When Do We Start Feeling Old?

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My patient Ardis used to be married to her college boyfriend, Henry. She put him through medical school on the assumption that, later, they’d live happily ever after on Park Avenue.

She was half right. Ardis still has the fancy apartment, but Henry moved out a year ago and married a woman half her age. Now in her 50s, Ardis feels old and rejected. She hasn’t a clue how to approach middle-aged men looking to start a romance. “This couldn’t have happened at a worse time,” she said. “I’m postmenopausal, I imagine sex could be difficult, and who would want me anyway?”

Even though by the standards of most people—especially demographers—Ardis is hardly "old,” she feels old because her sexual and emotional options seem limited. Thus if 70 is the new 50, then 50 can be the new 70 if you feel cast off and out of the running for personal fulfillment. Ardis wanted to know what she could do to revamp her attitude towards feeling alive. She really wanted to know what 50ish men wanted so that (perhaps) she could be in the running.

Age, and hence aging, is a state of mind. A husband’s departure for a much younger woman might make any woman feel old. While aging is biological, it also has a psychological dimension. In Ardis’ case, I was sure she hadn’t felt old until Henry left her. Then, suddenly, she became much more aware of her body (“I’m postmenopausal”), and began to fear she had become unappealing.

So, perhaps, old is when you think you’re old. If you start acting the way you think old acts, then it becomes self-reinforcing until, finally, your biology catches up with your mental state. I thought maybe we could reset Ardis’ “psychological clock,” the analogue to her biological clock, which, she thought, was slowing down.

When Ardis walked in the door, I’d have guessed her age at 45. She looked lovely. But she felt old, and that’s what mattered. Since Henry left, she’d taken up yoga again and joined a gym for women. Nonetheless, she feared that no matter what she did, she carried around an aura of rejection. “I worry,” she said, “that men will see me as past my sell-by date. Why else would Henry have dumped me?” Her friends said that wasn’t so, but she still worried. Her fear was paralyzing. She wasn’t sure that she could stand more humiliation.

“I’ve heard stories,” she said, “of women who go on Match and OK Cupid and nobody contacts them because they want younger women. Well, maybe old guys, but I’m not that old.” So, what could we do?

So much of feeling old is anticipating indignities that are associated with being old. The convention is that as men age, they want younger women (Henry seemed to bear this out). But that’s not true of all men. Some seek companionship from women their own age.

I set out, therefore, to help Ardis realize that to a considerable degree, her fears were excessive. That is, if she could get past the conventional wisdom, she’d see it wasn’t such wisdom after all. The goal was to help her realize that while she may feel old relative to younger women, she wasn’t necessarily old in terms of the people who counted—men around own age. She should begin thinking about “old” from a different perspective.

I suggested that she put this theory to the test by posting a profile on one of the dating platforms and assessing the responses she received (or didn’t). “But I don’t even know how to write a profile,” she said. Okay, like everything else, aging takes work. She could read the tips on those platforms about writing profiles and review those posted by other women her age. Maybe she could ask a couple of her friends to ask their husbands what they thought. “Oh, that’s so embarrassing,” she said. My advice was to get over it. We all must swallow our pride sometimes.

I thought that if she got even a few responses, her confidence would increase. As we age, we can boost our confidence through affirmation. That is, if we do something that’s scary because we feel old, and then we succeed, we’ll try it again because our fear has diminished.

But suppose Ardis did meet someone. There was the delicate subject of sex, about which she totally lacked confidence. “I haven’t slept with anyone in four years,” she said. Apparently, while Henry was practicing infidelity (as well as medicine), they had maintained separate bedrooms. She had tried to change that. In fact, up until six months before he left, she thought maybe things could improve. She asked Henry, for her sake, to attend marriage counseling; they even visited a sex therapist. But it became clear that Henry wanted out, period, and that nothing would change. Thus, when a sex therapist suggested that they “try” having sex, Henry couldn’t get an erection. He said he just wasn’t attracted anymore. “Then he proved it,” Ardis said, “by telling me that he’d been sleeping with women while he claimed to be working the night shift at the hospital.” Ardis was crushed.

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She wondered whether anyone would find her sexy, or even whether she could have sex comfortably. I suggested that she visit a gynecologist, who could help with the practicalities. “A lot of women way past menopause have sex—but you have to know how hormones and other approaches might work.” She didn’t have to feel awkward about sex once she knew it was possible and, in fact, that she could enjoy it. Again, she had to get past being afraid.

So, in middle age, Ardis is embarking on a new phase of life—just when she thought she’d be settling even further into a life she had known for years. It’s no fun. But while she feels old, she feels too young to be “that old.” She must take steps, in many ways, to reconstruct an identity as an appealing and sexual person.

The last time that we spoke, she reported that her friends were providing support. It helps to be candid with people that we know and trust. One privilege of aging is that we can speak openly about our problems; a lot of people have the same issues, or worry that they will.