an acknowledgement that there is noting that can be done while recognizing the past);  and a realization that “change is gonna come.”

Photo by Aaron Ang on Unsplash

Read more about Dr. Strayhorn's practice and philosophy...