Notes

Why Older Couples Needn't Marry To Have Great Relationships

At age 22, when retired election consultant Rochelle Ventura married, she says she felt like a slave. We were equals. Now 83 and living with Phil Doppelt, 82, a retired software engineer, she says, We were equals. My first point of clarification was that I wasn't responsible for the dinner plan every night.

While keeping their finances separate, they divide their time between her home in Los Angeles and his in San Jose. Without getting married, they have shared love and joy without getting married for more than a decade. She says she did not feel like her own person in her marriage. I felt stuck. Now that I am free to leave, I can do so. In Phil's case, I cannot imagine leaving.

A demographic and social wave is sweeping through Ventura and Doppelt. Older adults are at the forefront of family change, according to Bowling Green sociologist Susan L. Brown. She says the divorce rate for women 50 and over doubled between 1990 and 2010. The result? Older singles.

Couples are meeting in unprecedented numbers and unorthodox ways, whether online, at the gym, or at church. In the past two decades, the remarriage rate has remained steady, but cohabitation rates have more than tripled among people over 50, according to Brown. Statistics on LATs (long-term committed couples living apart together) are scarce. Still, more info by Huijing Wu from the University of Western Ontario in 2011 found that about a third of unmarried but partnered adults over 50 in Wisconsin were LATS.

These couples have different partnering styles, but that is not all that distinguishes them. Sociologist Deborah Carr studies older re-partnered couples and finds that they tend to be more equal financially, more autonomous as individuals, and less bound by gender role expectations. According to Carr, this holds whether the couple is remarried or living together. Carr has not studied LATs. The very structure of living apart together builds autonomy and equality.

Changing social attitudes also factor into the picture, Carr says. Traditionally, cohabitation was stigmatized as a sin or inferior to marriage. Even if some still disapprove, many older adults do not mind. It's not easy being 60 years old, but I'll do whatever I like.

These couples are different because they aren't raising children or building fortunes together. It's common for married couples to keep their finances separate. In the opinion of Tammy A. Weber, a Pennsylvania certified elder-law attorney, that is the case for more than 75 percent of her clients. It's a common desire to leave assets to children. People might want to retain Social Security benefits or alimony from a former spouse. They keep their Money separate for more reasons than just fiscal impact.

Maryan Jaross, 68, of Louisville, Colo., for example, has forged a successful career post-divorce and gained autonomy and independence. As much as I wanted to keep it, I couldn't let it go. The shoes I own can be exchanged even if I have 100 pairs. She lives happily in New York with her husband, Tom Lepak, 65, who is in sales for a firm that sells industrial construction equipment. She has built a legal wall between their finances because of this and other reasons.

Many women, like Jaross, are economically independent, capable, and determined to form equal relationships. While she enjoys cooking, Lepak does the laundry and cleans up. The yard work and making the bed are things he enjoys. They hire people to do what neither one wants to do. She says it's huge that we don't have kids or obligations on our shoulders. Couples have a new mindset now.

Partners like these feel no obligation to operate as a unit when they visit family, friends, or travel. Jaross and Lepak, for instance, see some of their children separately while other children share their time. Shell spends a week with his brother in the East; she stays with her mother in New York for a month. Occasionally, Doppelt and Ventura travel separately. Doppelt will be hiking with five other guys in the fall of this year while Ventura tours Cuba with women friends. He told me that it's fine for us to travel separately. That is not how I would have felt when I was married before.

Couples who live at home (and expect to do so for the rest of their lives) have the least traditional relationships and have the most freedom. Apart, they can avoid any potential conflict over all the habits, wants, and people they've gathered over the years. Is he a morning person, and she sleeps late? No problem. When the thermostat is at 65, he's fine, but when it is 75, she's miserable? Not an issue. Her grandkids run wild all over the house? Hey, it is her house. Many people live alone and require their own space and solitude.

Despite living in suburban Philadelphia, Jeff Ostroff, host of the podcast Looking Forward, lives far away from the woman he calls the second love of his life. Staff, who is in his late sixties, is busy working, surfing social media, exercising, and serving his community. He also spends time with friends and his children. He and his girlfriend of more than six years talk and video chat several times a day, sometimes for more than an hour, but they typically see each other only at the weekends. He says he can devote himself to her almost 100% during his time alone during the week.

Couples differ in their emotional textures based on whether they marry, live together, or are apart. Having children or an empty nest are two major life events that often change people. What they need and who they are is clear to them. They know what matters to them and what doesn't. University of Colorado Denver sociologist Teresa Cooney observed that older couples are better at problem-solving and tend to argue less when compared to their first marriages.

Even though older adults are under no pressure to find a new partner, if they choose to, they pick someone who matches their current traits. I once had the pleasure of talking with a woman who lived happily with her first husband. I thought he would make a great father, and he did. He was, however, not the right mate for midlife and beyond. Couples who partner in later life do it solely for the relationship, for the love, companionship, and emotional support it provides.

Researchers from Haifa University found that in remarried older couples, each spouse felt more equal within their relationship, creating a deepening of intimacy and equality. Sociologist Torbjorn Bildtgard, who has researched romantic unions in older couples, says time acts paradoxically on older couples. However, they have more free time together. They also know there are only a few more years left together. Having found each other has brought them immense joy. They cherish their love.

Lepak expresses it this way. Instead of worrying about our end, he says, we try to make the most of each day we have together. We are blessed to have found our soul mate.

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