Episode 12: Long Term Relationships
Episode 12: Long Term Relationships
The chance to do things differently
Appears in this episode
This week we discuss what happens in long-term relationships when they have run out of steam. As people live longer and longer and relationships grow proportionately we are increasingly confronted by the question of what they are for. People are asking themselves whether they need to make a break from or make a change within these relationships. About 50% of marriages now end in divorce and the rates for long-term cohabitation are similar. The greatest increase in the divorce rate has been amongst those who have been together for more than 30 years. This has risen from 25% to 44%, showing that there are a lots of older people out there looking for a new start.
As women have grown out of the old ways of doing things and are no longer prepared to put up with the sort of behaviour from men that they were expected to and as they have become more independent socially, politically and personally, relationships are having to change accordingly. As a result, and perhaps surprisingly, around 70% of divorces are initiated by women. Within long-term relationships, too, there is an increasing willingness to do things differently so that it does not have to end in divorce.
This often has to do with sexual dissatisfaction within a relationship, and often this dissatisfaction is on the part of the women who have realised after many years that sex is not just a duty to be performed for procreation or to keep your man happy! Women are not only coming out of the kitchen but out of the bedroom too and demanding better sex. They are demanding different sex as well, in different combinations and different ways and are entering into a new age of experimentation.
It seems to us that are sex in later life does not have to be the simple continuation of old-fashioned marriage by different means. Sexual experimentation and the pursuit of desires for both sexes can carry on at an age undreamed of in earlier generations. The point is to use our newfound real and imaginative freedoms to the fullest extent possible.
Episode 12: Long Term Relationships
I just loved this episode, although it was as much about new relationships as it was about old ones. But it made me reflect - how sad, how predictable we are, that the way we go in our relationships can be described so fully. Everything you said, I was nodding, agreeing as I kneaded my bread dough - yes, that's what we do, I know so many who do that, who have done that. How predictable. Particularly sad, the women who have been left. I know many who have never really recovered enough to jump back in to the relationship game. And how right you are about the lazy men! One issue you didn't mention is women's insecurity about how they look and how much that insecurity is magnified as they get older. Some women, like Suzanne I bet, are comfortable with their bodies, but so many are not. Perhaps that issue is one you could discuss in another episode? Meanwhile, thank you for a refreshing, insightful and delightfully cynical listen.