Dear Sugar,
I love your advice column. I am a sixty-four-year-old man who has been single for the past five years.
My most recent romantic relationship lasted ten years—eight of which were wonderful. My ex had four adult children and three grandchildren. I liked her children a lot and I loved her grandkids. The year after our relationship ended was the most painful time of my life. (This from a man who lost his father in high school, spent a year in Vietnam, and watched another lover die of cancer.)
To survive my heartbreak, I started to do lots of community volunteer work. In the past four years, I’ve been involved with hospice, I’ve served on the board of directors of a nonprofit agency that provides services to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, I’ve tutored students at a middle school, and I’ve worked at an AIDS hotline. During this time, I’ve had a few dates with women I’ve met via internet dating services, and found one good friend among them, but no romance. I’ve had one sexual encounter since my ex and I broke up, which I paid for. It wasn’t very satisfying. I miss sex a lot but I also miss having someone to talk with over a meal or coffee.
There’s a new volunteer coordinator at the AIDS hotline where I volunteer and she’s wonderful. She is so exciting that I overcame my fears and asked her out to see a play with me. She said she couldn’t go because she had a friend visiting from out of town. I believed that. I know I should ask her out again since she seemed willing, but one of my fears is that I am old enough to be her father. I don’t want to be a dirty old man!
My counselor said just be light at first—start easy and be funny. Be Cary Grant! she said. But I don’t know if I can do that, Sugar.
I give to lots of people, but I have emotional needs too. I want sex, affection, and emotional closeness. I want someone to care about me. I know people do care about me already, but I want someone special. I want to be loved and to receive love; to have someone there for me. My hunger for this is so great that I fear it’s too much to ask anyone for. I’m afraid that if the volunteer coordinator did go out with me, I’d share all this with her at once and though she’d be compassionate, she’d be scared off because she’d perceive me as needy. Of course I know that even if the volunteer coordinator and I did start seeing each other she may not be the person for me, or I the person for her.
But I want to take that chance and see. I don’t want my fear to get in the way. What do you think, Sugar?
Thank you.
Fear of Asking Too Much
Dear Fear of Asking Too Much,
Of course you want someone special to love you, sweet pea. Approximately 68% of the people who write to me inquire about how they can get the same thing. Some are “hot, smart and twenty-five,” others are “forty-two, a bit chubby, but lots of fun,” and others “awesome, but in a muddle.” Many are teens and early twentysomethings whose hearts have just been seriously broken for the first time and they are quite convinced they’ll never find a love like that again. A few are seasoned, experienced, grown-ups like you whose faith in the prospect is waning. Unique as every letter is, the point each writer reaches is the same: I want love and I’m afraid I’ll never get it.
It’s hard to answer those letters because I’m an advice columnist, not a fortune teller. I have words instead of a crystal ball. I can’t say when you’ll get love or how you’ll find it or even promise that you will. I can only say you are worthy of it and that it’s never too much to ask for it and that it’s not crazy to fear you’ll never have it again, even though your fears are probably wrong. Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It’s the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It’s worthy of all the hullabaloo.
It seems to me that you’re doing everything right, darling. I plucked your letter out of the enormous how-do-I-get-love pile because I was struck by the integrity with which you describe your situation. You’re looking for love, not letting that keep you from living your life. In the face of your most recent (and considerable) heartbreak, you opted not to wallow. Instead, you gave generously of yourself by committing to work that’s meaningful to you and important to your community. It’s no surprise to me that it was in the course of that work you’ve met someone who genuinely sparks your interest.
So let’s talk about her. The “exciting” volunteer coordinator. I agree with you that you shouldn’t let your fears get in the way of asking her out. Just don’t allow yourself to take it too personally if she says no. I can think of two reasons she might turn you down. One is your significant age difference—many women will date outside their age bracket, but some won’t. The other is your status as a volunteer for the agency that employs her—she may be constrained by workplace policies that prohibit her from dating you or she may have a personal boundary about doing so (she does, after all, hold a position of professional authority in relation to you).
You won’t know either until you find out. I suggest you ask her on a date without specifying the day or time or occasion, so you can avoid the uncertainty of another impossible-to-interpret “I’d love to but…” scenario. Just tell her that you think she’s great and you wonder if she’d like to go out with you sometime. She’ll either say yes or no or okay, but only as friends.
I agree with your counselor that light and easy is the way to begin—with her and with any woman you ask out—even if you have to fake it for a while.
Which happens to be precisely what Cary Grant did.
