A PLUME BOOK
HOW WE LOVE NOW
SUZANNE BRAUN LEVINE is a writer, editor, and nationally recognized authority on women, media matters, and family issues. Editor of Ms. magazine from its founding in 1972 until 1989, and editor in chief of the Columbia Journalism Review, she currently blogs for Huff/Post50, Next Avenue, and AARP. This is the third in her series of books about women in Second Adulthood, following Inventing the Rest of Our Lives and Fifty Is the New Fifty. Her other books include Father Courage and an oral history of Bella Abzug (with Mary Thom). She also produced a Peabody Awardwinning documentary about American women. She has appeared on Oprah and the Today show, among others, and lectures widely.
Praise for How We Love Now
Its still rare to read anything this thoughtful about our age group, especially about caregiving. And caregetting. None of us is too good at that yet.
Ellen Goodman, columnist
[Levine writes about how] going out of the comfort zone and risk-taking are part and parcel of building new intimacies. The road from dependence to independence to interdependence is part of the journey toward finding a peaceful place of reconciliation between conflicts of the past and present, work and love, who you are and who you thought you should be.
Marcia G. Yerman, The Huffington Post
The metaphor I prefer is Suzanne Braun Levines fertile void, a space of unremitting unknowningness.... It is here in the tendrils of the fertile void that something new can begin to sproutif you surrender to it and dont numb yourself with busyness.
Jane Fonda, in Prime Time: Love, Health, Sex, Fitness, Friendship, Spirit; Making the most of all of your life
Suzannes messages about women in second adulthood are wise, witty, and hopeful. After hearing her, we know that the best is yet to come!
Ellyn Cohen, program chair, Rockland, New York, Jewish Family Service
Her words are confirmation that the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual changes I am experiencing are not only normal but desirable.
Audience member, The Transition Network, Columbus, Ohio
Through research, her own journalistic prowess, and the engaging stories of many women, Levine etches a reassuring picture of the many forms love can take in the lives of women.
Thelma Reese, ComingofAge.org
How We Love Now is the latest, masterful installment in a trilogy that, I believe, will become the new guidebooks for a second half of life well-lived.
Marc Freedman, founder of Civic Ventures, author of The Big Shift
How We Love Now has the wonderful features of Levines previous booksthe ease with ideas (e.g. brain research), the ability to make them accessible, the parallel ability to see patterns in our lives and still give people their particularity, and the common sense of her advice, its plausibility. My maturing amygdala is lighting up.
Catharine R. Stimpson, university professor and dean emerita, New York University
Whether youre single or married, widowed or divorced, this book will remind you of how many opportunities for gettingas well as givinglove already exist in your life, and of the many more that await you.
Jane Adams, author of Im Still Your Mother
Also by Suzanne Braun Levine
Fifty Is the New Fifty:
Ten Life Lessons for Women in Second Adulthood
Inventing the Rest of Our Lives:
Women in Second Adulthood
Father Courage:
What Happens When Men Put Family First
Bella Abzug:
How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the Rights of Women and Workers, Rallied Against War and for the Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along the Way, an oral history (with Mary Thom)
How We Love Now
Women Talk About Intimacy After 50
Suzanne Braun Levine
A PLUME BOOK
PLUME
Published by Penguin Group
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Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Viking edition.
First Printing, February 2013
Copyright Suzanne Braun Levine, 2011
All rights reserved
Excerpt from One of the Softer Sorrows of Age from Begin Again: Collected Poems by Grace Paley. Copyright 2000 by Grace Paley. Reprinted by permission Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA
The Library of Congress has catalogued the Viking edition as follows:
Levine, Suzanne.
How we love now : sex and the new intimacy in second adulthood / Suzanne Braun Levine.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-101-55372-5 (epub)
1. Older women. 2. Older womenSexual behavior. 3. Intimacy (Psychology) 4. Love. I. Title.
HQ1059.4.L477 2012
306.70846dc23
2011030172
PUBLISHERS NOTE
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For my dear children, Joshua and Joanna
A UTHORS N OTE
I am immensely grateful to the women who shared their most intimate thoughts and experiences with me. Although many were willing to have their names used in the book, I chose to change all names in order to protect everyones privacy. In the cases where real names are used, it is because the person is knownor should be knownfor their accomplishments or activities.
C ONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Love, Sex, and Unicorns
It has long been my unassailable belief that orgasmic women can change the world. By this I mean that a woman who is unfettered sexually is unfettered politically, socially, economically and she is unstoppable.