#45: Love During the Twilight Years, with Jay and Caryl Casbon

Love Is Us: Exploring Relationships and How We Connect

What does it take for couples to create a loving relationship that will last through retirement and beyond? Join me for this conversation with Jay and Caryl Casbon, who set out to learn the answers to that question.

Caryl & Jay Casbon, are the co-authors of a newly released book, Side by Side: The Sacred Art of Couples Aging with Wisdom & Love. They first met at Lewis & Clark College in 1995 and married in 2001. They worked in educational leadership, teaching, writing, retreat facilitation, and ministry.

To learn more about Caryl and Jay, go to: https://sidebysideaging.com/about/

Karin's website: https://drcalde.com

TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.

[00:50] Karin: Hello, everyone. Today I'm going to be talking with Carolyn J. Casbin about relationships in the late adulthood stage, so that's roughly 65 and older. We're going to talk about what it takes for couples not only to stay together as they age, but feel satisfied in those relationships. Jay and Carol are themselves retired and spent their careers working in higher education. And since that time, they've stayed curious about themselves and what it takes for relationships to last, including their own. And a few years ago, they drove across the United States interviewing older, heterosexual married couples about their relationships, seeking to learn what happens in those years, what are the challenges unique to that stage of life, and what are the rewards, and are the rewards worth it? They address the intersection of aging, love, and spirituality. And we do talk a bit about the spirituality piece because it really just can't be taken out. It's a vital piece for so many couples. And then they wrote a book about what they learned called Side by Side. They also have a bunch of videos of the couples they interviewed that you can access on their website. So thanks for being here...and here we go!

Episode:

[02:10] Karin: Carolyn, Jay, welcome.

[02:12] Jay: Thank you.

[02:13] Karin: We had a few hiccups with technology, but I think we've got it dialed in now. So really good to see the two of you and to have you with me. So tell us where you are in the world.

[02:25] Caryl: Well, we live in Santa Barbara, California, just north of Los Angeles.

[02:32] Karin: And you were actually closer to me for quite a while. Is that right?

[02:38] Caryl: Yeah, we lived in Portland for a long time, many years. And then we moved to Bend across the mountains and lived there for 20 years. And now we've been in Santa Barbara about three years going on four. Yeah.

[02:51] Karin: Okay. So what drew you there?

[02:55] Jay: Well, we have different stories on that. This is part of what we talk about in the book, too, that couples can have different stories about the same event, and it makes coupleship more interesting. So my story is that we moved down here to be closer to our daughter, who was living in San Diego, and we have friends down here, and that would have been good and kind of an adventure. That was kind of my story. And your story is?

[03:27] Caryl: Well, we were drawn to the ocean, to be honest. We had lived in the mountains for a long time and we were also with aging pretty okay. With warmer climate. Central Oregon. We were living at 4000ft and had quite a bit a long winter.

[03:44] Karin: Yeah, well, yeah, I've been there and it is absolutely beautiful.

[03:51] Jay: We love living here. We do. Absolutely.

[03:54] Karin: Yeah. Great. Well, tell us about your book and the work that you're doing and how that's all connected.

[04:04] Jay: We started the book about five years ago and we had been working with a group on another project actually. Was that Befriending the Unknown or what was it?

[04:16] Caryl: It was the soul of aging.

[04:17] Jay: Soul of Aging, right. And we're kind of doing a beta test group with some friends, all in their 70s, early eighty s, and it just bombed. We couldn't get anything going. It just was awful. And these were friends and we finally all agreed just not to continue. And I remember going home that evening because the content was fabulous and I've learned over the years to trust content. And I was just saying to Caryl, I said, why do we have friends like this? I mean, you've got to be able to go deep to ask the questions about life, especially in relationship and aging. And basically the group didn't want to go there. So I went home pretty pissed off, to be honest and didn't go to sleep that night. That's how bad it was for me. And I was reading James Hollis the Psychotherapist Union Train for most of the evening, then kind of fell asleep and then woke up because I had a dream about a project that turned out to be this one that that's where we could take our energy. So I waited for Caryl to get up and when she of..

