Older Women Don’t Want to Live With Their Male Partners. Here’s Why – by V. Larson
Older Women Don’t Want to Live With Their Male Partners. Here’s Why
Excerpts:
They’re just not interested in giving up their sense of freedom to have companionship
by Vicki Larson
A rift is emerging between single older women and the men they date, according to a recent Globe and Mail article. Increasingly, 60-something men are discovering that women their age are all in for having a male partner, but they just don’t want to live with them, preferring to be LATs — live apart together partners. As one 70-something woman quoted in the article says, “I don’t want to take care of anybody. I want to take care of me.”
… But they’re [older single women are] just not interested in giving up their sense of freedom to have all that, adamant that they were “willing to be lonely before sacrificing independence.”
… That older women overwhelmingly would rather be alone than give up their independence is a sure sign of who has historically benefited more from “traditional” marriage. …
(Link): The new reality of dating over 65: Men want to live together; women don’t
Excerpts:
by ZOSIA BIELSKI
…D’Alfonso’s push-and-pull with his partners reflects a rift emerging between single women older than 65 and the men they date. Increasingly, these men are encountering resistance from older women who want their own lives, not a full-time relationship
…Some of these women completely forego dating while others opt for “living apart together” (LAT) arrangements, in which partners in committed relationships choose to keep separate residences.
…Now, divorce is driving the trend: the share of separated or divorced seniors living alone more than tripled between 1981 and 2016, according to the agency.
Increasingly it is personal choice – not death – that sees senior-age women going it alone, with 72 per cent reporting they were highly satisfied living on their own, according to data from the 2017 General Social Survey.
Today, this reticence to co-habitate is driving a wedge between the sexes. Many older, heterosexual men still prefer living with a partner: among senior solo dwellers, men were significantly more likely than women to say they intended to marry or form a common law union in the future, according to the authors of a 2019 report from Statistics Canada.
In heterosexual relationships where partners over the age of 65 lived apart, men often assumed they or their girlfriends would move in eventually, while women clung to the solo arrangement, enjoying their free time without responsibility for others – this, according to in-depth interviews conducted in 2013 by University of Victoria sociology professor Karen Kobayashi and Laura Funk, now an associate professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba.
For a generation of older men, traditional, live-in relationships remain important because female partners meet so many of their social, emotional, health and domestic needs, said Sharon Hyman, a Montreal filmmaker who’s interviewed hundreds of couples for her upcoming documentary called Apartners: Living Happily Ever Apart. “Women have wider circles of friends. Men don’t so they are relying on women for more,” Hyman said. “For men, often we hear it’s not as easy for them to be on their own.”
A number of social factors have sent women 65-plus hurtling toward independent lives, chief among them financial independence, said David Cravit, author of The New Old: How the Boomers Are Changing Everything…Again.
“They’ve had careers, they’re liberated and they’re not dependent on the guy,” Cravit said. “When they hit this age, they’re not going to revert back to being their mothers and their grandmothers.”
Older women are forging the kind of partnerships they want because society now allows different kinds of relationships, said Dr. Helen Fisher, a senior research fellow at Indiana’s Kinsey Institute. Fisher, 74, lives separately from her partner of five years, calling it “a blessing.”
…Many women resist moving in with men because they remember previous marriages and the unequal division of labour at home, said Bella DePaulo, author of How We Live Now: Redefining Home and Family in the 21st Century.
Having a place of their own, she said, offers senior-age women time to rest, think and pursue their interests, instead of feeling exhausted by the chore wars. “They want to have their own place, in their own way,” said DePaulo, an academic associate in social psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
When a guy chats up 77-year-old Montrealer Rhoda Nadell at her tennis club, her brain quickly fast forwards: Dinner dates will turn into a relationship, which will inevitably find Nadell cooking, cleaning and eventually caregiving for the elderly gentleman.
“I don’t want to take care of anybody. I want to take care of me,” said Nadell, who divorced her second husband two decades ago. “You want to be friends and get together, when I say it’s okay to get together? Fine. But to be in a relationship where I have to answer to somebody else? Been there, done that, don’t want to do it again.”
…Even so, many senior-age men struggle living alone, growing lonely because they’d over-relied on their spouse “to be their best friend and their social co-ordinator,” DePaulo said. She hopes these realities will change for men as more people delay marriage, reside alone longer earlier in their lives and learn how to thrive solo.
Related:
(Link): Divorcee Learns to Enjoy Life Again After 35 Year Marriage Ends by J. Ivey
(Link): What is a Platonic Life Partnership? These Couples are Breaking Societal Relationship Norms
(Link): What I Wish the Church Knew About Singles by E. Riese
(Link): Why Older Singles Aren’t Looking To Couple Up by Janet Siroto
(Link): When You Are Lonely In Your Marriage by K. Parsons
(Link): Myth 18: Divorce is the Unpardonable Sin and ‘God Hates Divorce’ by G. Baskerville
(Link): Why Making Friends in Midlife Is So Hard By Katharine Smyth
(Link): How I Navigated the Minefield of Online Dating in Later Life – and How You Can Too by Alice Grebot
(Link): Dear Abby: I’m Happy Now That My Abusive Ex is Dead
(Link): Joanne The Widow Lady Wants to Know Why God Didn’t Answer Her Prayer to Keep her Husband With Her
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