Here are some things I’ve learned over the last 42 years counseling men and women who want to expand their love and deepen their intimacy (Not to mention what I learned finding mature love at the age of 37 after I had been married twice before):

Jed Diamond

In a previous article I asked the question: Are you attractive enough to find and keep a mate? my purpose in discussing these powerful, genetically driven desires that cause men to be attracted to certain women and women to be attracted to certain men was to expand and deepen the intimacy we can have in our relationship, not to perpetuate the myth that the only way a woman can keep a man is if she tries to look like and act like a 20-something nymph.
 
I wanted to suggest that what men and women find attractive in each other is not just based on cultural styles and big business definitions of beauty, but has evolutionary roots. But desiring an attractive mate is not the end of the story it is only the beginning.
 
Here are some things I’ve learned over the last 42 years counseling men and women who want to expand their love and deepen their intimacy (Not to mention what I learned finding mature love at the age of 37 after I had been married twice before):
 
· Though understanding biological desire can be helpful in understanding large groups of people (David Buss’s study that I referred to in the previous article sampled over 10,000 men and women from cultures all over the world), it tells us nothing about what individuals find attractive.
 
· When we are young and foolish we often desire a partner whose beauty is only skin deep. When I was young I was always attracted to petite, cute, short, dark-haired girls. I was often disappointed because the girls that I was most attracted to weren’t attracted to me. I learned early that being a short, cute guy doesn’t often get the girl.
 
· But youth being what it is, most of us find someone who wants us and most of us start families and raise children.
 
· Life being what it is, many of us find that our dream of living happily ever after and growing old together doesn’t work out. It didn’t work out for me, twice. Author Caroline Myss suggests that in order to grow spiritually most people experience one or more significant betrayals.
 
· Myss and other wise elders say that there are two worlds–the one that exists "in front of our eyes" and the one that exists "behind our eyes." The world "out there" is driven, Myss suggests, by our lower Chakras, while the world "inside" links to our higher Chakras.
 
· Lower chakra relationships are all about the externals. How pretty is she? How much does he earn? Does he/she make me happy? Higher Chakra relationships are attuned to love, kindness, inner beauty, soul wisdom, and how we can contribute to the well-being of our beloved.
 
· Most people don’t have a lot of experience actually developing higher Chakra relationships, even though most people want them. Many people talk a good line, but don’t actually practice what they preach.
 
· Other’s develop healthy, mature long-term, higher Chakra relationships, but lose them over time. I’ve found that when we are under stress, we regress to earlier levels. Like children who have developed higher levels of maturity, but regress to earlier levels when there is trauma in their lives, some adults who have achieved a mature, higher level relationship can lose their bearings when they experience increased life-stress.
 
· Bottom line: Mature higher Chakra relationships are the best humans can achieve, but they aren’t easy to develop and are difficult to maintain.
 
· Here’s a personal example of the evolution of a more mature type of relationship.
 
My wife, Carlin, and I met nearly 30 years ago. We met, but we almost didn’t connect. Neither of us fit the "attraction model" that had driven our relationship searches up to that point. She wasn’t as young and pretty as my "beauty model" called for. And I wasn’t as good looking or successful as her "handsome-man model" dictated. Besides she was older than I was and taller than I was, which didn’t fit for me. And, of course, I was younger than she was and shorter than she was, which didn’t fit for her.
 
Yet there was something calling each of us to the other, something based on an inner sense of beauty, a deeper sense of attraction. As we got to know each other better, we found that the "outer" was less important than the "inner." We fell in love. We got married. We took on the task of parenting each other’s children from previous marriages. We learned that a mature marriage has much less to do with finding someone who will make us happy as it does in finding someone who can support our inner journey.
 
Being married to Carlin has been one of the most difficult practices of my life. She often refuses to give me want I want, but always gives me what I need. She can be exasperating in the extreme, but she is always deeply honest and trustworthy. Every day is an adventure. I am learning to love and I am learning to live more deeply and more completely.
 
We’re both getting older every day (She’ll be 70 next year and I’m not too far behind her). We both keep in shape and we both have aches and pains and sags and drags. I know we’ll see each other through to the end. She’ll never be as pretty as she was when she was young. But I’m amazed to see that she grows more beautiful each day. And I don’t just mean "inner beauty," though that certainly is the case. Everything about her gets more beautiful. Each new wrinkle, each new crinkle and crease, each new inch. On her it is beautiful.
 
It’s comforting to know that we will grow old together and we will continue to explore the depths of new life. I know this kind of journey isn’t for everyone. Some would prefer to go for "young and pretty." But for those who want the benefits of age and beauty, find that special someone and stick with them to the end.
 
Any "old beauties" out there? Any men and women who are in long-term relationships that have lasted through the years? What has been working? What has been difficult? Any people out there that wanted this kind of relationship, but it hasn’t worked out? What happened?