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As my women friends and I get older, we seem to fall into two categories.
One group is losing their hair.
The other group, which I am in, is getting hairier.
I swear I'll have one friend who's putting Rogaine on her eyebrows to make them stay actual eyebrows.
Meanwhile, I have so much hair all over my body that I could make a little eyebrow wig for my eyebrowless friend.
This is happening, probably, because of perimenopause.
I don't know when I first heard the word perimenopause, but once I knew it, I noticed it everywhere.
Drew Barrymore would talk about it.
I'm so hot.
I think I'm having one of my first perimenopause hot flashes.
Morning shows like Today were covering it like it was breaking news.
Today is World Menopause Day, and the good news is it's no longer considered a taboo subject.
Halle Berry talked about how she was once misdiagnosed as having herpes when she actually was in perimenopause.
I had razor blades in my vagina after a great night of sex.
Now Halle Berry is an advocate for talking about what it means.
Because guess what?
Perimenopause and menopause changes you.
And it can be jarring.
As we try to answer this question of can people change, we must acknowledge that the answer is often yes, because our bodies are evolving with or without our consent, no matter who we are.
Change through aging is inevitable.
From the Boston Globe, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
So I put out a call for stories about how perimenopause and menopause changed people.
And I got a zillion entries because this is a common thing.
I chose a story I want to share with you about how a changing body can change who you are.
But before we get there, I want to talk about what perimenopause is, because there's so much information about it and yet not enough at all.
So let's define it.
I want to read to you from the Johns Hopkins website.
That's a website I go to when I'm being neurotic about my health.
Johns Hopkins says, Basically, it's menopause before it goes full menopause.
I chose today's story because it's not just about menopause and how it changes people.
It's about how sometimes, long after we grow up and become an adult, We grow up again.
With age, there's still room to improve, to be happier.
Let me introduce you to a woman we're going to call Eileen.
We're allowing her a pseudonym because she's going to talk about her vagina and she has a teen son and sometimes privacy is nice.
My name is Eileen.
I'm 57.
I live in the Boston suburbs, and I work in the healthcare industry.
Eileen was born in the Bronx and raised in New Jersey.
I went to college in New Jersey.
And while I was in college, I realized that I was lesbian.
And I came out to myself probably right after college fully, and then came out to my family shortly thereafter.
What were your first relationships like?
So I had boyfriends in high school.
I didn't understand why I wasn't all that into it. did not rock my world.
I had boyfriends in college as well.
My first long-term relationship was with a woman, and that was when I was 22.
Eileen was in a family where she could talk about things like sex.
She had a household with pretty open communication.
My mother was always very clear with me about my period, about sex, about even orgasms.
She was very clear with me.
In fact, In fourth grade I passed around the book Forever to my classmates and got into some trouble with my teacher and with my mom.
But what my mom had me do was she had me read the entire book out loud to her and stop at every time.
I didn't understand what it was.
I should say here that Forever is by Judy Blume, known for epic young adult books like Are You There, God?
It's Me, Margaret.
She also wrote books that skewed a bit more mature.
Forever was a book about two high school kids who have sex for the first time.
It was not meant for fourth graders to read, obviously.
It was more of, I think, a teen book at the time.
I don't know what would have been appropriate, but certainly was not appropriate for an eight or nine year old to read.
So Eileen has relationships and she knows about her body.
When she's 38, she's living in D.C. and meets someone she can see a future with.
We met Eileen.
We met online in 2005, and it was very quickly a serious relationship.
What was really interesting about being involved with my ex getting involved with my ex is that we realized very soon into our dating relationship that our fathers grew up on the same block in the Bronx.
Now, this was kind of unbelievable to us because how could this possibly be?
It was such a bizarre sort of confluence of events.
But my father asked me what her name was.
And I told him and I told him her father's name.
And he says, I know him.
I said, Dad, don't be ridiculous.
But it turns out they did know each other.
I have a picture of them playing stickball on the street together.
And for me, in Yiddish, the word bashert comes up.
Bashert means like it was meant to be.
