It's never too late to fall in love.

Photo: Quavondo Nguyen

Whether you lot're 35 or 75, information technology'south never also late to fall madly (or gently and even sacredly) in love. Just ask actress Ellen Burstyn and a host of other women who found themselves in the oestrus of romance when they least expected it.

My mother met the love of her life when she was 84. A widow for nine years, she spotted Harold Lapidus, a retired doctor, standing lone at a bridge guild. She asked if he wanted to play, and they became inseparable.

"He's a younger human," she told me.

"How immature?" I asked.

"Oh...," she said. "I retrieve he's fourscore."

They're still devoted to each other every bit my female parent moves into her 90s, which fills me with awe. Only do I have to wait that long?

I've been unattached for seven years and accept go very good at it. I love my house, my work, and my kids, and every twenty-four hours I'm grateful for skilful health and what I run across as a fortunate life. But sometimes I ache for a partner to bank check in with, talk, snuggle, and grow spiritually with. I'g afraid that in my 60s, later two divorces, such love may be behind me, as the pickings get slimmer every twelvemonth. When I get to parties or events, there are thirteen single women and 1 single guy, and he's usually gay.

This depresses me, and I wonder if my female parent's experience was a fluke. But during the past month, I've talked to a dozen women, ranging from their tardily 40s to their 90s, who've institute deep love—a soul mate—long afterward they thought that was possible.

Ellen Burstyn was lone for 25 years before she fell in beloved, at 71, with the man with whom she now lives, who is 23 years younger. Jane Fonda, 69, recently started a human relationship with Lynden Gillis, 75, a retired management consultant, and wants to make a "sexy erotic motion picture most people over seventy."

As I listened to these stories, I felt...hope. And I wanted to explore whether this kind of love happens because of luck, karma, or blow, or if there are interior changes one can make or steps i tin can take to connect with a partner at any age.

What surprised me was that the women's stories were remarkably similar. All had been afraid they were too erstwhile. They all relished their independence and had come to terms with the fact that they might never find some other mate. At the same fourth dimension, they'd done inner piece of work that enabled them to feel worthy of love, ready to take a man as he is and exist accepted unconditionally past him.

Most meet their relationship as a spiritual practice, an opportunity to work on hurtful patterns and aggrandize their capacity to forgive. At that place'south less drama, they report, and more peace. Each woman feels her electric current partner is her beshert—Yiddish for "destined mate"—and that all her experiences, past relationships, and heartbreak were necessary to set her for this wedlock.

For 25 years, Ellen Burstyn did not go out on a date.

Why non?

"Nobody asked me," she says.

I discover that hard to believe, I say. "In 25 years, weren't you attracted to a man, or pursued by one?"

"I was busy living my life," she says. She worked constantly effectually the world, won an Oscar® for Alice Doesn't Alive Hither Anymore, and was nominated for five other films. She enjoyed being with her son, Jefferson, her friends, and her animals. Every so often, she would look around and call up, "Where are all the men?" "I idea it would be great to go abode and curl up in someone's lap after a task, but I didn't sit around crying about it. I made a friend of confinement," Ellen says.

But this ease took her decades to attain. In her 20s, she'd been "promiscuous," she says. "I'd gone from man to man since puberty and had 3 marriages that were all painful and concluded in divorce." She knew she had to heal the wounds that kept her repeating the same pattern with men, "so that aspect of myself closed up shop. I recollect I built an invisible shield that no ane could penetrate."

She worked with a therapist, studied Sufism, and reconnected with her Christian roots, which she describes in her book, Lessons in Becoming Myself. When she finally believed she knew how to "do it right—attract a man who would treat me well and whom I could dear"—she feared it was too late. On a whim, she asked a woman friend if she knew a man who might exist suitable.

"I'll take to think about that," the adult female said.

Shortly subsequently, this same woman was approached by a Greek actor who had auditioned for Ellen at the Actors Studio when he was 25 and she was 48. He confessed to Ellen's friend that he'd been in love with her for the 23 years since they'd met.