Caryl: I could barely get a cup of coffee. And he shared, Caryl, I think we should go on the road and interview couples who are aging together who are getting older. I was just retiring, supposedly retiring, and we had the bandwidth to do it and it just landed. And I said, well, let's call it side by side. So we bought an RV and we took about two years and we spent three days with each couple that we interviewed. And we were looking for couples willing to tell their soul stories. In other words, they were willing to show both the light side and dark side of relationships and the light side and dark side of aging and the realities of pursuing a spiritual life together. And we were fortunate to have a community of friends through the center for Courage and Renewal based on Parker Palmer's work. And many of our couples came from that group because they had been doing soul work in their careers.

[06:39] Jay: They were comfortable about talking about their inner lives, also just about their personal lives. And we asked a lot of people and the vast majority of folks we asked said no way am I going to be interviewed about our marriage. No, we're not going to go public with this.

[06:57] Karin: It was mostly too personal.

[06:59] Jay: Yeah, it was mostly the men who said no, they just pushed back way too much vulnerability. But we did get wonderful people. And I've been accused that I agreed to do the whole project just in order to get a motorhome. It was a sad day when we sold it, I have to admit. But that really wasn't my chief motivation. We went from Portland all the way to Portland and Oregon all the way to Key West and back, put almost 10,000 miles on the rig, interviewed all these fabulous people and these people now have become lifelong friends. It just was an amazing experience.

[07:39] Caryl: We really feel that couples don't get enough attention and especially you get attention if you're in trouble. There are resources you can pull in. But it was a real rare opportunity to share our lives with another couple for these times and then go so deep in our interviews. We have 6 hours of interview filmed for each couple.

[08:03] Jay: So we'd interview a couple and then we would kind of download what we'd seen with this couple as we were going on to the next interview. And I kept hearing us say we can do better in our relationship. Those are great ideas we just heard. And we were doing this all along the way. And by the time we got through with our trek and came back to actually write the story that eventually became side by side, we realized that our own marriage needed some work. We found an amazing therapist here in town and we started in therapy working with our issues. And I can see how the whole progression, how it was, it was a perfect set up to get us to therapy. In fact, it's been such a wonderful learning experience for us that we dedicated our book to our therapists and also to family therapists everywhere. Because if there's a group of people that need to be lifted up and thanked by the American people, it's this group. They are doing amazing work and they're all overworked. So that's also part of the story. It's an important part of the story for us.

[09:17] Karin: Yeah, I bet. Well, I want to back up just a bit. So what drew you to doing that kind of work in the first place?

[09:25] Caryl: Frankly, I think it was spirit led. I think that it felt like the dream was a spiritual intervention and it was an idea that came out of nowhere or out of the from another dimension. And we felt very strongly commissioned to do it. It's been fairly costly of our time and resources, but we just felt that there was a story to be told and the intersection of aging and relationships and spirituality was a rich plate to serve up.

[10:04] Karin: And you had said that you had met at Lewis and Clark College, is that right? And Jay, you were teaching art history, is that right?