He wasn’t born a suave and bedazzling movie star. He wasn’t even born Cary Grant. He was a lonely kid whose depressed mother was sent to a madhouse without his knowledge when he was nine or ten. His father told him she’d gone on an extended vacation. He didn’t know what became of her until he was well into his thirties, when he discovered her still institutionalized, but alive. He was kicked out of school in England at 14 and by 16 he was traveling across the United States, performing as a stilt-walker and acrobat and mime. Eventually he found his calling as an actor and changed his name to the one we know him by—the name your counselor invoked because it’s synonymous with male charisma and charm and fabulousness, but he was always still that boy inside. Of himself Grant said, “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point.”
I suggest you take that approach, honey bun. It’s not about becoming a movie star. It’s about the down-in-the-dirt art of inhabiting the person you aspire to be while carrying on your shoulder the uncertain and hungry man you know you are. Your longing for love is only one part of you. I know that it feels gigantic when you’re all alone writing to me, or when you imagine going out on that first date with a woman you desire. But don’t let your need be the only thing you show. It will scare people off. It will misrepresent how much you have to offer. We have to be whole people to find whole love, even if we have to make it up for a while.
I remembered a younger version of myself as I pondered your letter, FOATM. I recalled a time fifteen years ago, when I was sitting in a café with Mr. Sugar. We’d only been lovers for a month, but we were already in deep, thick in the thrall of the you-tell-me-everything-and-I’ll-tell-you-everything-because-I-love-you-so-madly stage, and on this particular afternoon I was telling him the harrowing tale of how I’d gotten pregnant by a heroin addict the year before and how I’d felt so angry and sad and self-destructive over having an abortion that I’d intentionally sliced a shallow line in my arm with a knife, even though I’d never done that before. When I got to the part about cutting myself, Mr. Sugar stopped me. He said, “Don’t get me wrong. I want to hear everything about your life. But I want you to know that you don’t need to tell me this to get me to love you. You don’t have to be broken for me.”
I remember that moment precisely—where he was sitting in relation to where I was sitting, the expression on his face when he spoke, the coat I was wearing—because when he said what he said it felt like he’d scooped a hunk of my insides out and shown it to me in the palm of his hand. It wasn’t a good feeling. It had never before occurred to me that I thought in order to get a man to love me I had to appear to be broken for him. And yet when he said it, I recognized it—immediately, humiliatingly—as true. Like truly-uly true. Like how could I have not known this about myself before true. Like what hole can I go and die in now true. Because here was a man—a good, strong, sexy, kind, astounding, miraculous man—finally calling my bluff.
You don’t have to be broken for me.
I didn’t have to be broken for him, even though parts of me were. I could be every piece of myself and he’d love me still. My appeal did not rely on my weakness or my need. It relied on everything I was and wanted to be.
Yours does too, sweet pea. Bring your needy self when you go on that next date with a potential lover, but bring all your other selves too. The strong one. The generous one. The one who became fatherless too young and survived a war and lost one lover to cancer and another to the challenges of a decade together, but came out wiser and more tender for it. Bring the man you aspire to be, the one who already has the love he longs for. Play every piece of yourself and play it with all you’ve got until you’re not playing anymore.
That’s what Cary Grant did. The lonely boy who lost his mom in the fog of his father’s deceit found himself in the magic of wanting to be. His name was Archibald Leach.
Yours,
Sugar
39 responses
You’re so good, Sugar.
Sometimes, in order to go on living, traumatised people have to trick themselves.
Like Sugar, I pretended to be someone I wasn’t, and my now-fiancé fell in love with me because of it.
I pretended I hadn’t been raised by a seriously dysfunctional family (in fact I often say I raised myself because my parents were always so focused on hating each other that us kids were just part of the background noise).
I pretended I hadn’t taken refuge in drugs and cutting myself as a teenager.
I pretended that the winter preceding the spring in which we met hadn’t been a depressing, trying time of too many bottles of wine emptied alone in my apartment.
I imagined myself as the heroine in one of the many films I watched during that lonely time, and charmed the proverbial pants off of my man.
And I’ve never regretted a single moment of it.
I think the danger here is that, by pretending to have roots that go deep, us unstable trees are easily toppled and some of the things that I’ve been going through lately have proven this to me.
Good luck to the letter writer, and Bravo to Sugar, who is as relevant as always.
I loved reading this.
Mr. Sugar sounds like a great man.
Send the 42 year old chubby one my way.
This is inspiring 🙂 another great column
I love Sugar like crazy, but today I love Molly, too!
A great and poetic answer as always, however Sugar didn’t address a fear he named outright — of being a dirty old man. He doesn’t want to be a cliche.
I’m sure there are many women his age who might actually get what he’s going through, having lived and lost. There’s no substitute for that experience.
