The Washington Post recently ran an article “For older women with money, it’s yes to love but ‘I don’t’ to marriage” by Roxanne Roberts in which she contends:
“Make no mistake: Romance and sex are still on the table. (‘Golden Bachelor,’ anyone?)
But millions of women who once considered marriage the ultimate form of commitment
are declaring financial independence. Some are widows, some divorcees and many are
professionals who built up retirement accounts after decades of working. The one thing
they have in common? An unwillingness to legally commingle their assets.”
According to the article, there are about 22 million households in the United States with a net worth of $1 million or more, and a third of them are headed by women, who typically reach that status by the age of 58.
When I was a child, my father had a button he liked to wear that read, “Nothing happens until someone sells something.” I would argue that nothing much happens until someone risks and commits to something.
I have been dating for about two and a half years since my husband of 42 years passed away suddenly and the biggest takeaways for me have been the reluctance of men to want any kind of intimacy beyond sexual and the inability of many to self-select on dating websites, which I will address in a future blog. Why is there such fear out there among American males?
In a Psychology Today article, Diana Kirschner Ph.D. offers eight common male fears related to romantic emotional commitment, a.k.a., gamophobia:
- Fear of Rejection
- Fear of Being Controlled and Smothered
- Fear of Not Being Lovable
- Fear of Not Measuring Up
- Fear of Being Found Out
- Fear of Trusting a Woman
- Fear of Growing Up
- Fear That He Can’t Make the “Right” Decision
Often, according to the Cleveland Clinic, the condition manifests with other phobias such as philophibia (fear of love), pistanthrophobia (fear of trusting others or being hurt by someone you love), genophobia (fear of sex or sexual intimacy) and fear of abandonment. In extreme cases, symptoms such as panic attacks and depression argue for psychotherapy, specifically cognitive behavioral therapy, as the recommended treatment.
In my age bracket, most women don’t want marriage, so the fear of having to provide financial support and be a sugar daddy should not overwhelm decisions about emotional commitment. Women have already had, if they were going to, their children, and their life expectancy is generally longer than the average male’s anyway, so the legal protections of marriage are not as important to most. In many cases they don’t want the complications of nursing somebody through a slow death while the heirs criticize from afar anyway.
What many instead like, however, is a partnership that includes sharing monogamous sex, companionship, and intellectual and emotional intimacy. Why is that so scary to men? I wonder why so many think they can be truly happy without it. Once you have had it, it seems to me hard to swear off it for the rest of your life. And to have it, one must be willing to take risks. Since I think we only get one go at living, the idea of Missing Out, to me, is even more scary than risking emotional commitment and intimacy and possible heartbreak.
Dr. Anna Chang, a professor of medicine specializing in geriatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, in a recent New York Times article, “The 7 Keys to Longevity” noted that, “Isolation and loneliness is as big a detriment to our health as smoking.”
Robert Waldinger, Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, has looked at longevity studies from around the world and concluded that the more socially connected you are, the more likely you are to live longer and live well.
As Haruki Murakami wrote in Kafka on the Shore, “Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.”
I don’t have FOC, but I do have FOMO.