[10:13] Jay: Well, not there wasn't but I was a dean and Carol's a professor, and Lewis and Clark, no one were pretty, androgynous most academicians were in our head. And so I'm just looking at faculty and stuff, but I spotted Carol and I started working with her, and this was just a fabulous person to work with and really enjoyed her. I didn't know anything about her personal life, didn't care to ask about it, but we just kept running into each other, and eventually that led to our friendship and eventually to where we are now. And it was a wonderful adventure, our courtship, and it meant that we had to change our jobs around a little bit in order to pull off the relationship, which we gladly did. And that's one of the reasons I moved on to Oregon State University to start the university in Bend. So we lived in Bend, Oregon, for 20 years, but I went over there to start the new campus, lewis and Clark to do that. Carol was moving into some other different directions, and no, it was just part of the adventure. And I just think we were back to your question. This project, I just think we're meant to do it, and I think it's definitely spirit led. Things kept happening. Like, originally we were going to shoot a documentary because this is all on film and we don't have the equipment, and all of a sudden, a professional videographer, Jim Whitney, shows up in our lives, in a way, and says, you know what? I'm retiring. You can have my equipment. It's like thousands of thousands of dollars worth of equipment just into the best quality ever, and we had to learn to use it. That's another story. But it just things like that kept filing in and just making it possible for us. People who just showed up to interview that came through either referrals or other sources that seemed magical, and that's a good word. There was magic all the way through this project, and it continues to be. We just got off another podcast in London for a couple, both Hindus and talking about their marriage and sharing what we've learned from the book. And they've just been married, like, three years and having this conversation. And when we got finished, Carol and I looked at each other and we both said, gosh, what an amazing opportunity that was to share with these two beautiful people. And that was an outcome of this project that we no way you could have predicted that kind of experience. It just means so much to us. Frankly, it really warms my heart to be able to have conversations with wonderful people all over the globe about the work we're doing.

[13:05] Karin: Yeah. Those connections are so precious, aren't they?

[13:09] Jay: They are.

[13:10] Karin: Well, tell me about some of the themes that emerged from these interviews.

[13:15] Caryl: One of the ones that has really stood out to us, it came as a result of interviewing two rabbis who actually live in Portland and they have a whole theme of welcoming the stranger. And we realized that. And Laurie Ruttenberg, Gary Schoenberg are their names. And they have a center in the Portland hills called Gesher, which means bridge. And they set up this center in order to recreate some of the festivals and customs of the Jewish home for so many unaffiliated Jews. And they have worked with over 10,000 people now who've come through their homes and had dinner. A big theme for them is welcoming the stranger. And Lori made the connection that couples jay and I are not the people who got married 22 years ago at Lewis and Clark College. Of course you change. Hopefully, you change. It's the nature of life. Your soul draws you on towards growth and change and you outgrow your forms. And so you're always really metamorphizing. But what can happen in a relationship is your image of each other is frozen back or your expectations are back here. So one of the things we've really explored is what does it mean to welcome the stranger in each other, in ourselves? And what do we need from each other when we're in a process of change? That was a wonderful theme that we talk about. Quite at least we continue to talk and write about. And I'll do one more and then pass.

[14:58] Jay: I'll just add on to this before you go to the one more. We can be in relationship and be together and we're lonely. Some of that loneliness is we're not connecting. And why we're not connecting is we're not engaging in each other what is new and alive. And we just kind of miss it. And for years, Carol and I and our relationship, we were both very professionally involved, happy with what we were doing professionally. And things that would come up, we would just kind of scoot under the table because the very next day we had to run 100 yard dash again. And so the career was that intense. And so there were times when we were lonely in our marriage. And I think Lori was really speaking to that. In fact, they mentioned that that they were lonely at times. And so recognizing that we change, that circumstances are different and asking the right questions about that actually makes the relationship fresher, more alive, threatening at times and more vital. But anyway, that's why we think this theme is so important, welcoming the stranger and each other.

[16:14] Caryl: And especially once you get older, age change increases. And so you have so many changes going on. It's almost like adolescence in reverse. And so at this stage, in fact, we've been in this process of trying to decide what car to buy.

[16:36] Jay: We have a lease car, and our lease is up.

[16:38] Caryl: And I said to Jay, at some point, it feels like age is another person in the room, because we have to factor in, well, what if one of us dies? And can we afford one person, afford these payments? That kind of thing? Well, we would not have had that conversation ten years ago.

[16:55] Karin: What car do we want?