Don’t write off women your own age or nearer your age, is all. The first relationship you are aiming for is with someone much younger — think about this a little more deeply.
Maybe be Cary Grant for someone who will get the reference.
hahaha lol
really though, I’m so alone.
Sugar, this is wonderful. The last line honestly gave me chills.
And Molly, Sugar’s advice, as always, goes for everybody. Think Grace Kelly.
Or better yet Katherine Hepburn. I love this quote from her:
“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get – only with what you are expecting to give – which is everything.”
“[Cary Grant is] synonymous with male charisma and charm and fabulousness”
A bit off-topic, but humor me. Has anyone watched a Cary Grant movie lately? I recently watched Charade (fun movie, BTW) and was struck by what a weirdo that guy is. He’s always muttering nervous and bizarre comments, making weird faces, etc. The whole movie sort of hinges on the viewer’s belief that Audrey Hepburn is falling in love with Cary Grant, but it seems so implausible given his array of strange tics. It’s funny that he was once considered very suave.
Kind of gets into Hmmmm’s point about maybe the writer should consider more women in his age group. If he really acts like Cary Grant, most younger women would think something was wrong with him.
Here’s a Cary Grant anecdote that seems very relevant to the context:
Upon meeting Grant in person, a disappointed fan told him, “But you don’t look like Cary Grant.”
He replied, “My dear, no one does.”
“If Sugar was as sweet as you honey, sugar just couldn’t be bought.”
Thanks again for another wise and wonderful column. xo
@Aaron – Cary Grant loved LSD. A lot of people don’t know that. I’m not saying the two are related, but probably.
http://bit.ly/aodyT7
@Winney – Alfred Hitchock says that a woman should be a lady in the parlor and a whore in the bedroom. I was thinking that that quote had something to do with Grace Kelly but I see now that it doesn’t. Directly.
Anyway, we’re exchanging a lot of great advice here.
“Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning.” Beautiful, Sugar. Inspiring, as always.
@Hmmmmmm: You’re right, nobody should write off anybody else due to age. But he’s only a dirty old man if he’s chasing after young ones who don’t want the attention. When I was in my 30s I never would have imagined how many women in their 20s like guys in their 40s. If he starts to believe he is awesome and wonderful, other people will start to believe along with him. It sounds like he’s got a good start, he just needs to start believing it himself.
@Chelsea: Don’t we all.
Beautiful Sugar.
I love coming here to read you and see what I can glean.
Oh Sugar, I love you so!
@Sugar – always the voice of reason, and always the optimist. At any age you have to put yourself out there, like Nike: JUST DO IT. People will be drawn to you or they won’t. Might as well be yourself. Wanting love, friendship and sex isn’t strange or needy at all, it’s the bare minimum for survival.
@Molly – you should have an in-box full of 40ish chubby guys by now. Enjoy. If that’s you in your avatar, I can’t believe that they aren’t already lining up. I once put an ad in the Chicago Reader spelling out exactly who I was (“a hipster doofus”) and what I was into (The Cure, The Smith, indie and foreign films) and I got 40 messages by the end of the weekend. Put it out there and you’ll find there are many people just like you, with similar interests to bond over and different experiences to share and learn from, so don’t be shy. But do be yourself, be genuine.
And have fun. 🙂
Hey Sugar –
As always – soulful and true.
I was wondering what your take is on the rub between being who you are and who you aspire to be.
How much of ourselves can we make up?
How much can we invent?
To what degree are we stuck being who we are?
I guess I am wondering what you think about our capacity to change into the people we aspire to be.
How malleable are we? Can we really become our own Cary Grants?
I think that pretending is different from denying.
Pretending is recognizing an essential ugly truth and transcending it, for the moment, until you realize that you don’t have to believe that ugly truth anymore. The pretense becomes reality.
Denial is ignoring or dismissing the truth as if it doesn’t affect you. Reality doesn’t change, but your inner landscape becomes misshapen around it.
Does that answer your question at all, Sean?
My sister linked to this from her website so this is my first introduction to your work and it is beautiful, stunning writing. I’m sitting here minding my own business drinking my West Coast morning coffee and you just brought me to tears. Plus it’s excellent advice. Wow. I’ll be checking back in here regularly. Fantastic writing.
with my comments I think I was trying to be funny or irreverent, but leave it to sugar readers to see through the facade and go straight for my vulnerability. I am touched.
sane people give good advice on this subject because we all know the right things to do: love yourself, temper your enthusiasm when warranted, be yourself, and if it doesn’t work you’ve got to let that shit go. those are the main things.
