by: Rosalyn Becton

In my late fifties, I have just fallen in love. With a man slightly over half my age. In his thirties, let’s say.  He is an actor. I run the lights at the local community theater. Before I knew him, I watched him from my booth at the top of a rickety spiral staircase. I consulted him about his cues and made adjustments to the script. I watched him inhabit a character in Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace.  A silly character with a fake German accent, a mad plastic surgeon by the name of Dr. Herman Einstein. Before each show he ruffled his hair until it stuck straight up on top, like tiny rabbit ears. Each time he reached for the light switch in Act 2, I hit Go on the board, and plunged the stage into a dim red glow. Its glow reminded me of my heart whenever I see him: this glow must not shine too brightly.

In Western culture, “social biology” insists that older men are attracted to younger women because of their fertility, and that younger women are attracted to older men because of their ability to be good providers. May/December romances reflecting that pattern are hardly noticed anymore. But when an older woman is partnered with a younger man (remember Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher? Susan Sarandon and Jonathan Bricklin?), that phenomenon has traditionally attracted attention, as well as a lot of commentary, much of it puzzling over whether the relationship is “normal” or not.

According to clinical psychologist Noam Shpancer’s 2012 article in Psychology Today, this attitude is changing, and that change is due, to a large degree, to changes in western culture and society. Though women still, dollar for dollar, earn less than men, a substantial and growing number of women earn enough to be independent and to make their own choices when and if they partner up with someone, rather than seek out a man who can support and provide for them. According to Shpancer, older women seek out younger men “because it’s gratifying to win a younger man’s attention and admiration, flaunt him, exercise power over him, and sleep with him.”

While all of this may be true (though I think “exercise power over him” goes a bit far), it is only part of the picture. I was forced to consider the other part when I found myself suddenly and inexplicably attracted to a man so much younger than I am. I was not looking for romance; I did not seek to “win a younger man’s attention and admiration.”  Why?  Because I am happily married to a man I have been with for 30 years. Together, we’ve raised three glorious children, moved to a Caribbean island, and weathered two Category 5 hurricanes. He is charming, attractive, successful, funny, scatterbrained (part of his charm), and flirtatious.  With younger women.

I am not sure when this thing, my falling in love with young “Dr. Einstein,” happened; only that it is unfamiliar, delicious in its strangeness. Did it happen when he was the first member of the cast to gesture his thanks to me at curtain call, smiling up at me, invisible behind my two-way mirror with its ghost-white complexion? Was it when he showed up for drinks at my invitation, and then asked, straight out, “Why me?” and I responded,  “Because you made me laugh so hard I slipped off my chair and nearly missed my next cue.” That may have been when it all started.  I literally fell for him. Right off my chair.

What I do know, at least, is from whence this feeling of deliciousness arises. When I am near this young man, or even thinking about him, the biochemistry of love kicks in and my brain involuntarily secretes dopamine and norepinephrine. Scientists have long understood that these neurotransmitters are secreted in higher amounts than normal during the attraction phase of a relationship, even a non-sexual one, albeit the amount of each substance secreted is highest during the initial stages of sexual attraction.

Estrogen and testosterone also play a role. I use an estrogen patch because it helps to control my mood and makes me feel better, physically healthier as well as stronger. Estrogen plays a role in sexual attraction because attraction is related to reproduction and reproduction is an urge most of us have, for better or worse. Without the estrogen booster at my age, I probably would not be having the urge to reproduce. And of course I do not consciously want a baby, even if I could have one; I only want to do the thing that sometimes leads to that.

While I do not use a testosterone supplement, my husband does. There is a warning label on this medication, AndroGel. It says users should avoid coming into contact with females in the area or areas where the gel is applied. The problem is, my husband and I are a couple who like to hug each other, so I am sure it is rubbing off on me that way, especially since he goes around bare-chested in the hot weather. Testosterone has a much stronger stimulating effect on sexual desire than estrogen does, so it must be on board, part of my crew, directing my course.

While at Karaoke Night with nearly everyone I know, including my two twenty-something sons, I wonder if my husband could be directly or indirectly responsible for the attraction to another man. When I sit next to that young man at a table and he (accidentally?) touches me, I actually find myself groaning. Groaning? Really? Really. Oh God, does he notice? I make a conscious effort, the next time it happens (because, again, it is involuntary) to lower the volume as much as possible.

I want to get up there and sing Joni Mitchell’s “Help Me, I Think I’m Falling.”  It’s the only song I can think of, even though it was released in 1974 when I was 15 years old. But it expresses exactly the way I feel now: Help me, I think I’m falling, in love, again. When I get that crazy feeling, I know I’m in trouble again.

There’s another line from that Joni Mitchell song that stands out, this on in the second stanza: Cause I’ve seen some hot, hot blazes come down in smoke and ash.

And really, that is partly what this is about. The hot, hot biochemical blaze I once experienced with my husband turned, somewhere down the line, into smoke and ash. I suppose the problem would be simple were it not so complex.

I still love my husband, and I know he still loves me. This love is also sustained by a chemical substance manufactured by my body: oxytocin. Oxytocin is the same hormone that encourages a new mom to bond with her baby in such a powerful way that many women describe this love as overwhelming. The oxytocin that bonds women and their partners is secreted at a lower level. I am fascinated by memories of the way it made me feel when I nursed my children, first tingly—mainly in my breasts, as they grew heavy with milk—and then the full-body wash of an opiate-like high once they began to suckle. A similar but less intense feeling of well-being is often experienced when a man stimulates a woman’s breasts during sex.

Most puzzling in the biochemistry of sexual love is that it lowers the neurotransmitter serotonin.  I wonder if this is why people who take  selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (the ubiquitous SSRI antidepressants whose first iteration was Prozac) tend to have low-to-no libido. Neither of the two antidepressants I take is an SSRI, and both stimulate the production of norepinephrine and dopamine. So I’ll be honest—perhaps the lust I feel for this young man is entirely the effect of the medications I take, three of which are associated with sexual attraction. A conundrum: These medications keep me from those days when I am crying so much I can’t leave the house and all I can think of is how to slit my wrists without making too much of a mess. I literally can’t live without them.

So what do I do? I don’t know– I can’t figure this out, but I analyze it to the point that self-knowledge creates an effective barrier, a kind of inoculation. I sit here, after reading this, and experimentally try looking at a short video I made of my favorite parts of the show, the ones where that young man really shines.

Nope, didn’t work.

Theater photo courtesy of: Monica Silvestre

Rosalyn Becton is a former professor of English and a writer who is fascinated by the intricacies and oddities of the inner– and often hidden– lives of women.