[16:56] Caryl: Let's get two of them. You're just in such a different space when you're in midlife. But I would say one of the other big ones is what we call mutuality. And what does it look like to achieve mutuality as a couple? And we didn't come in looking for this at all, but we noticed that the couples who valued each other's needs and feelings and realities as much as their own entered into a practice of mutuality. And we've actually been developing for our retreats some practices to go with this. And a lot of it has to do with slowing down, like with this car decision. It used to be I frankly didn't really care that much. Jay's sold cars since he was 16, and I just said, yeah, find us a car. Well, now I do. We're sharing a car, and it's different. So now this was a decision. We need to practice mutuality. So you want to make sure each person gets on listens, has a chance to share. Well, this is the decision and how I feel about it. These are my values about the car. And by the way, we have different values about the car. So you hold a space for the decision together, and then we we like to do a practice called it's the the wisdom of six options. So we brainstorm not, you know, he might have an idea. I have an idea. Well, let's come up with six more possibilities. So you move into possibility thinking, and you listen closely to the no's, and then ultimately, when we both come to a hell yes, we both are happy with that, then we know we've achieved some version of mutuality. I can live with that. Sometimes we have a single good enough for both of us, and it takes time. It takes really listening to each other and patience to just often a third way. I won't bore you with all of it, but yesterday we were buying one car, and then Jay again had a dream, and another option came up, and it was like the third way. It was the best way, and it was so clear once that happened, and.

[19:13] Jay: We pulled the trigger, and that's what.

[19:15] Caryl: We did, and that's what we did. But this conversation has been going on for months.

[19:20] Jay: It's a process. Yeah. Mutuality requires trust. And if I didn't trust Carol completely and respect her in terms of her ability to offer into the center wonderful ideas and I'm not being condescending, but I'm just saying I have a partner that I can throw uncertainty and doubt and vulnerability into the process my own and maybe ask questions that might bring forth some of her issues. And out of that, I think another thing we talk about is building relational fitness. And for men that I work with, especially when I talk about relational fitness, something clicks. Men are more reluctant to go to workshops on marriage or to pick up a book on marriage. Most of the folks who buy our book are women and they take them home and they say we should read this together. And those who do, the men do come around pretty quickly. But especially when you say you can develop relational fitness because the research shows that men want to be loved. Men want to know how to love. And when they realize, well, I can invest in this, I can invest in myself, I can invest in this marriage and take it from that point of view, rather than from shaming or shaming them, that they're a member of the patriarchy and that there's no hope, they're forever stained. It's looking at what reality is and moving on from there. But men get it. Once they get it, they're incredible. And they become, I think, really wonderful partners where mutuality actually can happen in a relationship. And we've struggled with this. There's nothing in our book. We're very honest about our relationship. Anything that's happened to any other couple, we've probably experienced it too. And we have developed relational fitness and we still are. And we get the question often, is marriage even worth it? This is mostly from younger people. Should we even consider this? And we say, well, depends. How strong are you? How much are you committed to this relationship and what does that commitment look like? And then if you can answer those questions, then maybe there's some more stuff that we can talk about. But what we do say is those who are willing to go into the depths, go into the dark forest, wrestle our own shadows and do our shadow work. Yes, absolutely. Marriage is worth it.

[22:15] Karin: Yeah. And maybe you can tell us what you mean by relational fitness, if you.

[22:24] Caryl: Have the capacity especially, well, one, just the value to go to the gym, if you will. If you want physical fitness, then frankly, every day you have to get up and go out there and exercise or it's a regular thing. And I would say every day you get up in a relationship. And if you want fitness, you have to invest in listening to each other, clearly communicating, watching. When you run into conflict instead of distancing or stonewalling or all the things that we know about, you turn to wonder, oh ouch, that hurt. Okay, this needs attention. This is right where the growing edge is for one of us or both of us. And this is not easy, honestly. Both of us, frankly, are quite defensive, we get triggered fast. We had similar childhoods, and therefore our triggers are very similar, and we're pretty good. We don't intentionally do it to each other, but we trigger each other. And so it's a combination of being strong enough to differentiate and, you know, why did that bother me? Our teacher, Parker Palmer, says, if you spot it, you got it. And so the other thing in relationships is it's easy to project our shadows onto our partners. She's sure being defensive, right?

