Suzanne Braun Levine - How We Love Now: Sex and the New Intimacy in Second Adulthood

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

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

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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.