She asked me to marry her probably about six months after we met.
At the time, gay marriage was not a thing.
It was not legal.
We did not get married legally until we moved to Massachusetts years later.
Eileen and her wife both know they want kids.
The process is complicated.
We made a deal that both of us were going to try to get pregnant, but that if only one of us could get pregnant, there would only be one kid.
And if both of us can get pregnant, there will be two kids.
I tried for eight times to get pregnant with alternative insemination.
We had an anonymous donor.
And the eighth try, I realized that that was probably gonna be it for me, because I knew that she was gonna wanna do IVF.
She was gonna wanna go much further than I was willing to go.
I wasn't willing to do IVF.
And so I figured well Okay, this is sort of a cosmic sort of sense of the universe that she should get pregnant, and she did the second time she tried.
Their son is born in 2009, and two years later, the family moves to Massachusetts.
Up here, life gets more complicated.
A thing that can change you?
Parenting.
Probably before we even moved up here, I knew our relationship was in danger. of failing.
I think our co-parenting was very stress-filled for a number of reasons.
I think we had a very hard time co-parenting and collaborating on what it meant to parent a child.
And I think that it just got worse and worse.
And so we went to counseling for probably two years and really didn't see much change in the way that we could relate to each other.
And The therapist at the time said that we were both more interested in our kid than interested in each other, which of course, was also a problem.
At first, they want to stay together for the sake of the kid.
But then Eileen is like, what would we be teaching him?
We weren't treating each other very well.
It was not loving.
It was not kind.
There was a lot of yelling.
I did not feel that it was beneficial for my kid, nor me.
Honestly, for my own happiness and my own self-worth.
So I asked for a divorce.
At that time was about 48 when the marriage was ending.
I am 47 now, so i know that not only was she going through the end of a marriage, she was probably at the start or in the middle of a body change.
I want to get more into the minimal of that, but i also want to sort of mark the age here, which is that you would have been at a time that i am now in which, like i consider like the onboarding of perimenopause, or at least where I feel more comfortable calling everything perimenopause.
So were you conscious of that at the time?
I was conscious of the fact that I was older and that I couldn't, that I was not as active as the other parents.
I saw, you know, in terms of running after the kids being much more active.
And I'd started to have, you know, some night sweats and stuff like that and was saying what is this?
You know, why and why is this happening?
I remember being on a plane once and being in the middle seat.
And I said and I had a hot flash.
I'm like, I'm going to die.
I'm going to die right here on this plane, you know, because I couldn't, I couldn't.
I was wearing a jacket and I couldn't get out of the jacket because these two people were sitting next to me.
And I was like, you know, the sweat is running down my face.
So I remember, though, I remember that happening.
For the record, I have never had a real hot flash.
I've thought I've had a hot flash, but turns out it was just hot outside.
This is the flip side of having a world where we actually talk about perimenopause.
My Instagram algorithm sends me possible symptoms all the time, which means when I have a weird feeling, I think oh my gosh, it's perimenopause.
And then I'm like, oh wait, it could be COVID.
And then I'm like, or is it anxiety?
And maybe it's nothing at all.
I think I had them a lot in bed.
I remember my ex saying to me because I would throw off the blankets, you know like I wanted the blanket, but I didn't want the blanket, you know.
And
She would always say to me, I can feel your leg.
You're putting your leg out.
She was very sensitive.
And I was like, I'm not.
I'm not putting my leg out.
So I remember doing that for a while.
To give you some perspective, Eileen is 57 during this interview.
I am 47 right now.
And 47 is somehow closer to 57 than it is to 30, which is crazy to me because, I swear to you, I just turned 30.
That was the night I puked on the bathroom floor of a bar called Lucky's, with all of my friends around.
Sometimes I'm still that girl, or some version of her.
Like me, Eileen has a tough time fully understanding where she is in life and how she got so mature.
And I still think I am a little bit in denial about my age.
I mean, I look chronologically, I do the math.
I understand how old I am.
I understand how old I was then.
But in my mind's eye, I'm maybe 35 or 40.