[24:09] Jay: Defensiveness is one of those words. It's a dynamic in a relationship that absolutely has to be attended to. Contempt is another one criticism if you want to really undo something and break that bond. And, of course, Stonewalling. And a lot of this comes from the Gottman work that we've embraced as well. Interior, real's work, groundbreaking work, really, in relationships. And one of the things when we went into therapy to look at our own shadows, because we both come from an academic background, we start to review the literature, what's out there. And so we did that and went to workshops and seminars, and our therapist went along with us in many ways. So it's just important. One of the things that helps me with Carol is, do I see her with soft eyes? Am I seeing her with hard eyes? Soft eyes? Is my heart also engaged in this when I'm talking? And if I find out that I'm not, that tells me I need to slow down and look at the person who means the most to me in this world. It wasn't easy for us to get together, and we've made a lot of commitments and investments to be where we are. So when I can get to that level, then I'm not thinking it through. I'm more embracing what's in front of us and what the bigger picture is. And that always helps me to relate at a deeper level. And when as soon as I turn that carol feels that this is without any words, carol will feel that emotional change, and she'll feel safer with me, as we might be arguing or in a fight, quote, unquote. And that's something I wish I could say. We've been doing this for a long time, but no, really, we've learned these things, we've known about them for years, but actually embracing them is another matter altogether. We've been doing it more recently, and that's actually wonderful.

[26:26] Caryl: I hope we live long enough to get better at this.

[26:28] Jay: Yeah, me too.

[26:31] Caryl: Another finding was we named the dance between me and we and all three relationships. I think especially in our career years, we were really good at me, and we had exciting careers. We really did. We were blessed to do all kinds of cool stuff that both of us enjoyed. I mean, it wasn't all easy, for sure, but we were so into the me. We were many times living parallel lives, and I don't think that's uncommon at all in couples, especially when you're raising kids and doing your careers. I mean, we look at our children, oh, my gosh. But as you retire together, one of the big questions in the jokes about, oh, my gosh, three squares a day together and you're together in a smaller space. And so it's a time to negotiate the dance between me and we again. And the beauty of it is you have time to finish conversations and be relaxed. And we share a lot. We read books together, we meditate together. We're able to do a lot more together. And we both have a strong need for the me, too. So we found we need separate offices. We make sure we have privacy. And like last Saturday, we did a day of silence just to be able to go deep, be in the same space and go deep within ourselves. And that's incredibly enriching.

[28:09] Jay: It's one of the more countercultural things we can do as an individual, but also as a couple, is just to stop talking and just turn down all the inputs that are coming on so many different levels. And what we find at the end of the day is when we reenter into conversation, it becomes more dialogue. We share at a deeper level. The sharing is at a slower pace, and we feel more connected. And this happens every time. We've never missed on this. We've been doing this for years. So it's something that we recommend for couples to do because it's very cost effective. It really doesn't cost a cent. You don't need a special you don't need I do.

[29:00] Karin: And I really do love the concept of the me and the we. And I know Terry Real talks a lot about that and how that I notice in my work. It's really teaching people that dance between making sure that you are taking care of your own needs and individuating, but also being relational, because that relationship that us is so very important, and so many of us never learn those skills in such an individualistic culture that we live in. Right?

[29:33] Jay: Yeah. The dynamics between independence and interdependence, and I'm increasingly leaning toward maturity in relationships means more interdependence. And Carol and I actually might write on this a little bit as we go into the deeper levels of what mutuality means. We think this is so important for relationships, and that mutuality also extends to the broader family, if it's possible. And we find that we help each other immensely with our birth. Fact. You know, my family is celebrating a gathering next week in Florida, which is where I grew up. And it's wonderful to have Carol with me because as families do, we get wires crossed occasionally. And part of the mutuality in this situation is being a partner who listens with me, who's with me the whole time. And if I need help in dealing with all this, she's there. And it's a beautiful thing and it really has helped me. And I've done the same thing for Carol and her family of origin, I guess I should say big time.