I agree that it’s going to be okay @richard, @everyone, I just have to exercise some patience. I have special needs. I need a man who is a writer and knows how to use the Internet and has a job but no wife or girlfriend. this is like the lochness monster, all of these things in one man. Another problem I have is that I don’t remind anyone of their mother.
“Be yourself,” everyone says as though this is self evident and easy, but it’s not. sometimes it’s hard to know what that is, and sometimes “being it” can have real consequences. It’s still good advice and worth fighting for, but not so simple. also, sometimes yourself isn’t good enough and you have to change. luckily, writing, thinking about these things, talking to you fine people about it, nurturing real life relationships, etc. takes up a lot of time and being single is not a problem it’s an opportunity.
@Molly, thank you, thank you, thank you. Beautifully put. I smiled at “Another problem I have is that I don’t remind anyone of their mother.” Me too. Thanks for the reminder of the full picture and the opportunity too.
Hey Natasha,
Thank you for your kind, thoughtful, and well written response.
Does it answer my question(s), I don’t really know.
I think those questions, for me, are searchers, koans almost, and may always be unclear.
Regardless, your response has given me different avenues to explore, and for that I am appreciative.
Best.
@Molly and Lara – I had a chuckle at your last two comments. Take it from someone who knows, reminding people of their mothers has its own pitfalls, too!
I am a little troubled by the idea that “play every piece of yourself and play it with all you’ve got” has been interpreted to mean “pretend that awful, scarring things in my past don’t exist.” The ‘every piece of yourself’ shouldn’t be ignored in that statement. I believe Sugar chooses her words very precisely, and all are significant.
Having been in a few relationships where a secret past came up out of the blue to smite us, I would like to say that those are very different goals. I’ve been with two people who had a relationship with someone who had secret abuse in their pasts. It came up years down the road, and it came up like a land mine when considering children, or marriage, taking the relationships with it.
While carrying the past around on your shoulder like a badge of accomplishment is something to avoid (“I’m a SURVIVOR dammit, and you’d better pay homage to that at every opportunity), total denial of a damaged past should be avoided also. Being suddenly confronted with a whole secret past such as incest or abuse several years into a relationship, is unfair, IMHO. Even if there has been significant effort to overcome and move on, via therapy and some outside accountability, that kind of past will leave some residue. Faking confidence and breezy is a whole different realm than faking a happy, calm past.
There’s a difference between papering over gaping holes in your sanity, and forging ahead with the best you you can be.
About the letter writer’s fear of being a dirty old man: resist that idea with all your might. I currently know a man in his mid-60s who’s old enough to be my dad, and if I were single and looking, I’d date him without a second thought. He’s a vital, in-shape, attractive, interesting man.
I know he finds me attractive, but I get the feeling that much of it isn’t because of my age relative to his. I’m just a person who has a lot in common with him, and my younger looks are just a bonus. I’ve met his other girlfriends, and they’re his age, and ordinary looking. I give him a lot of respect for that.
I think older men enter into DOM territory when they won’t consider women their own age, and so reveal an inability to see women as individuals. This letter writer doesn’t seem to be in any danger of this.
@Ray: “If he starts to believe he is awesome and wonderful, other people will start to believe along with him.”
Except that doesn’t work for older women, except maybe one in a million, like Helen Mirren.
Just saying.
@Hmmmm: I used to say “Except that doesn’t work for overweight guys, unless they’re Tony Soprano” all the time. I’ve since been convinced otherwise.
I know plenty of older women for whom it would work, if they weren’t so focused on the “except for older women” thing. Older women are awesome.
This is actually my favorite Sugar column yet.
“You don’t have to be broken for me.” How true and caring.
@ray – thanks!
Seems to relate to the developing theme, so I’m throwing it out:
I have helped several 50+ male friends create online dating profiles that have led to happy long-term relationships with women. The key sentence I recommend is, “I am interested in dating strong women my own age.” It’s like catnip – if true.
FOATM, if you would be willing to consider joining a reputable internet dating site (where most participants are specifically interested in relationships), you will begin back-and-forth discussions that will also help you in person; you can find your lightness more easily when there isn’t so much freight on any one invitation or meeting.
No matter how/where, I send best wishes for finding someone with whom attraction is mutual, so your next adventure can begin.
Damn, Sugar.
Okay, I’m going to be a bit hyper-realistic here. My dad, at the age of 79, developed a roaring crush on a 19 year-old girl. This would have been fine (since we are all human) except that, for a time, he deluded himself into thinking that his feelings were reciprocated. She was fond of him, true, but definitely as a father/grandfather figure. Fortunately, my dad somehow saw the light before making a complete fool of himself (I hope, from what I can tell).