"What?!" Ellen said, when the message was relayed. The Greek child? But he was 48 now, attractive and a successful acting teacher. (She won't disembalm his name.) He sent her an east-mail, which she answered, guardedly. He wrote dorsum, "I don't encounter the word 'no' in this."

They've been together for three years, living in her house on the Hudson River in New York. She says it's been an like shooting fish in a barrel fit, "which is startling because he'due south from a different culture and a different generation." 1 reason for that may be her new arroyo. "Most of my life, if a man did something totally other than the way I thought it should be done, I would attempt to correct him. Now I say, 'Oh, isn't that interesting? You lot practice that differently than I practice.' Information technology's the biggest thing I've learned. It allows for a stress-free relationship."

Ellen's greatest challenge has been working with her fear of abandonment. "I had so much feet in my erstwhile relationships—I was scared of losing men, all of them." She believes there are patterns we tin work on only in a relationship, and this is one of them. "Right now, he's in Hellenic republic, educational activity, and that brings upwardly anxiety. 'He's abroad—what volition happen? Somebody else will grab him!' I take to see that and go along releasing those thoughts."

Every bit I get older, I hear more than frequently about people who autumn in beloved over again with boyfriends from the by. This strikes me as auspicious: Yous already know the person, and presumably you've attained more wisdom to make the human relationship work.

Marta Vago, an executive coach in Santa Monica, California, was 62 when she received an e-mail service from her first dear, Stephen Manes, whom she'd started dating the summer she was fourteen, after coming together him at a piano master grade in Vermont. She and Stephen were a couple for three years, parting when she was 17 and he was 21.

40-six years later, Stephen wrote to Marta proverb that his wife of 43 years had died of cancer, he was coming to Los Angeles to rehearse with his bedchamber music trio, and could he have her out to lunch? Curious and amused, Marta suggested that he come to her house and she'd order in sushi: "I desire to hear you play."

Marta lives in a cottage filled with fine art and antiques. Her piano is in her bedroom, so subsequently lunch, Stephen played a Beethoven sonata while she sabbatum on the bed. "It was exactly how it had been when I would visit him at his flat most Juilliard," she says. "He would play, and I would sit on the bed. In some means it felt as if no time had passed, and in some ways I was with a stranger."

They'd been apart all their working lives. Stephen had pursued one calling—performing and pedagogy music—and he'd loved only two women: Marta and his married woman. Marta had left music, earned a PhD in psychology, and lived with unlike men, sometimes marrying them and sometimes non.

In 2006, she'd been alone for five years when she traveled to Budapest and found the urban center alive with culture and vibrant people. "I thought, 'If I'm not married or engaged by my next birthday, I'm going to retire in Budapest,'" she recalls. "That argument told me that I really wanted to be married, and if I wasn't, I would make a big change in my life."

She hired a matchmaker, who arranged a few dates that fizzled. The matchmaker told her: "My honey, you look also former. That's not gonna fly." Because Marta coached executives, she'd always worn her hair severely short and dressed in "scary-looking suits." Past the time Stephen'southward email arrived, she'd ditched the suits and let her hair grow out soft and curly. Five months afterward their reunion, she and Stephen were engaged.

While Marta'due south teenage love had made the start movement, Sally Grounds, 72, gear up things in motion at her 50th high schoolhouse reunion. Sally had run with the most popular girls and football players at University High in Los Angeles. At the reunion, Sally, who'due south 51, spotted a man who was 65, trim, strong, and tan equally a surfer—Gene Grounds. He was a surfer, and too a broker, who had flown in from Hawaii.

Emerge went up to him and asked, "Do y'all recall me?"

"Of course," Gene said. He'd asked her out one time, for grad night, and had been nervous she'd say no because he didn't belong to her oversupply. Sally remembers Gene as "kind of intellectual, and he wore braces." But at the reunion, Gene, at 71, was a standout. "All the other men had potbellies," Sally says.