[30:52] Karin: Yeah. I mean it reminds me know, holidays in particular in past where I've had a difficult family member present and looking at it and planning for that, saying to my partner, can you just check in with me every now and then absolutely see how I'm doing? And that is worth so much. And that really is important work that can help us at the individual level and connect us more as a couple.

[31:25] Jay: Another thing that there was something about spirituality and I've been thinking about that because it's a huge part of the life that Carol and I live. We declare ourselves as Christians, but I have to tell you, I've got Hindu teachers, Buddhist teachers. We're as about as ecumenical as you can possibly get. But the fact that in our relationship there is something bigger than just me individually or Carol individually or us as a couple that there's a mystery about life and that there's meaning and purpose to life that supersedes just the first three dimensions of life. We get into fourth and fifth dimensional aspects of life, which to me is getting into spirit and whether it's meditation and budhism or as some of my guy friends do, they just go out and hike in the mountains and commune there. But it's communing to something that's bigger than us has really helped us a lot as a couple. And the couples that we've interviewed that has this capacity, they always refer to it. I've got a friend right now that's suffering with dementia and his presence is as strong as it's ever been and maybe even stronger. And we relate very deeply when we're together. It's almost like we go beyond what the old forms were in terms of cognition and the forms around language and stuff and we move to something. I just call it fourth and fifth dimensional. It's omnidirectional, it's nondualistic in its manner. And I think we have found in ourselves and the couples we have interviewed for the book that going into that space gives us a perspective and strength to do some of the things we're talking about, which is to face some of the unpleasant truths about each of us in terms of some of our childhood hangover. Stuff that needs to be faced and other things know.

[33:36] Caryl: One of our teachers, James Finley, who has a wonderful program on the mystics going, has the saying that God doesn't spare us from anything in life, but God is always with us. And I think this faith we share, it doesn't save us from hard times at all. But it gives us this root system that we know if this storm, this is our storm to endure and to get through. And we're not alone. And the other piece is if you do have a connection with a. Greater reality, whatever you want to call it. You don't put that on your partner. You don't expect your partner to be God.

[34:22] Jay: Right.

[34:23] Caryl: You expect your partner to be just as flawed as you are, even though maybe they seem like God when you first met. And I think it's just really healthy to realize that you can't put your spiritual needs on your partner, but you can become pilgrims together and explore spiritual dimensions. And I would say we had an astrologer tell us a long time ago, oh, I see this in your charts. You two will do anything to seek the oracle, to go to the oracle.

[34:58] Jay: And we've done that.

[34:59] Caryl: That's pretty much about right.

[35:01] Jay: Our travel. We're still doing it.

[35:02] Caryl: Yeah. And it's wonderful to have a partner. Like, if I have a mystical experience and share it with Jay, he totally gets doesn't doesn't dismiss it. He doesn't say, oh, that's know your unconscious or your imagination or your imagination.

[35:19] Jay: Just your imagination.

[35:20] Caryl: Because he's been there, too. I think having that shared spiritual not everyone gets it, but, boy, it's the best.

[35:29] Karin: And is that something that you recognized in the couples that you interviewed that they reported similar experiences?

[35:37] Caryl: We asked people about their mystical experiences, and so those were great stories. And by the way, a lot of mystical experiences happened at the deathbed because we asked were the stories of their parents death.

[35:53] Jay: One of the best questions?

[35:54] Caryl: Some of the best questions, because we asked that because people aging, we wanted to know how they're getting ready for the end of life. And of course, we're children all our lives watching our parents. And so those stories were incredible. Not everybody had the same faith, but everybody had a faith that we interviewed. Almost everybody.

[36:14] Jay: I would say a belief in something bigger.

[36:20] Caryl: Right.

[36:21] Jay: A hidden hand in the universe. Maybe it's not Jesus or Buddha or Krishna, but it's something. And maybe it's coming through physics.

[36:32] Caryl: However, it know if you have a shared faith, it's rich and wonderful, but it's not necessary as long as you support each other. Like one couple, the Creswells, jeff is a musician and a teacher. They're another Portland couple. And he goes to Trinity Episcopal and sings in the choir. And Carol's, a Quaker minister, very quiet, very inward. She goes to a little gathering, but they share songs, and so they love to sing the old religious songs together, something that they do together. So people figure out how to enrich their lives in different ways.