Like it just does not make sense to me that I can be the age that I'm at when I remember my mother being my age.
You know, like the math doesn't seem, doesn't, even compute sometimes now.
I did wonder, knowing that Eileen grew up in such an open house, how much did she know about menopause?
What did her mom tell her?
I heard very often about her hot flashes and her going on HRT to sort of reduce the hot flashes.
I did know that that was something that was happening to her, that it was very unpleasant and that she needed help from medical providers to get her through it.
Eileen guesses she herself was done with menopause at 52.
I had a friend come over once, and this is right after I stopped getting my period.
And you know, I had a huge closet, as most of us do have a huge closet, full of shelf, full of all those products that we use every month.
And I said, you know, I think I'm done.
Do you, would you want?
And she said, yeah.
And so I got two huge shopping bags and I brought, I went upstairs to the closet and I put all that stuff in shopping bags.
And she said, oh my gosh, thank you.
And when she walked to the car, I said, wow, that's weird.
I'm never gonna need those again.
And I thought, well, what if I do?
And I said, well, you can go buy some more.
It's not a big deal, but I never did need them again.
But I remember feeling a little sadness, thinking about her taking those in those big bags and me recognizing that that's part of my life is over, especially because I never had children.
I never had a child of my own sort of made me feel like okay, my body, my body is has no matter what i would like.
My body is making decisions.
Right, my body made a decision about we're not not being able to get pregnant in my mind.
Right, my body made a decision.
My body made a decision about we're not getting our period anymore.
Right, so you know you're, that's it, it.
My body made a decision about having the hot flesh like there.
When you're younger, i think you think i'm in charge, right.
When you're older, you realize you're not in charge actually.
There's a whole bunch of biological processes.
And then also you understand you have some control over some of it, you know, because your emotions play a part in your body and vice versa.
And how do you sort of help that happen?
But I think it was only when I got to that perimenopause and menopause stage that I started to understand that there's greater plans that my body has, that I didn't realize that it was in store.
As Eileen's body continues to change, so does her life and her priorities.
She'll get into all of it after a break.
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We're all out of the ordinary.
There's a battle playing out right now over who should control American universities.
We're going to bankrupt these universities.
In season one, we were guessing what was to come.
Now, we know.
We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard.
From the Boston Globe and on the media, it's season two of The Harvard Plan.
This time, it really is personal.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
So back to the story of Eileen, a woman whose life changed as her body changed.
Ever since her divorce, Eileen has been caught up in being a mom to her son and dealing with her changing reality, both emotional and physical.
But she does want to be partnered.
And while she's tried a few dating apps, nothing has really worked.
I joined a lot of the internet dating services.
I would go on a date. maybe two or three times a year with somebody.
I would converse with them online a little bit, maybe graduate to the phone, then have a dinner or two.
And most of those encounters.
When I got back in the car I would just cry all the way home and just say I'm too old.
This is never going to happen.
I felt no connection with this person, or I felt such little connection with this person that I don't want to see them again.
Or vice versa, I felt a connection with that person, which was less frequently.
And this person clearly had no interest in seeing me again.
And what happened was I would get home and I would go to bed and I would just say I'm never going to do that again.
This is when Eileen's dad comes into the story.
Because sometimes parents and what they tell you change your perspective throughout your life.
You know, I'm in my 50s, I'm single and I'm feeling pretty not entirely hopeful that my future is going to be partnered, even though I had had that vision.
But then she thinks about her dad.
My dad met his girlfriend when he was 60 and they stayed together till the day he died, when he was 90.
And I thought, okay, if I don't meet someone by the time I'm 61...
Then I'm going to give up the ghost.
But I am going to keep trying until I'm 60.
Then I'll know that that's the time to like give it up.
And it's so fun to hear about this deadline because it just shows you how arbitrary it is, because so many women especially will say to me by the time I'm 30, by the time I'm 40.
And I love that you're like, actually, there's it's 60.
That's the cutoff.
And it just goes to show there probably is no cutoff at all.
Right.
