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I am really growing in all areas of my life because of your coaching. I'm continuing to utilize the skills I developed during our work & find that I am more confident to entertain new potential relationships. I am indebted to you, Janice. Many blessings!
-- Deborah[Click here to read more]
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In my last column, "Is 'Age' a Dating Challenge?" I argued against a current misconception that since "older singles" typically have more life experiences and accumulated knowledge, it can appear that age is a dating challenge. I emphasized the need for singles, especially older singles, to perform a major self-assessment of their needs, habits and routines in order to determine their capacity to accommodate another person into their lives.
What I want to present now is a rebuttal to another common age-related misconception -- that the complexities of any one person's life can be distilled into one single number.
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If you ask, most people will tell you that they don't feel accurately represented by their calendar age. Many will tell you that the number attached to their lives doesn't take into account their life experiences, attitudes, interests, physical health and various accomplishments and responsibilities.
On one end of the spectrum, you may know a 14 year old girl who looks and acts like an 18 year old. This is because you see how her "physical age" gives her the appearance of an adult, while her "emotional age" shows that she can handle adult-like responsibilities and situations. Her intelligence, or her "psychological age," gives her the ability to understand more deeply about life, and coupled with her "chronological age" -- the sum total of her life experiences -- you get a much more accurate picture of the girl than by just saying "she's 14."
On the other end of the spectrum, you may know a man or woman with the calendar age of 75. Too, their physical appearances, intellectual capacities, emotional stability and life experiences may make them appear way younger than their actual age. On the other hand, there are men and women with much younger calendar ages, such as 30 or 40, who because of many emotional and/or physical hardships encountered during their lives, will appear as someone with a much greater calendar age.
I have found many singles to become upset and distraught by the propensity of others to summarize their entire lives into just one number. Obviously, this behavior can be extremely subjective. What you think a 30, 40 or 50 year old should be like, or capable of, can differ from someone else's opinion. Consequently, I contend that it is hurtful and even dangerous for one person to judge another person based solely on his/her calendar age. But unfortunately this happens way too frequently.
At the same time I have found many singles succumbing to this practice as well, and ultimately feeling trapped by a system un-equipped to understand or describe the diversity of who they really are. As you can well imagine, this behavior easily becomes a source of depression and anxiety.
Linda and Eva both have a calendar age of 42. Linda has never married and has no children. Eva is recently divorced after being married since age 21; she has four children, and is a grandmother. To describe either of them by simply stating "she's a 42 year old woman" inaccurately portrays their diverse emotional, psychological and physical experiences during their 42 year lifetimes. As single women now, they need to view, and communicate to others, multi-dimensional their lives really are.
So what's an experienced, vibrant, healthy, and mature single to do?
I would start by challenging older singles to think "out of the box." I suggest that you begin to think about your age by looking at yourself as a complex whole. In other words, consider yourself in terms of your accumulative life experiences, your emotional maturity and flexibility, your intellectual capacity and your physical health and capabilities. By viewing yourself in this diverse way, you create your own number, and open yourself up to seeing others similarly.
Once you have this multi-dimensional view of yourself, I have suggested that singles "experiment" when revealing their calendar age while dating. For example, since online dating profiles require that you enter your age, I have suggested that singles enter one age for a couple of weeks, then a different age for another couple of weeks. Done in combination with descriptions of your various life interests, experiences and accomplishments, you can see who responds to your profile, and why.
Then what do you do? As I advocated in "Dating is Difficult When You're . . . ." when you meet someone online (or even over the phone), you should focus your communication on the goal of making a meaningful connection before meeting in-person. If you make this "spiritual" connection, there is a greater chance that you will appreciate each other as the multi-dimensional human beings that you are, and be prevented from making judgments based on the number that is attached to you.
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that others will share your "enlightened" viewpoint, and will continue to view and judge you solely on the basis of your calendar age. But I think that the more you avoid defining yourself in a one-dimensional way, you increase the likelihood that others will experience you as the fulfilled, multi-dimensional and unique whole person that you are.
**My thanks to Mrs. Devora Alouf for her contributions to this article.**
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Posted by: Janice on Wednesday, April 07, 2004 - 11:15 AM
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