Author Erica Manfred
An Excerpt from He’s History, You’re Not:Surviving Divorce After 40
By Erica Manfred
One of the hardest struggles we older divorcees have is aging. When you’re married, you feel you can relax about getting old—your life is settled, you have a mate to walk into the sunset with. You may be upset about your wrinkles and sags, but at least your husband still thinks you’re beautiful (hopefully). Divorce turns that sense of security on its head. When my husband announced he was leaving, after wailing “But how will I survive?” I was hit with the reality of having to date again. “I’m fifty-eight, who will want me?” I moaned. Aging is rough even when you’re married. It’s hard to lose that male gaze when you walk down the street, to feel you’ve become invisible. Ironically it was easier for me because I’d always been the fat girl whom guys didn’t look at anyway. I think it’s harder for girlfriends who used to be real lookers.
Dealing with aging affects women in different ways. Lola has dyed her hair purpled; she wears big purple glasses and, when I met her, a fitted black T-shirt, baggy black pants with large green polka dots, and clogs. She’s not going gentle into that the good night, and since she’s still quite a beauty with a great figure, she gets away with it. She met a guy at Burning Man and is having a steamy long-distance romance. One of the advantages of living in my town, the old hippie mecca of Woodstock, is the large number of old ladies in 1960s garb. I am currently wrestling with the jeans-or-no-jeans dilemma. I look at women my age who haven’t given up their jeans, and unless those jeans are dark, tailored, and worn with high heels, they look schlumpy. If you’re already short and plump, faded jeans are not a good look, but they’re hard to give up. I’ve made some progress: I’ve transitioned to black jeans and jeans skirts—they’re a bit more flattering.
The effects of aging these days is that there are no rules anymore. We’re not our mothers. We don’t have to look respectable, or tailored, or grandmotherly, or tone ourselves down or gussy ourselves up. You get to look however you want, to express who you really are. Of course if you’re working in a law firm you have to dress appropriately, but after hours all bets are off. I do have a fashion icon, however: my girlfriend Dinath, who at fifty-six always looks stunning. She has a straight red pageboy bob and puts together youthful, fashionable layered outfits with jackets and heels that make her look twenty years younger and at least that many pounds thinner, but effortlessly—not like she’s trying to look younger. Of course Dinath was a fashion designer, so that helps a lot. As Nora Ephron says in I Feel Bad About My Neck, “If only one-third of your clothes are mistakes, you’re ahead of the game.”
Erica Manfred is author of “He’s History, You’re Not: Surviving Divorce After 40,” (GPP Life, Paperback: $16.95; available on Amazon.com). For more information about Erica and her work, please visit www.HesHistory.com or www.EricaManfred.com
this is part of the sad things about divorce, it knows no age, it can basically happen to anyone, young and old..