In Jan of this year, Sally closed up her domicile in Palm Desert, California, and flew to Honolulu, carrying 2 suitcases. "I felt like a war helpmate," she recalls. Gene was barefoot when he picked her upwardly at the aerodrome and placed a lei around her neck. They'd spent a few months getting to know each other, sailing on his trimaran and visiting each other's homes; then he proposed.

Sally and Gene hadn't been in beloved before, but they had much in mutual now: Both had lost their spouses to illness, and they shared a zest for adventure and hunger for spiritual fulfillment.

When she moved into Gene's business firm, where his 39-year-quondam son and new wife (who happens to be my niece) live in an upstairs suite, Sally started to weep. She'd known the business firm was a bachelor pad, but now she had to learn to live in it. Gene and his son Daniel surf 10-pes waves and practice long-distance swims between the islands. They had surfboards on the walls, and a gunkhole in the garage, along with mountains of boxes filled with junk, Sally says. The paint was peeling, the bathrooms were moldy, and cockroaches were on parade. As Daniel put information technology, "Nosotros had a roof over our heads. A expressionless gecko in the cupboard? Whatever. My dad said he'd rather alive with dirt than employ chemical cleaning products." Sally put on rubber gloves and went through the business firm with Clorox. Slowly, she's been sorting and discarding boxes—"I had to fight for space," she says—painting walls and, with Factor'due south aid, picking out fabrics to reupholster the furniture. "I gave up my perfect lilliputian firm in the desert, my friends, my style of living," she says. "Simply I would do anything to be with Gene. I've never loved anybody like this and never idea I could. I feel such a bond considering we went to school together, and nosotros tin can actually communicate. You know how very few men can communicate? This i tells you everything."

Sally's lifelong passion has been dancing, and she'southward e'er been afraid of the water. Now she's learning to swim, and Cistron is learning to trip the light fantastic toe. They pray together daily and nourish church building meetings. "Are we soul mates?" Emerge asks. Factor answers: "Yes."

Well, what is a soul mate? Not someone who's identical to y'all, I've found, simply a partner with whom you lot share values and a delivery to bring out the highest skillful in each other. Equally Ellen Burstyn puts information technology, "There'south a coupling of two people's development into one path—so his development is as important to me every bit my own."

Two of the women I met prayed for such a partner. Verlean Holland, 65, who lives in the Bronx, New York, lay down on her bed one night and said out loud: "Lord, I am sooo lonely. Delight ship me someone who will honey me just for me, and I volition love him for himself." She prayed for a husband who shared her organized religion and "could go to church with me. That's what I wanted almost."

The answer to her prayers was right under her nose. Verlean had been alone for 13 years, but she was e'er decorated with her work for the board of education, her church, and her grandchildren. But in 2003, because of budget cuts, she lost her job testing vision and hearing in special ed children. That's when she began to feel lone.

Around the same fourth dimension, a man in her extended circle, Rodney Holland, chosen "Pop" by friends and family, lost his son in a machine crash. Pop had befriended Verlean's youngest son, Tyrone, when her second oldest son was killed in a shooting. Pop, a retired postal worker, came to Verlean'due south business firm on Thanksgiving and New year's day's, just she paid him no attention. "He was a friend of my baby's," she explains. Her friends teased her: "That homo likes you lot." Verlean would say, "No, he don't."

On New year's day's Eve 2003, Verlean, her son, and Pop went to church and so a party. Verlean couldn't stand the loud rap music, so Pop escorted her home. Then he started calling and taking her to the movies. Subsequently a few weeks, he said, "We're likewise old to be dating. I want a wife, not a girlfriend."

Did you accept right abroad? I inquire.

"Oh, yep, I wasn't going to permit him get away," Verlean says. "Looking back, it was like a cake that had to be broiled up. The man knew me, and I knew who he was. I liked his gentleness, and he treated me with high respect."