Exactly.
But.
In having this motivation, you go back online, I assume after not being online for a bit.
There is a service, which I won't tell you the name of, which is a national matchmaking service.
They're expensive.
And several years ago, I thought that I would maybe, you know, try it out.
So they called me up and they had an interview.
And at the end of the interview they say OK, if you want to join us, it's going to be this much amount of money.
And I said OK, you.
And they said do you want to still be on our list?
You know, no charge to you and i'm like sure bye, you know.
And so i would hear from them every so often and you know they would say do you still want to be on our list, etc.
It's january of 2024.
Eileen gets a call from the company and they say we've got somebody for you.
They said we have somebody who meets your criteria.
Um, she's a older lady.
She's the word lady, which of course is a very ridiculous word for me.
But anyway, she's an older lady like yourself and like, shut up.
Um, and she's, you know, she has this, she lives in North Carolina.
And immediately when she said that, I said there is no way I'm going to date somebody in North Carolina.
My life is complicated enough.
I have a kid, you know, I have my job.
I have my life up here in Massachusetts.
But then I said to myself, you know what? you know, what's the big deal?
They're going to put me on a date with this woman online and see what it's like.
Well, it was a wash.
The woman was, we, the woman was extremely boring and I could not wait for the hour to be over.
And that was the end of that.
But it made me think like, okay, well, what's that?
You know, why have I always made this thing that I could only date people, you know, two hours away?
What was that about?
That was my sort of criteria.
Okay.
Like only two hours.
You know, and my father used to my father when he used to date say he would say only one bridge.
Uh, my father lived in the new jersey sub new york suburbs and he would say only one bridge for dates, not two bridges.
So for me i was like okay.
Dad said no not, not two bridges.
So for me, you know, any more than two hours is gonna be too much.
This was something eileen could actually change about her mindset.
Eileen says her brain starts to open up about the idea of dating someone more than two hours away.
She gets on jdate, an app for people looking to date jewish people, And she opens up the geographic range.
Anyway, the first person who emails me or contacts me on this site is this person from Florida, this woman from Florida.
And initially I was like, Florida?
No thanks, right?
I live in Massachusetts, for God's sake.
But then I thought I had just met that person you know in North Carolina and I thought what's the big deal?
Why don't you just converse with her?
Let's call this woman meryl.
So meryl and i, you know, conversed for about a month.
I knew um, i knew what she looked like, you know because she had her pictures on the um on the website.
Of course, googled her to make sure she was legitimate and that you know her stories.
You know uh, checked out and it was very immediate that we had a connection.
But i was very caught very played my cards very close to my chest.
I was totally, i was very reserved um, and i was somewhat suspicious because um Again, Florida.
I'm old.
And I think this is kind of a stupid idea.
I mean, even during the whole time, I'm like, this is stupid.
This is ridiculous.
I'm not going to continue doing this.
Florida.
Meryl is a lot of things Eileen would not have put on her list of wants.
She rides a motorcycle.
I was like, oh, that's ridiculous.
I'm not going to date someone who rides a motorcycle.
Like, no, no, no.
And so I would go back to my therapist.
I said, like, this is a deal breaker.
She rides a motorcycle.
And my therapist said, now, you know, I don't know if that's really a good reason for you to stop.
And I was like, oh, all right.
You know.
So I kept like trying to put up these like these sort of barriers, like it's never going to work because of this or it's never going to work because of that.
Or this is silly.
This is silly.
Several months go by.
Eileen and Meryl are still talking.
Meryl says, I'm coming to New York for Pride.
Want to meet me there?
You know, I said well, let's see.
You know, let's see if we're still conversing, you know, a month from now, you know then yeah.
So I made the reservation for the train and I canceled it.
I made a reservation for the train and I canceled it.
And then I did the same thing with the hotel.
I made a reservation in the hotel, I canceled it.
But the weekend comes and Eileen goes to New York.
I got on the train and there was a young woman sitting next to me and she had, you know, her headphones in and you know, the whole time on the train.
My heart is racing.
