Women in Their Forties and Why I Love Them

Two summers ago I went to visit my sister in LA. Usually when I go out to see her it's only for a few days, but this time we were both in lucky situations that afforded us more time together: I was in graduate school and enjoying a nice long vacation, and she was unemployed. And, she was newly pregnant which meant that I saw her several more times that year between holidays, baby showers, and births. So the moral of the story is that I went from seeing my sister 1-2 times a year to seeing her 5 times in one year.

Now, full disclosure, my sister and I have a complicated and evolving (and thoroughly enriching) relationship. She has always had her shit together careerwise whereas my career has been, um, a "journey." My sister is a decade older than me, worked in commercial banking for 13 years in New York and LA, and, at my age, was an assistant vice president at one of the largest banks in the world. Yeah.

I remember she used to get mad at me for not buying nice enough things for myself (nearly everything I own that is nice was given to me by either my sister or my brother), for drinking wine out of jam jars, for just generally faffing about and acting young and aimless all the time (such is the curse of a youngest child - to faff about aimlessly). My sister was always overly concerned with whether I was on track - if I was hitting all of the right marks at the right time to maintain her same schedule of success.

But then she got laid off and pregnant, and because of that I got to spend 5 wonderful visits with her and her friends, all smart, well-educated, beautiful women in their very late 30s (now 40s). All were in the middle of big transitions - terrifying, risky, destablizing transitions. Here are some shorts I picked up along the way:

1) One day my sister and I were taking a hike with her friend - let's call her Sara. Sara is also very smart and successful with bullet points on her resume indicating than she has worked for Google, has an MBA from Columbia and is just an all-around badass. I always saw my sister and Sara has such formidable friends - so professional, so ambitious, so career-driven, and very successful. So imagine my surprise when both women, both of whom were at the time laid off from prestigious organizations, agreed that although they missed their jobs, working was so overrated and that if they could just go to yoga everyday, go out to lunch, and hang out with their kids all the time they would be happy.

UM WHAT? Isn't that the exact opposite of what my sister, feminism, and capitalism has told me my whole life? I always thought I was a slouch for only wanting to work an 8 hour day. And here it turns out that the most ambitious people I know, the women who I wished I was more like, the ones who I thought depended on their work to give their lives meaning admitted that working wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Maybe they both felt jilted from being abandoned by organizations they had labored for for years. Maybe they were drunk. I don't know. But what I do know is that my 37 year old sister and her friend were both wise, and as a result more confused, about what was best for them. I take a great deal of comfort in this. I liked that, nearing 40, they allowed themselves to be ambivalent. Because ambivalence creates the space to explore.

2) My sister has two friends, let's call them Vania and Brooke who met in college. Vania and Brooke are best friends and lived together for probably close to 15 years. Until they decided to get their own apartments. I think it must have been much worse than a divorce because you're both still in love with each other. It reminded me of when Lisa, my roommate of about 5 years, moved from Brooklyn to Israel and I walked around New York like a ghost, as if I had no other friends and no purpose. When I told my friend Julia that Lisa had moved to Israel she gasped and said, "but you guys are like married...how will you live without each other?" So the the best thing about Vania and Brooke is that they remind me that the most important relationship in your life can be the one you have with your best friend.

One time my ex-boyfriend called me his best friend. It was awful, like someone you didn't want to marry proposing to you. And I didn't return the words, because my true best friends had known me since I was a teenager - was he seriously as committed to me as they were? As intimate? As unconditionally offered?

No.

So I just sat there and smiled at him, flattered but not at all convinced. I think I said something mildly lame like, "Awww. I like you too."

3) When my sister doesn't want to do something, my first response to help her get out of it is to weave a web of elaborate lies to explain away and cover her true feelings about why she doesn't want to do it so as to spare the feelings and disapproval of all the people impacted by her decision. "Just say you're sick" or "blame it on me" or "tell them you're tired but you're excited to see them next week" or "blame it on the pregnancy" I advise her. But then she just looks at me and says, no, that's too complicated, I'm just going to tell the truth and if it hurts their feelings, oh well. Because when you're almost 40, you're not afraid of being honest with people. You ain't got time for that.

