AARP Love and Meaning after 50: The 10 Challenges to Great Relationships-and How to Overcome Them

Description

AARP Love and Meaning After 50 addresses the 10 most common challenges of sustaining loving relationships and emotional wellness in our 50s, 60s, and beyond. Authors Barry Jacobs and Julia Mayer, a husband-wife team of psychologists with more than 50 years of combined clinical experience helping individuals and couples, help readers decide -- and gracefully walk through -- those next steps. Jacobs and Mayer provide professional expertise paired with tried-and-true advice from those who've walked this walk before you. The challenges and advice in the book includes: The Empty Nest: How can you shift from an intense focus on children and turn more toward your partner? Diminished wealth and cutbacks in spending: How can you agree to live more modestly to stretch limited income and joint savings over longer expected lifespans? Need for care-giving: If caring for your partner, how can you still feel well cared for and loved -- even when you feel you're giving more than you're getting? Slow drift and detachment: Spouses who have long-held resentments, difficulties resolving disagreements, and little tolerance of each other's bad habits often drift over the years into emotionally distant arrangements of parallel co-existence rather than living the life of fully engaged partners. How can this be avoided?

Julia L. Mayer, PsyD is a clinical psychologist, and has been doing individual and couples therapy for more than a quarter century. She has a busy full-time private practice in Media, Pennsylvania, where she specialises in women's issues, including relationship concerns, sexual abuse, eating disorders, care-giving, and ageing. She has done readings and given talks at libraries, art galleries, clinical supervision groups, retirement communities, and graduate programs in clinical psychology. She also previously published an article in the APA journal, Family, Systems and Health. Barry J. Jacobs, PsyD is a clinical psychologist, family therapist, and long-time journalist and writer. He works as the Director of Behavioural Sciences for the Crozer-Keystone Family Medicine Residency Program in Springfield, Pennsylvania, and has had adjunct faculty positions with the Temple University School of Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and the Department of Psychology of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University and his Doctor of Psychology degree from the Hahnemann/Widener Universities.

A beautifully written guide for couples who want inspiration, a refresher, or a reboot after the kids are gone.--William J. Doherty, Ph.D., Professor of Family Social Science, University of Minnesota, and author of Take Back Your Marriage A must-read for anyone over 50 who is married or wants to be. I wish my parents had read this book when they were in their 50s! It's a practical, hopeful guide to renegotiating and reinvigorating your relationship. It will save a lot of marriages, because it will really help you and your spouse talk to each other.--Stephen Fried, New York Times bestselling author of Husbandry: Sex, Love and Dirty Laundry: Inside the Minds of Married Men and Rush: Revolution, Madness & the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father Drs. Mayer and Jacobs use their clinical wisdom and story-telling abilities to bring to life the challenges for couples 50-plus. Their advice will help strengthen long-term relationships to combat the rising trend of Gray Divorce.--Janis Abrahms Spring, PhD, author of After the Affair and Life with Pop Julia Mayer and Barry Jacobs have given us an eminently practical guide to maintaining connection and re-establishing intimacy for couples over 50. They provide engaging descriptions and clear step-by-step guidance to help couples forge deeper meaning and greater closeness. As the percentage of Americans over 65 continues to grow, this will become an increasingly important and relevant book for an ever-larger segment of our population.--Dr. Patricia Papernow, author of Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships: What Works and What Doesn't, and, with Karen Bonnell, The Stepfamily Handbook: From Dating, to Getting Serious to Forming a "Blended Family"