It's never too late to fall in love.

Photo: Quavondo Nguyen

Whether you're 35 or 75, it's never also late to fall madly (or gently and fifty-fifty sacredly) in dearest. Just inquire actress Ellen Burstyn and a host of other women who establish themselves in the estrus of romance when they least expected it.

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

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

"How young?" I asked.

"Oh...," she said. "I call back he's eighty."

They're even so devoted to each other as my female parent moves into her 90s, which fills me with awe. But exercise I have to look that long?

I've been unattached for seven years and accept become very good at it. I dearest my business firm, my piece of work, and my kids, and every day I'm grateful for proficient health and what I meet every bit a fortunate life. Only sometimes I ache for a partner to check in with, talk, snuggle, and grow spiritually with. I'1000 afraid that in my 60s, subsequently 2 divorces, such love may be behind me, equally the pickings get slimmer every year. When I go to parties or events, at that place are 13 single women and one single guy, and he'due south ordinarily gay.

This depresses me, and I wonder if my mother's experience was a fluke. Just during the past month, I've talked to a dozen women, ranging from their late 40s to their 90s, who've found deep love—a soul mate—long later on they thought that was possible.

Ellen Burstyn was lone for 25 years before she roughshod in honey, at 71, with the man with whom she now lives, who is 23 years younger. Jane Fonda, 69, recently started a relationship with Lynden Gillis, 75, a retired management consultant, and wants to make a "sexy erotic moving-picture show nearly people over lxx."

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 accident, or if in that location are interior changes one can make or steps one can take to connect with a partner at any historic period.

What surprised me was that the women's stories were remarkably similar. All had been afraid they were likewise old. They all relished their independence and had come to terms with the fact that they might never find another mate. At the same time, they'd done inner work that enabled them to feel worthy of beloved, prepare to accept a man as he is and be accustomed unconditionally by him.

Near come across their relationship every bit a spiritual practice, an opportunity to piece of work on hurtful patterns and expand their chapters to forgive. At that place's less drama, they report, and more peace. Each woman feels her current partner is her beshert—Yiddish for "destined mate"—and that all her experiences, past relationships, and heartbreak were necessary to prepare her for this union.

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

Why non?

"Nobody asked me," she says.

I find 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 Live Here Anymore, and was nominated for five other films. She enjoyed beingness with her son, Jefferson, her friends, and her animals. Every so ofttimes, she would look around and think, "Where are all the men?" "I thought it would be groovy to get home and gyre upward in someone's lap after a task, only I didn't sit effectually crying virtually it. I made a friend of solitude," Ellen says.

But this ease took her decades to attain. In her 20s, she'd been "promiscuous," she says. "I'd gone from homo to man since puberty and had three 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 airtight up shop. I recall I congenital an invisible shield that no one could penetrate."

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

"I'll accept to remember about that," the woman said.

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

"What?!" Ellen said, when the message was relayed. The Greek kid? But he was 48 at present, attractive and a successful acting teacher. (She won't disclose his name.) He sent her an e-post, which she answered, guardedly. He wrote back, "I don't see the word 'no' in this."

They've been together for iii years, living in her house on the Hudson River in New York. She says it's been an easy fit, "which is startling because he's from a unlike civilisation and a dissimilar generation." One reason for that may be her new approach. "Most of my life, if a man did something totally other than the fashion I thought it should exist done, I would attempt to correct him. Now I say, 'Oh, isn't that interesting? You practice that differently than I do.' Information technology'due south the biggest thing I've learned. Information technology allows for a stress-free relationship."

Ellen's greatest challenge has been working with her fright of abandonment. "I had so much feet in my former relationships—I was scared of losing men, all of them." She believes there are patterns nosotros can piece of work on just in a relationship, and this is i of them. "Right now, he'due south in Greece, teaching, and that brings upwardly anxiety. 'He's away—what will happen? Somebody else will grab him!' I have to encounter that and keep releasing those thoughts."