I'm thinking like, what am I doing?
You know, I know i can't believe i'm doing this is so stupid.
You know florida.
You know motorcycle ridiculous.
You know i'm 57 years old.
But the woman sitting next to me, she was, she's very cute um, and as the train pulls into penn station, she turns to me and we start saying hi or something, and i said i'm about to meet a blind date.
She goes what?
You're gonna meet a blind date?
We've sat next to each other for the last, you know three and a half hours.
You never told me you know until just now.
And she was so great.
And I'm sure she's looking at me like look at this old lady meeting somebody on a blind date, you know, and she's a lesbian.
Like, wow, look at, look, you know, like, isn't she cute in her old cute way, right?
I just imagined her thinking this about me.
The woman tells Eileen, have a great time.
And with the encouragement of this lovely stranger, Eileen arrives in New York excited.
I remember taking that first, first foot off of the train and saying I may be starting something, a brand new part of my life right now, right now.
And or not, right?
Because my therapist said, you know what?
It could just be a pleasant trip to New York.
You don't have to think about like getting married.
You're just going to New York.
That's all you're doing.
You're spending the night in New York.
That's all you're doing.
So Eileen and Meryl find each other in the city.
Do you remember, like, what you thought when you saw her in person for the first time?
Like, were you like, oh, she's pretty.
Like, what did you think?
My heart was racing, obviously.
I was very, you know, we were texting.
So I didn't know whether she was going to come from.
You know she said she was going to come from this side.
I kept turning and turning.
And, you know, it was the middle of Pride.
So there's a lot of like.
You know people walking by and screaming and you know costumes and you know music.
And when I saw her, I don't remember.
I just I was like.
Oh, there she is.
That's what she looks like.
That's what she looks like.
And we just stared at each other for like, I don't know, a minute or so.
Like, this is you.
Okay.
You know, this is the voice.
This is the, this is the face.
This is the.
This is the same person that I've been talking to, but here she is, standing in front of me.
And then everything comes into focus.
It was a very hot, hot day, but it was also extremely rainy.
It rained so much and I had no umbrella and it it was, we were caught in the rain.
Like, and I'm not talking about drizzle.
I'm talking about a pouring rainstorm for a while.
And we're walking in the streets of Manhattan for hours.
And you know, I had, like you know, worn certain clothes and I had, you know, done my makeup and my hair, thinking that I would like you know be, you know, sort of presentable or look my best for this person.
And by the time we got to this restaurant for dinner, like everything had like melted off my face.
You And I sat down and I said something like well, I'm sure I look ridiculous, but I'm going to have to roll with it.
And at that point she looked at me and I looked at her and we were both like yeah, I guess we're going to roll with it.
Right.
And she later said that that's when she knew she was falling for, like she was going to fall for me when she when I said that, because I'm so completely like I just had no choice.
I had to roll with it.
Right.
Nothing I can do.
So I got to roll with it.
Would you be able to cast her in a movie and or describe her style?
Well, she's a mix of smart and nerd with curly, beautiful hair and wearing high tops and a tie-dye.
Personality-wise, from calls, Eileen already knows that Meryl gets her.
I mean, first of all, they both love musicals.
One of the first things I said to her on our first phone call was can you sing five Broadway show tunes?
Five Broadway shows in the shower uninterrupted, with no prompts.
And she named her five and I named my five.
And there was, I think, two or three that were the same.
So I kind of felt like so she has.
She also appreciates musicals, but she's also sort of an intellectual and a news junkie and whatever political person and sort of certainly a lefty progressive like myself.
So there was a lot of stuff that we could connect with on that level.
After the trip, things escalate quickly.
So we left her saying that she was going to come to Massachusetts in August.
This is June.
And on the train ride, I said, I can't wait to myself.
I said, I can't wait till August to figure out where this is going.
So I texted her and said, I'd like to come to Florida to visit in two weeks.
And she said, wow, okay.
And I didn't even know what I meant when I said it, when I typed it, but I knew that I needed more information.
That trip to Florida, it was a very intense, beautiful, lovely weekend of a lot of connection.
