Tag: Close relationships in Old Age

Where am I?

I am ninety. So I know that my time is very limited. But that does not matter for as long as I feel happy about being alive and maybe can also still do a little bit of writing. I very nuch care about relationships. To devote a great amount of my time to respond to what people say is important to me. Without significant relationships I am nothing. I have to say that relationships that I did have in the past do count a lot too, and I want to be able to tell about them and write about them. However I feel I should not forget to write about present relationships too!

So, where am I at this stage? Can I prioritize and devote myself to the things that are the most important to me? How can I still make the most with the time that is left to me? Even though I cannot know exactly how much time I may still be given, I can still try to make the most of every day that I still feel alive enough to be doing something at all. To be able to do something is such a blessing!

What about loneliness? It is said the feeling of loneliness can be a killer as much as any sickness. For most people it seems to be important that they have someone to hug and to kiss. How can hugging and kissing be so important? But it is. Instead of generalising I want to tell here something about myself. I think for most of my life I was more an introvert than an extrovert. Has aging changed me in some ways? Maybe yes. In my old age I find it usually not very difficult to be somewhat outgoing in communicating with people who in the past perhaps would have been very much out of reach for me. Also I find now often some increased desire to hug and kiss people.

Looking back at my longtime marriage, I think it lasted fot that long because we always had some kind of love and respect for each other. Now that I have a ‘boyfriend’ who is nearly as old as I am, we too love and respect each other. He too comes from a very long lasting marriage. It seems to me he has sometimes difficulty treating me just as a girlfriend. I like him very much, but I like him as a girlfriend, not as a wife . . . .

So, where am I? I am happy that Les and I have found each other. We have lots of fun together. Les has a wonderful sense of humour. He often makes me laugh. And he likes me to laugh a lot! 😂

Marianne Kraft (2)

It is true, Marianne and Jack had exchanged off and on quite a few emails to each other during the last twelve months or so. Seeing Jack in person yesterday Marianne found, thay Jack had not changed much at all from a few years ago when Marianne and Gunter had seen Jack and his wife Marie socially quite regularly. Marianne herself found of herself, that she had pobably changed quite a lot. Anyhow, Marianne was very pleased, to have been able to talk to Jack in person after so many years, and after having been receiving so many emails from him over the past twelve months. Jack does not live far away from her. So, she is wondering, does that mean now, that Jack would like to see her more often in future?

She is 81, and he is 78. The women he was dating, or having had affairs with, were usually quite a bit younger than he. However, from his recent emails to Marianne he gave the impression, that he did not seek a new relationship with a younger person. She is wondering, could she believe him? The question is, does he more or less look for a close relationship at all now? And is everything, he had said online in his emails, really true? She did not want to have doubts. But she was not so sure, whether this was right. Shouldn’t she have some doubts?

She wished there was someone, with whom she could talk about Jack. Did other people think it was possible for her to have a close relationship with Jack?