As I get older, I hear more often nearly people who fall in love once more with boyfriends from the past. This strikes me as cheering: You already know the person, and presumably yous've attained more wisdom to brand the relationship work.

Marta Vago, an executive bus in Santa Monica, California, was 62 when she received an e-mail from her first love, Stephen Manes, whom she'd started dating the summer she was 14, after meeting him at a piano master class in Vermont. She and Stephen were a couple for three years, parting when she was 17 and he was 21.

40-vi years later, Stephen wrote to Marta proverb that his married woman of 43 years had died of cancer, he was coming to Los Angeles to rehearse with his chamber music trio, and could he take her out to lunch? Curious and amused, Marta suggested that he come to her house and she'd lodge in sushi: "I want to hear y'all play."

Marta lives in a cottage filled with fine art and antiques. Her piano is in her sleeping room, and so after dejeuner, Stephen played a Beethoven sonata while she sat on the bed. "It was exactly how it had been when I would visit him at his apartment near Juilliard," she says. "He would play, and I would sit on the bed. In some ways it felt every bit 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 ane calling—performing and teaching music—and he'd loved only two women: Marta and his wife. Marta had left music, earned a PhD in psychology, and lived with different men, sometimes marrying them and sometimes not.

In 2006, she'd been lonely for five years when she traveled to Budapest and found the metropolis live with civilization and vibrant people. "I thought, 'If I'm not married or engaged by my side by side birthday, I'grand 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 brand a big alter in my life."

She hired a matchmaker, who bundled a few dates that fizzled. The matchmaker told her: "My dear, you look too old. That'south non gonna wing." Because Marta coached executives, she'd ever worn her hair severely curt and dressed in "scary-looking suits." By the time Stephen'south electronic mail arrived, she'd ditched the suits and let her hair abound out soft and curly. Five months after their reunion, she and Stephen were engaged.

While Marta's teenage love had made the beginning move, Emerge Grounds, 72, set things in movement at her 50th loftier school reunion. Sally had run with the virtually popular girls and football players at University High in Los Angeles. At the reunion, Emerge, who'south 51, spotted a man who was 65, trim, strong, and tan every bit a surfer—Gene Grounds. He was a surfer, and also a banker, who had flown in from Hawaii.

Emerge went up to him and asked, "Do you recall me?"

"Of course," Cistron said. He'd asked her out once, for grad night, and had been nervous she'd say no considering he didn't vest to her crowd. Sally remembers Factor as "kind of intellectual, and he wore braces." Merely at the reunion, Gene, at 71, was a standout. "All the other men had potbellies," Emerge says.

In January of this year, Sally closed up her habitation in Palm Desert, California, and flew to Honolulu, carrying two suitcases. "I felt like a war bride," she recalls. Gene was barefoot when he picked her upwards at the drome 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; and so he proposed.

Sally and Gene hadn't been in love earlier, but they had much in common now: Both had lost their spouses to affliction, and they shared a zest for hazard and hunger for spiritual fulfillment.

When she moved into Factor'southward house, where his 39-year-onetime son and new married woman (who happens to exist my niece) live in an upstairs suite, Emerge started to cry. She'd known the house was a bachelor pad, but now she had to learn to alive in it. Gene and his son Daniel surf x-foot waves and do long-altitude swims between the islands. They had surfboards on the walls, and a boat in the garage, forth with mountains of boxes filled with junk, Emerge says. The pigment was peeling, the bathrooms were moldy, and cockroaches were on parade. As Daniel put it, "We had a roof over our heads. A expressionless gecko in the cupboard? Whatever. My dad said he'd rather live with clay than use chemical cleaning products." Sally put on condom gloves and went through the house with Clorox. Slowly, she's been sorting and discarding boxes—"I had to fight for space," she says—painting walls and, with Gene's help, picking out fabrics to reupholster the furniture. "I gave up my perfect little firm in the desert, my friends, my style of living," she says. "But I would do annihilation to exist with Gene. I've never loved everyone like this and never thought I could. I experience such a bond because we went to schoolhouse together, and we can actually communicate. Yous know how very few men can communicate? This one tells you everything."