And we both recognized that we really wanted this to go somewhere and that this was not sort of a casual dating relationship.
So what does this story have to do with the change that is menopause?
Well, maybe a lot, maybe a little, but definitely something.
Eileen was divorced by 48.
She starts dating someone she actually likes almost 10 years later.
During that time, it's like she has a whole changed body.
I want to talk about reentering a sexual life after some time off, as someone who who's been through menopause.
I have read that women hit their sexual peak when we're 35.
And I don't know what you were doing when you were 35, but I was having some pretty high sexual peak activities at the time and still look back at that saying like wow, what kind of energy was that?
That's kind of amazing.
I remember leaving work early to meet this woman when I was 35, just so we could, like you know, meet and do stuff.
But anyway...
Yeah, I can tell you that my body is very different than it was.
I did not realize how different my body was, because I had not been physical with anybody in a long time.
What Eileen realizes is that even the way she likes to be touched has changed.
She's getting to know her desires all over again.
But this whole thing about, like, I like this, right?
No, I guess I don't like that, you know, or I don't like this.
Well, wait a second.
I wait.
I kind of do like that.
Right.
And I'm still figuring it out.
You know what?
And and, you know, she is with me.
You know, what is what is this body like now?
And things are more difficult now. mean i don't know how graphic you want me to get but like having an orgasm is is is more difficult it is and something to look forward to um it is not um you know it's not push here uh push here press there and you know whammo you get your you know results it's things are slower um and i didn't expect that and i i was kind of a little resentful of it even initially like well why is things not happening exactly as quickly and as easily as they used to happen But it's not all bad, Eileen says.
Sometimes things are slower or weirder, but sometimes it's more right than it's been in a long time.
Sometimes things are scary when you've reset after a lot of time off.
And I know all about this.
I took a lot of time off before the relationship I'm in.
My body, including my brain, had changed so much before this relationship that I had to relearn.
Ever heard the saying that, oh, having sex is just like riding a bike?
I had gone away with a person I'm with to Maine and, you know, he wanted to like ride bikes.
And I was like, I don't, I'm not good at that.
And he's like, no, you know what they say, you never forget.
And let me tell you, you do forget.
And I thought about, I was like, I'm terrible at this.
I cannot ride this bike.
Stop asking me to do it.
And I just thought, well, isn't this appropriate?
Yes, yes.
The analogy is not lost on me.
Yes, it's that you might need some training wheels, or you might need different kinds of tires, or you might, you know, want a tricycle, or you might want a unicycle or, maybe you know, a motorcycle even.
But it's definitely not the bike you thought you'd be riding, right?
Because your bold bike is still in the garage and you can't use that bike anymore.
I asked Eileen how menopause changed her priorities like changed fundamentally what she wants as a human.
And if so, if that's a good thing.
She's into Meryl, but would she have chosen Meryl if she were pre-menopausal?
So such a good question, because I think and she and I talked about this too about would we, could we have met when we were younger?
Would that have even been possible?
Not logistically possible, but if we had met when we were younger, would we have been into each other?
And I think for both of us, the answer is no.
I think, having been in a long-term relationship and being divorced, you understand certain things that you cannot tolerate in a relationship.
That is intolerable for you, for me.
And that things that you must have in a relationship that are not negotiable.
And I'm not talking about superficial things.
I'm talking about how you're treated, how you feel when you're with this person, the temperament of that person, the energy of that person, the curiosity of that person and their life experiences, right.
And also this idea of taking care of myself is paramount and feeling good about myself when I'm with this person is paramount.
So I don't know if those things would have been as important to me when I was younger.
Certainly you know starting a family or you know settling down, buying your first house, that kind of stuff.
When you're older, it's like, okay, well, how do I wanna live the last third of my life, right?
Do I wanna have adventure in my life?
Do I wanna have security in my life?
Do I wanna have someone who could hold me when I feel really down.
Being with Meryl is bringing out parts of me that I think have long been dormant or have long been dormant or maybe weren't even.