At their church wedding, all their offspring and siblings walked down the aisle. Popular moved into Verlean'southward apartment, "and that was the worst part," she says. "That first twelvemonth was haaaard. I'm used to doing things my way. I'm used to cleaning and picking upwardly; he doesn't clean and pick up. He likes to watch Tv; I don't," she says. "And then I realized: I love him a lot, and he loves me a lot. Permit me accept him the way he is—that's what I asked for. Finish screaming about little things and but adapt."

They gear up a day room for Popular with his TV, "and I have my own room where I can pray and heed to gospel music," Verlean says. She'south grateful to have someone "to grow sometime with. I escort him to the doctor and he escorts me. And nosotros get to church together. I similar to wearing apparel up, but at first he was casual. I told him, 'A human needs to exist in a accommodate on Sunday.'"

Donna Zerner, who lives in Boulder, Colorado, also prayed for a spiritual partner. In 2003 when I met Donna, an editor in her 40s, she said she'd never been in dear and didn't think information technology was possible. She had dated men just never felt she could be all she was or give herself completely to the human relationship. She thought she might be "perpetually unmarried" because she felt flawed. She also suspected that what other people call "existence in dearest" was an illusion and that eventually they'd get their hearts cleaved. Despite these thoughts, she was still trying to find a "beautiful, healthy human relationship."

On New Twelvemonth's Eve 2005, Donna and I made a list of the qualities nosotros desired in a mate. "Jewish" was at the top of her listing. She's a leader in the Jewish Renewal community and founded the Kosher Hams, a Jewish comedy improv troupe that performs at services and conferences. She had dated but men who were Jewish and couldn't imagine sharing life with someone who wasn't.

Not long after drawing up the list, Donna went to a multifaith conference. She found a chair beside David Frenette, who she thought was the "cutest guy in the room." During the three-day conference, they sat together, talked, and went for a walk. David invited her to a movie, and "by the second date, nosotros realized something amazing was going on," Donna says. They seemed a perfect friction match: They made each other laugh, they liked the same books and films, they both craved solitude, neither drank alcohol, and both are gluten intolerant. It was perfect, except...David wasn't Jewish. He was a Christian spiritual counselor who'd lived like a monk for 12 years. It was his intense spiritual devotion that made their spousal relationship possible.

"He was much more interested in and open to Judaism than any of the Jewish guys I'd dated," Donna says. She brought him to Jewish Renewal services, which he loved. "And I became interested in his path of contemplative Christianity," she says. They plant they could meet "in that place across religion. For both of us, religion is a path to God, and our commitment to God goes beyond any organized structure. That'southward what really bonds u.s.."

Unlike the other couples, Donna and David oasis't had whatsoever conflict. "Not even a moment of irritation," Donna says.

That defies credulity, for me. Neither had been married or had children. What are the odds they could connect in their 40s and not have a single argument?

"No one will believe it," Donna says. "I don't believe it. It's like grace." They haven't lived together and don't wish to marry yet, merely this past August, they invited their friends to a "commitzvah" ceremony to gloat their interdependence. "We wanted to publicly limited our gratitude for this relationship and gear up intentions for our futurity," Donna says. "Nosotros both know this is it—we're washed looking."

What most people who've been married multiple times? Practise they run across this as failure and throw in the towel? Do they privately fear, as I practise, 'I'g merely not good at relationships—I lack the gene?' Or do they acquire knowledge and skills that make later on relationships more than fulfilling?

I explored this and other questions about honey later 50 in my book Spring! What Will We Practice with the Rest of Our Lives? I wrote well-nigh my friend, Joan Borysenko, the spiritual teacher and author of Minding the Trunk, Mending the Mind, who'd just divorced her tertiary husband when we met. Shortly after, she began telling friends that she was getting married for the 4th time to Gordon Dveirin, an organizational psychologist who'd also been married three times before.

The women'south posse mobilized. They cornered her and said, "What the hell are you doing? I'm certain he's terrific, but you said good things about your other husbands at the beginning." None of them had met Gordon, simply that was irrelevant; they were upset at what they considered the mirage of taking vows she'd already broken three times.