Sally'southward lifelong passion has been dancing, and she'due south always been agape of the h2o. At present she'southward learning to swim, and Cistron is learning to dance. They pray together daily and attend church meetings. "Are we soul mates?" Sally asks. Gene answers: "Yeah."

Well, what is a soul mate? Not someone who's identical to you, I've establish, but a partner with whom you lot share values and a delivery to bring out the highest skillful in each other. As Ellen Burstyn puts it, "In that location's a coupling of two people'southward evolution into one path—and so his evolution is every bit important to me as my own."

2 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 alone. Please send me someone who volition honey me but 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'southward what I wanted most."

The reply to her prayers was right nether her nose. Verlean had been alone for 13 years, but she was always busy 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 experience lonely.

Around the same time, a man in her extended circle, Rodney Kingdom of the netherlands, called "Pop" by friends and family, lost his son in a car 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's house on Thanksgiving and New year's day's, just she paid him no attention. "He was a friend of my infant'due south," she explains. Her friends teased her: "That man likes you." Verlean would say, "No, he don't."

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

Did yous accept right away? I ask.

"Oh, yep, I wasn't going to let him go away," Verlean says. "Looking back, it was like a cake that had to exist baked upwardly. The man knew me, and I knew who he was. I liked his gentleness, and he treated me with loftier respect."

At their church wedding, all their offspring and siblings walked downwards the aisle. Pop moved into Verlean's apartment, "and that was the worst part," she says. "That beginning year was haaaard. I'm used to doing things my way. I'm used to cleaning and picking up; he doesn't make clean and choice up. He likes to watch Television set; I don't," she says. "And so I realized: I honey him a lot, and he loves me a lot. Permit me accept him the way he is—that's what I asked for. Terminate screaming most trivial things and only adapt."

They set a day room for Pop with his Tv set, "and I take my own room where I can pray and listen to gospel music," Verlean says. She's grateful to have someone "to grow one-time with. I escort him to the doctor and he escorts me. And we go to church together. I similar to dress up, but at first he was casual. I told him, 'A man needs to be in a suit 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 love and didn't remember it was possible. She had dated men but never felt she could be all she was or give herself completely to the relationship. She thought she might exist "perpetually unmarried" because she felt flawed. She also suspected that what other people call "being in honey" was an illusion and that somewhen they'd get their hearts broken. Despite these thoughts, she was however trying to find a "beautiful, healthy relationship."

On New year's Eve 2005, Donna and I fabricated a list of the qualities we desired in a mate. "Jewish" was at the top of her list. She'due south 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 later drawing upwards 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 briefing, they sat together, talked, and went for a walk. David invited her to a movie, and "by the second engagement, we realized something amazing was going on," Donna says. They seemed a perfect friction match: They made each other express mirth, they liked the same books and films, they both craved solitude, neither drank alcohol, and both are gluten intolerant. Information technology 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 identify beyond religion. For both of us, organized religion is a path to God, and our commitment to God goes beyond any organized structure. That'due south what really bonds us."

Dissimilar the other couples, Donna and David oasis't had any disharmonize. "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 unmarried argument?

"No ane will believe it," Donna says. "I don't believe it. It'south like grace." They oasis't lived together and don't wish to marry yet, just this past Baronial, they invited their friends to a "commitzvah" ceremony to celebrate their interdependence. "We wanted to publicly express our gratitude for this human relationship and gear up intentions for our futurity," Donna says. "We both know this is it—we're done looking."

What about people who've been married multiple times? Do they see this as failure and throw in the towel? Do they privately fear, every bit I do, 'I'grand just not expert at relationships—I lack the gene?' Or practise they acquire knowledge and skills that make after relationships more fulfilling?

I explored this and other questions virtually love later on 50 in my volume Leap! What Will We Exercise with the Rest of Our Lives? I wrote virtually my friend, Joan Borysenko, the spiritual teacher and author of Minding the Torso, Mending the Heed, who'd just divorced her 3rd hubby when we met. Soon afterward, she began telling friends that she was getting married for the 4th fourth dimension to Gordon Dveirin, an organizational psychologist who'd also been married three times earlier.