So, having had a bit of experience with lonely, needy and self-deluding men, I’d caution the letter writer to seriously consider whether this has much chance of success. It is one thing if a woman is even twenty years his junior (say, forty, to his sixty-odd years) – which would still make him technically old enough to be her father. If so, I’d say – give it a try, why not? (except that she works at the agency and has ducked him once, both of which may be negative indicators). In any case, no harm, no foul.
However, if she is truly young enough to be his daughter (say, a woman in her twenties or thirties), then I’d say he’s wandering perilously close to the lonely and self-deluding territory that my dad inhabited for a time. Loneliness can definitely cloud one’s vision. Perhaps he has a male friend or a female friend who know a bit more details (his state of mind, relative ages, etc), who can steer him with some perspective on his specific situation.
I’m a bit suspicious that he wrote Sugar, without giving more details (unless they were edited out, which i kind of doubt). It’s almost like he wanted to write in a way that was vague enough to increase the chances of hearing what he wanted to hear.
I’m all for self-expression, and I’ve certainly been with people when there was a large age difference. However, in the cases where the difference was the most significant, they were chasing me (and had misjudged my age), not the other way around.
Be careful, dude – and seek advice from those who -know- your situation, and who care enough about you to give it to you straight.
@hmmmm My mom dated a 27-year-old when she was 69. And SHE was the one who broke it off. I’m not saying I think this is something I’d aspire to. But I agree that if a woman is active and vital, (and really self-confident) she can be attractive to much younger men. The man she hangs out with most now is in his 50s, and she’s maybe 71.
I only recently discovered this column, and for the past few days I’ve done little else other than devour it all, fully, completely. You are beautiful, Sugar. Every word, every bit of advice thoughtfully and sweetly given. I do believe I’ve fallen in love with you, the same way I fall in love with people beautiful and strong and amazing and writers that make me feel things I sometimes forget I could feel.
And it struck me that I recognise you. I recognise your writing voice as a half-memory of something I’d read a while ago. Some of the stories you’ve included of your life have been familiar and I wondered… The memory you shared in this column (with yet-again near flawless advice that made my heart sad and warm at the same time) confirmed what I suspected.
But don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. I promise.
Keep doing what you’re doing, Sugar. The world is just that bit more of a better place because of it.
Love,
A Now Loyal Reader.
Why do you always know what a 21 year old girl who is newly supporting herself and confused by the entire universe needs to read?
I only just came across this column. I first discovered #64 “Tiny Beautiful Things” indirectly because some facebook friend liked that someone else had posted it to yet another person. In other words, pretty indirectly, but I was so moved that I wanted to read another, I clicked the previous post button and got totally wrecked. So many similarities, I lost my father at 10. I’m 61 now, just a hair younger than Mr FOATM was when he posted. It’s a very strange time of life to be single and looking. I’ve been on a few dates via dating sites, pretty much with women within 10 years of my age, mostly fifty-somethings. People by their fifties tend to have their personalities etched very deeply, they are so much themselves. I’ve met a number of women who I like and respect, but usually it’s usually apparent to me after a date or two that we would drive each other crazy. I got into a long-distance relationship for a couple of years which in many ways was one of the best I’ve ever had. A brilliant, strong, articulate woman, but we amicably called it off recently partly because neither of us could move. I recently felt very attracted to a woman in her late 30’s who I met while visiting friends in another state. Very far away, so it’s not really something I could easily pursue, but it brought up a lot of feelings, self-doubts and all sorts of stuff for me. Outside of the dating site scene there is always that puzzle of properly interpreting someone’s level of friendliness/interest. Was that a little flirt? Or was she just being nice? But I have to admit having that same fear of being thought a “dirty old man” if I over-interpret some simple friendliness when the woman is that much younger than me. I happen to know that the mother so the late-30’s gal is younger than me, and I would bet her father is too. That’s the part that always really feels creepy to me when I think about seeing a younger woman, the idea of meeting her parents and feeling more of an age with them.
I love Cary Grant, but it’s funny someone mentioned Charade, because I always thought it was horrible casting to have him and Audrey Hepburn together in that show. Don’t judge Cary Grant by what he did in the 1960’s. Katharine Hepburn was a much better match for Grant, being only three years younger. Audrey was young enough to be Grant’s daughter (25 years).
Maybe such an age difference can work, but it’s kind of creepy to pretend like it’s not even there the way they did in Charade.
Anyway, thanks Sugar, great writing, great insights.
Makes me want to be somewhere that people talk this way!
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