I wasn't even aware that they weren't that important to me until she made me feel them.
We talk about sex drive and a lower sex drive as some deficit, right?
But I kind of like the idea that you mentioned leaving work early to sleep with someone.
I'm like, oh my gosh, that sounds so like a lot of work right, but I know that it's like closer to that age I would have been like yeah, like so there is something like clarifying also of that not being a priority that supersedes all other things.
Yeah, I mean, let me say, this attraction I have for for Meryl is is is physical as well.
It's not like it's not important to me and obviously I would not have been able to be with this person if, if I wasn't physically attracted to her and and you know that we didn't have really good sexual energy together.
But it is not.
It is not the be all and end all.
Although I have had, I have to tell you at age 57, and you'll probably believe this at all.
So you know we've had several weekends that you know we were didn't do much except stay in the house.
And I never thought, you know, I never thought that would ever happen to me again.
You know, I haven't done that since I'm in my 20s, right?
And so that's really nice that that can happen.
Like, oh, this thing still could happen.
But you're right.
It's not the same priority it was.
It's not the same energy that you're bringing to it or intensity, frankly.
Sometimes I think that people who are starting relationships after menopause have this benefit right.
They can enter a relationship as they are.
Whereas, like these friends I have who have already been together 20 or 30 years or you, know that they have to change together and they remember a different time when things look different.
And like I'm certainly not suggesting that everyone in long-term relationships should just break up and then try someone new, but it seems like there's this added challenge if you have this legacy history of well, you used to do this and now you're like this, whereas you know Meryl's meeting you and you are who you are now.
Right.
That's really interesting to say that, because I feel a lot less pressure of sort of you know, hair and makeup and dressing right.
I mean, I picked her up at the airport recently, like you know, in my PJs, with you know and you know, and I don't think you know with nothing, I had done nothing to myself to make myself look any different than I usually look.
And I thought there was a freedom in that, in the sense that like look, she's seen me like this anyway.
Meryl and Eileen were still enjoying each other last we checked and will let them have that relationship in private.
You know, I'm in the last third of my life, which is also a weird thing to even say out loud.
How can that be true?
Like, I'm only, you know, 40 or 35.
I'm not in the last third of my life, but I am, right?
And so how do I want to live this last third?
Eileen knows who to thank for all of these positive changes.
I mean, to some extent, she can thank menopause.
And there's her dad for showing her how to be open as you approach 60.
She also gives credit to her therapist, as so many on this show do.
If you keep saying that's never gonna happen, then it will never happen.
I'm thankful that someone pushed me in this way, right?
And my therapist in this case, because I think it's very easy to get stuck in our ways, right?
It's so easy for me to be the old lady you know in the Boston suburbs walking her dogs down the street.
Like, you know, like, oh, there's that old lesbian with the dogs walking down the street.
There she is again, you know?
And it's like, oh, please don't let that be my legacy.
And think about my dad, who met his girlfriend and she was with him for a very beautiful part of his life, for the last 30 years of his life.
And I think I take a lot of inspiration in that.
And I think he had to sort of suspend some disbelief there too for him to commit to being with her.
And I think I've suspended disbelief And I'm really happy I did that, because I don't I'm really happy I did it.
I am so appreciative of having experienced this.
This has been a life altering experience for me that I never, I never would have expected in a million years.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe.
Our producer is Christina Honitou.
Our executive producer is Kristen Nelson.
Uzair Ahmed does our audio mixing and mastering.
Sound design by Christine Ahanatu.
Maddie Mortel is our audience engagement manager.
Special thanks to Nancy Barnes and Linda Henry.
Our music is from APM.
Remember, Love Letters is also an advice column.
Send any questions about dating divorce marriage singlehood whatever, to loveletters at bostoncom.
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Learn more at loveletters.show.
It's funny because now I'm extending the metaphor and saying I did eventually figure out that bike, but now I want an electric bike.
They didn't have that when we were younger either, right?
I know.
I look at those now.
I'm like, hey, those look pretty good.
Those look pretty good to me.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