In short, we don't have crystal balls to show us what our lives will be in ten years - our futures are unknowable in so many ways. So I recommend the next best thing, and, if you don't have a crazy sister like I do, get yourself a friend ten years your senior and just sit back and listen.

Suddenly Single at 29

This past fall, I broke up with my boyfriend of seven years.

Sometimes when I say it it still sounds insane. Who breaks up with their boyfriend of seven years when they are in prime marrying age? => THIS METALLY-DERANGED PERSON, RIGHT HERE <==

Sometimes I feel like the dumbest person alive.

Actually, I don't feel that way, but my cousin told me that I was "literally the dumbest person he had ever met" after I told him about the breakup. I'm still trying to decide if that's better or worse than my other cousin who asked me if my ex-boyfriend dumped me because I was using too many drugs. Thank god for family, during these difficult times.

I won't go into all of the blood and guts of our breakup - and believe me, at the time, it gutted me like a fish. And thank god it did, because I needed to see my guts on the table, rifle through them, and seriously figure out what was there. That sort of life reckoning was long overdue.

I had been with my ex-boyfriend for the better part of this decade. You won't see a ton of whining on this blog about how sad and lonely I was in my 20s. Because I had a boyfriend who was obligated to provide me company, and love, and support, even when he didn't.

But now I'm 29, and I'm on my own.

Actually, the question that sticks in my head about all of this is not "why did you break up with your ex-boyfriend, whom you loved, whom you might have married, with whom you wanted to have babies, whom your family liked, with whom you had planned your past, present, and future?" That question has a deeply complicated, layered answer. But really, the only layer that matters is the simple one: I wanted to. Even though I couldn't always put words to why that was the case (though sometimes I did put words to it, mostly four letter ones), a little part of me knew I wanted to be without him.

Instead, the question that gnaws at me is, "why did it take you so long?"

I knew something was "off" in my relationship - I knew it for a long time, for years and years. I couldn't verbalize it, or maybe I didn't want to, or maybe I did, but I convinced myself that I should just feel lucky that I wasn't alone or with an abuser (for some reason, my mind could only see three plausible options for my life: either I could unhappy and coupled, unhappy and alone, or victimized; that I could be in a happy relationship felt unfathomable for some reason). I was afraid of admitting to myself that there was something wrong in our relationship, because it implicated me and implied that I had fucked up by investing so much into it. And the more deeply entrenched I got, the more the consequences of of my mistake seemed to balloon. I became even more scared about ending it. But still, a little part of me knew.

I had a zillion conversations with my ex-boyfriend to forge a path ahead and to try to relieve my doubt, but it just bore down deeper until a voice as loud and clear as the one that comes out of my own mouth screamed, YOU STUPID BITCH, ARE YOU FUCKING BLIND? THIS IS WRONG. GET OUT OF THIS NOW.

And I was all, FUCK YOU, INNER VOICE! HOW DARE YOU JUDGE MY DECISIONS, YOU ASS-HATTED WHOREMONGER! And then like literally 2.5 seconds later I was like HOLYFUCKINGSHIT, YOU'RE TOTALLY RIGHT. I'M SORRY INNER VOICE, IT IS I WHO IS THE ASS-HATTED WHOREMONGER.

Here's some free advice about your inner voice - and I mean the real one, not that charlatan inner voice who tells you do stuff like rob the guy you just made out with: If you're ever battling your inner voice you will lose, because that bitch is crazy - like "biter" crazy. You can put up a good fight, but ultimately she rules you. And that's a good thing, because she knows what you want better than you do. She's like a benevolent dictator.

I realize now that the question, "why didn't you do it sooner?" has a simple answer too: "because I couldn't." Leaving a very long term relationship takes courage, clear eyes, and a sober accounting of your life and what you want out of it, separate from what you think others want for you. I didn't have that courage or clarity at 24. I don't think a lot of people do.

But more than all of those things, confidently making a big decision takes the ability to listen - really listen - to the guidance of your inner voice and to trust it to lead you in the right direction. Learning this is the greatest lesson of my 20s and, unfortunately, you only learn it from being fucking miserable for a long ass fucking time.