Joan and Gordon, who were 57 and 59 respectively, had to ask the question themselves: Why is this wedding different from all our other weddings? They'd both felt instant sparks—physically, mentally, and spiritually—when they ran into each other at the full general store in Gold Hill, Colorado. They seemed well matched. They began teaching and writing together and their latest volume, Your Soul's Compass, was just published.

They decided that what would be different about a 4th hymeneals was them. "We're mature individuals who've learned a lot and know who we are," Joan says. "When I was younger, I couldn't accept articulated the vows I want to take. This fourth dimension I will vow with my whole heart: 'I will walk the residue of the manner with you. I will walk into the mystery with you lot. I know at that place will be hard times, and I vow to see them as grist for the mill.'"

Joan knows—as practice the other women—that infatuation burns out and deeper affinities must rise. "At first information technology'southward like you lot're drugged," she says. "Yous have seen the promised land. You can't sustain that elation forever, but after four years, nosotros're notwithstanding in it a lot of the time." She says they've cultivated means to return to that state.

"How?" I ask.

"Being in nature together, sharing spiritual practice, creating together—like writing or designing a garden, when all suddenly ideas are flowing and yous're in that magical space."

She says what's unlike about love when you're older "is that nosotros're so damned grateful. I'grand fifty-fifty grateful for my previous marriages—I don't consider any of them failures—because you lot go honed in the process. They readied me for this."

What's liberating about late beloved is that you don't have to follow convention or anyone else's ideas; yous can design what works for you. Marry, or non. Alive together, or not. Take sex a lot or a little.

Peggy Hilliard, 80, met John Morse, 84, through an Net dating service in 2006. They lived in different cities, and after a year, Peggy left her house in Oregon and moved in with John at a retirement village in Washington State. She says that 50 years ago, "I would never accept lived with a man without being married. At 80 y'all have more than freedom."

I tell her some of the women I've met are having glorious sex, only others say erotic desire lessens as you lot go older.

"Wrong!" Peggy says. "We take a wonderful sexual life—very fulfilling." She admits there are physical challenges, "but that doesn't cease usa. You simply have to relax and be artistic."

I take center from these stories, fifty-fifty if some seem a bit mushy. They offering prove that beloved tin can come up to people at all ages and stations. They inspire me to let go of my trend to be pessimistic and think, "They're writing songs of dearest, but not for me." What good are such thoughts? Donna Zerner had never been in dearest before, and the joy and sacredness at her commitzvah ceremony with David were so palpable, people couldn't stop smiling. Those who were single felt there was still a chance for them, and those who had a partner were inspired to strengthen their bail.

Donna and David set the bar high, vowing they would always see challenges between them as an opportunity to deepen their love and their relationship to God. When I heard them vocalization this, I thought, "That'south the reason I want to be in a relationship once again. Non for sex (solitary) or fifty-fifty companionship, just for the opportunity to go deeper with some other and draw closer to the lite—specially at this historic period, when time seems to be speeding up."

Ellen Burstyn talks about how, effectually age 65, "I experienced my mortality. Not like 'Oh yeah, I'thou gonna die,' but it'southward a possibility that's there all the time. And once that happens, everything becomes more precious.

"And to be in love!" she says. "To experience the joy of intimacy in the presence of death—that is delicious. When y'all're in honey you feel and so young, and at the same time, y'all're summing life up. And then information technology's beautiful and rich, and you accept to be aware that it's impermanent." She says that she and her partner joke all the time virtually funerals and ashes. He told her recently that he was driving habitation and a song on the radio threw him into a terrible night place...

"Oh, was I dead again?" Ellen said with a laugh. "Will you finish already?"

She says they don't plan to marry. "Nosotros have beingness in love right at present. Nosotros know that life is curt. Expiry is certain. And love is real. We're going to enjoy every moment of it."

More than on Dearest and Relationships

  • The central to letting honey in
  • How to know it's existent love
  • Finding and keeping the love of your life

From the November 2007 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine