How Couples Discover Love Later in Life

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Some people wouldn’t expect the bucket list of an 80-year-old to include “falling in love.” But why not? Romantic love provides a variety of advantages across the lifespan—including into advanced age.

There may be practical reasons older adults do not enter into new relationships, but that doesn’t mean the potential benefits and blessings are not there. Research reveals some interesting findings.

Finding Love Later in Life

Teresa J. Moore and Joanni L. Sailor (2018) investigated the experience of romantic love for women who entered into relationships later in life.[i] They note that romantic love for older adults may be complicated by factors including finances and the objections of adult children. We can also think of other potential issues, including health concerns or relationships with ex-spouses. Yet the experience is often worth pursuing, winning over naysayers who witness the resulting comfort, compatibility, and chemistry.

Moore and Sailor interviewed 14 women between the ages of 65 and 84 who experienced romantic love later in life. Themes that described their experience included “openness to experience, attraction, commitment, adjournment, and generativity.” Moore and Sailor found the women in their study were attracted to partners to fulfill needs ranging from esteem, love, spiritual connection, and self-actualization.

Regarding the five emerging themes, openness to experience allows individuals to embrace new opportunities and relationships, fulfilling their needs for safety, belonging, love, esteem, and self-actualization. Attraction was expressed in terms of physical, intellectual, and emotional, as well as self-acceptance and celebrating a well-developed self-esteem achieved over time.

Moore and Sailor noted that although the women in their study continued to value romantic relationships that fulfilled their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs, the difference, compared to romance in younger years, was greater wisdom, life experience, and sense of self.

Experiencing the Evolution of Intimacy

Love at any stage in life includes both emotional and physical expressions of affection. Recognizing the enduring benefits of sexuality, Moore and Sailor note that couples who remarried in later life exhibited a shift in the primary expression of intimacy from intercourse to enjoying physical closeness and other methods of expressing sexual affection. They note that older women reported the high importance of companionship and intimacy, emphasizing that sexual intercourse was not the only way to express love and passion.

Intimacy also involves more than physical affection; it includes emotional connection. Accordingly, on the topic of companionship, the researchers recognized that the greatest predictor of psychological distress for older adults is loneliness, which is linked with negative outcomes, including health risks, cognitive decline, and a decrease in life satisfaction. They observed that women who entered into romantic relationships later in life counteracted the emotional, physical, and emotional impact of loneliness created by bereavement or late-life singlehood.

Apparently, matches made in heaven can begin on Earth at any stage in life. Finding someone with whom to share the sunset is an attainable aspiration at any age, creating a love story with a happy ending.

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