Opening to True Love in My Late 60's

Often, people ask me what it’s like to be in my sixties and have welcomed into my life an extraordinary relationship like the one I share with my beloved wife, Joy. I often find that woven into their question is often a quiet, tucked-away fear: Is it too late for me?

I share here not to boast, but to share my journey and inspire hope. For four years before I met Joy, I pined. I dated. I waited. I was 67 years old, noticing that my skin didn’t look the same as it once did. I was insecure about my increasing age, my level of desirability and my aging body—and at the time I was about 25 lbs. overweight. But I also had an indomitable prayer in my heart for a spectacular partner to be profoundly devoted to. My intuition continually reassured me that the partner of my dreams was indeed coming, and that when she arrived every aspect of my life and work would be fundamentally transformed (which turned out to be true).

Throughout my 4 (long) years of being single prior to Joy’s arrival, I had to continually make a choice: Would I have the courage to honor this prayer, nourish it, and take consistent action towards it? Or, would I go against the grain of my soul ‘s expression by denying this divine vision of building my new life with a deeply loving, mature and compatible partner?

 

Steeping into the “Now”

When Joy and I finally met each other live 3 years ago now—on one fateful Zoom call that lasted two hours—indeed everything shifted in our lives. There was a profound, sustaining soul connection between us as well as the delicious thrill of the new. But we soon discovered that there was also something more essential and sustaining between us: a genuine, wide-ranging compatibility.

During our first year of intertwining our lives, of building our shared future together, we steadily experienced the stream of “gold” we were blessed to be receiving. At the same time, on a human level, I found myself increasingly haunted by a fear. Given I was approaching my 70’s, I often found myself looking at Joy and thinking, “I love this woman so much, but I’m older. How long will we have together before I die?” I openly shared with Joy this fear and being haunted with my troubling pattern of focusing upon our final times together. I confessed that I simply couldn’t shake the tendency to dwell on this negative future fantasy, and was feeling a steady level of anxiety.

Thankfully, I reached out to a wise intuitive counselor who often supports me in traversing my life, and he shared with me: “Every second you spend thinking about the end times, you rob yourself of experiencing the rapture of your life with Joy now.” Hearing these words assisted me greatly to recognize that I was robbing myself of the present every time I made the choice to focus upon mourning a future that hadn’t even arrived yet. The powerful frequency of his words carried a warrior-like truth, and enabled me to consciously “seal off” the habitual pattern that I had been allowing to drain my energy. I simply made an unwavering choice to stop going there, to stop engaging the haunting—and I haven’t done it since. From that point forward, I’ve chosen a path of wholeheartedly savoring and steeping in the exquisite blessings of our shared life together.

 

Transparency

I’ve learned that for Joy and I to have an extraordinary relationship, we must be willing to speak truthfully to each other—even when we might be afraid that what we’ll share may jeopardize our relationship. This transparency includes sharing those things that we feel most vulnerable about—our most human fears and emotions. We have both learned from our past relationships that the bigger risk to the relationship, by far, is remaining silent and withholding sharing what is deep and carries a sense of risk.

 

Who We Are and Who We’re Becoming

One of the rich dividends in my vibrant partnership with Joy has been the reawakening of my “inner athlete.” In my teens, I was a very successful Little League baseball pitcher, a very competent athlete. Over the decades, I drifted away from that vibrant identity and fell into a pattern of taking my body for granted and neglecting its needs.

It just so happens that Joy has a long-term devotion to living a life of embodied vitality. She didn’t try to change me; she cherished who I was and supported who I was becoming. She championed me by reawakening my own relationship with embodied vitality in the arena of optimal nutrition, strength training, aerobic conditioning, and regular activities out in nature in the healing forests and lakes where we live in Mt. Shasta.

Today, I am healthier and more vital than I have been in decades. I champion Joy in many rich ways as well. This is an example of the dividend of an intimate relationship where both partners are dedicated to continually “flourishing” in new and passionate ways.

Neither of us wanted to get lost in pursuing “potential” in relationship—investing in what might come. From the beginning, Joy and I have been committed to a liberating and empowering orientation: we are continuously loving each other for who we are, as we are—while also supporting all we are becoming.

 

Being Reassured by the Spirit

Ever since I was 25 years old, I have cultivated a personal, conscious relationship with the flow of Spirit inside of me. It serves as my eternal North Star, and this wise presence has always guided me with spiritual direction at crucial turning points in my life journey. It supported me 10 years ago as I unexpectedly stepped free from a 25-year marriage, and it sustained me through four years of inwardly preparing to receive Joy and all her exquisiteness into my life.

Near the end of laying this preparatory ground, I would often find myself pleading with Spirit, asking why it was taking so long for my new partner to arrive. The answer I heard was gentle and clear and reassuring: “Try to imagine the job of orchestrating the intersection of two soul’s lives that are a real, sustainable match—who are also being brought together to do rich work in the world. Know that we are working on it, and it won’t be long now.”

If, like me, you also also carry a powerful, unwavering prayer to welcome an extraordinary partner into your life, you may be tempted to tell yourself a story that somehow you can’t have a relationship like this because of your age, your past, or your body—or any other reason or circumstance. I invite you to consider that by holding this fictitious conclusion, you may be pretending to know something you don’t actually know. The truth is you just don’t know.

While I was praying and holding for Joy’s arrival, I of course didn’t know for sure whether my prayer for a partner would be answered in this lifetime. What I did know without question is that if my prayer wasn’t answered—it wouldn’t be because I had denied my prayer and hadn’t been willing to take actions that placed me in the way of receiving it. I knew in my bones that I was responsible for my part of the co-creative process of manifestation.

I want to extend my heartfelt encouragement to you to open wide, to pray your sacred prayer for your Beloved, and to continually take steps in faith towards its graceful arrival. (For if we don’t, the answer will always be “no.”)

It’s been my experience, personally and in my work supporting clients, that we as humans have been given our prayers as a gift from the divine. I am so grateful that I am wholeheartedly honoring and acting upon mine.

 

I would love to hear from you: whether centered upon a future relationship or not, is there an abiding prayer in your heart that you’ve been distancing yourself from because of a fear of being disappointed? What would it look like to allow yourself to more fully embrace this profound prayer, to give it room to breath and let its dynamic presence light the way towards your prayer being answered?

Blessings upon your path,

Gavin

Working With Me

The journey back to your authentic self is the hero’s journey of this lifetime. If you are dedicated to evolving, becoming more conscious—and releasing the unconscious patterns you carry inside—I invite you to explore my website and schedule a complimentary 45-minute conversation with me to explore the possibility of us working together.

Schedule a Complimentary Consultation