The women'southward posse mobilized. They cornered her and said, "What the hell are you doing? I'm certain he'due south terrific, simply you said adept things nigh your other husbands at the offset." None of them had met Gordon, just that was irrelevant; they were upset at what they considered the delusion of taking vows she'd already broken 3 times.

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

They decided that what would be different near a fourth nuptials was them. "Nosotros're mature individuals who've learned a lot and know who we are," Joan says. "When I was younger, I couldn't have articulated the vows I want to accept. This time I will vow with my whole center: 'I will walk the remainder of the way with you lot. I will walk into the mystery with y'all. I know there will be difficult times, and I vow to see them as grist for the manufactory.'"

Joan knows—as do the other women—that infatuation burns out and deeper affinities must rise. "At outset it's like you're drugged," she says. "You have seen the promised country. You can't sustain that elation forever, merely subsequently four years, we're even so in it a lot of the time." She says they've cultivated ways to return to that state.

"How?" I enquire.

"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 infinite."

She says what'south different nigh honey when you're older "is that nosotros're so damned grateful. I'm fifty-fifty grateful for my previous marriages—I don't consider any of them failures—because you lot get honed in the procedure. They readied me for this."

What'due south liberating most late love is that y'all don't have to follow convention or anyone else's ideas; you tin pattern what works for you. Ally, or not. Alive together, or not. Accept sex a lot or a little.

Peggy Hilliard, 80, met John Morse, 84, through an Internet dating service in 2006. They lived in different cities, and later on a year, Peggy left her house in Oregon and moved in with John at a retirement village in Washington State. She says that l years agone, "I would never have lived with a man without being married. At fourscore yous have more freedom."

I tell her some of the women I've met are having glorious sex, but others say erotic desire lessens equally you get older.

"Wrong!" Peggy says. "We have a wonderful sexual life—very fulfilling." She admits in that location are physical challenges, "but that doesn't stop united states of america. Y'all but take to relax and be creative."

I take center from these stories, fifty-fifty if some seem a bit mushy. They offer testify that love tin can come to people at all ages and stations. They inspire me to permit go of my tendency to be pessimistic and call back, "They're writing songs of love, but not for me." What adept are such thoughts? Donna Zerner had never been in love before, and the joy and sacredness at her commitzvah ceremony with David were so palpable, people couldn't stop smile. Those who were single felt in that location was yet a chance for them, and those who had a partner were inspired to strengthen their bond.

Donna and David set the bar high, vowing they would always see challenges betwixt them equally an opportunity to deepen their dear and their relationship to God. When I heard them vocalisation this, I thought, "That's the reason I desire to be in a relationship again. Non for sex (solitary) or fifty-fifty companionship, just for the opportunity to go deeper with some other and draw closer to the calorie-free—especially at this age, when time seems to be speeding upwards."

Ellen Burstyn talks almost how, around historic period 65, "I experienced my mortality. Not similar 'Oh yeah, I'm gonna die,' but it's a possibility that'southward there all the time. And once that happens, everything becomes more than precious.

"And to be in beloved!" she says. "To experience the joy of intimacy in the presence of expiry—that is delicious. When yous're in love you feel so immature, and at the same time, you're summing life upwardly. And then it's beautiful and rich, and you have to be aware that it's impermanent." She says that she and her partner joke all the fourth dimension about funerals and ashes. He told her recently that he was driving domicile and a song on the radio threw him into a terrible dark identify...

"Oh, was I expressionless again?" Ellen said with a express mirth. "Volition you lot stop already?"

She says they don't programme to marry. "Nosotros accept being in beloved right now. We know that life is brusque. Decease is sure. And dearest is real. Nosotros're going to enjoy every moment of it."

More on Dear and Relationships

  • The fundamental to letting love in
  • How to know it's real love
  • Finding and keeping the love of your life

From the November 2007 issue of O, The Oprah Mag