[37:13] Karin: Yeah. What would you say keeps people happy after you've talked to all these people? If you could distill it down to a few things, what were some things that really stood out? I mean, you've mentioned some of these themes mutuality and meeting the stranger in each other. Were there other things, though, that really seemed to be at the core of the ones who seemed happy and satisfied?

[37:37] Caryl: Well, one of our expressions is the daily bread of communication. The couples who really communicate don't not just talk, but that have ways of sharing deeply and authentically with each other. I think that they're just well fed. I would also say people like a lot of people who enjoy traveling together, that doing adventures together was very joyful. It's really individual people who keep learning. What makes people happy is very different. Like, I think of Sally Hare and.

[38:21] Jay: Jim Rogers, one of the couples. Yeah.

[38:24] Caryl: They have a company called Still Learning. Well, they love to learn and support other people. All these couples have a great generativity. They're giving back to their communities, they're doing things for others.

[38:39] Jay: And we call that beneficial presence.

[38:41] Caryl: Yes.

[38:41] Jay: And couples who have that kind of beneficial presence, they're alive. I mean, they're just full of life and they're not doing what they did when they're 35 or 40, but they're doing important work. And another one we wrote Beatitudes for Couples as a way to catch kind of different energy spots and frequencies. And in each chapter we assign a couple one of the beatitudes that we wrote because we felt that kind of met their energy signature. And we talk about energy signatures that every couple has a particular vibratory rate. And we could match these beatitudes with these couples based on that, and it was actually very easy to do. But one of the beatitudes we have that gets back to what makes these couples who are the happiest is this one. Blessed is the couple who celebrates life with the spirit of Tomfoolery shenanigans, creativity and play, for they shall know humor and mirth and have some really good times. And Carol and I can be really serious people, and I don't want that to get in the way of our creativity and imagination. And so these couples also know about Tom Foolery and I just shenanigans. I mean, these are old words, but I love them.

[40:16] Caryl: And creativity, the people find growing edges. They find creative edges and they keep growing. And I think ultimately people have a great need for meaning. And so all of these couples are engaged in extremely meaningful activities to them. And then there's a capacity for pivoting. Like with Jim and Marianne Houston. Marianne, Jim is about twelve years younger than Marianne. She's in her eighty s and she had a pretty serious stroke. Well, Jim gave us a great gift by naming a reality. He said, I love to do service in the community, but now some of my service has to be with Marianne because she needs more he. And he goes, I'm so glad to do it. I love her, I married her, I'm happy to be of service to her. So he's carrying laundry for her.

[41:15] Karin: Being a beneficial presence, that flexibility is really important.

[41:20] Jay: Absolutely.

[41:21] Karin: Yeah. Why did you learn?

[41:23] Jay: That was surprising right off the bat. For me, it was couples reported that the couples who reported that they were alive and fully engaged with one another and with life. Also said across the board that each person in the couple ship had to do their own work. And that was just right up front. And we went into this. We developed the questions. We were awarded a playa retreat. This is this very remote place in the Great Basin of Oregon to do a writer's retreat. That's where we came up with the software of the program, and that's where all the questions came from. And when we did this, I guarantee you, neither one of us thought this would be the first big blast that came back. You got to do your own work in a relationship, and if you're thinking your partner is going to do the work for you, no, that's not going to work. And that was very strong.

[42:27] Caryl: Yeah, we actually wrote a beatitude. Blessed is a couple who confronts their own shadows, for they shall be freed from blame and projection. If you don't do your shadow work, you project it. You just do and you do it anyway. Part of the skill is catching the shadows when they get rejected. But if somebody really runs like one, one person in one of the couples in his early 50s, he just ran into his childhood that had not been addressed. And so Mrs. Paul and Ross and Ross just said to him, I love you, but I can't live with this. You need to get help. So he went into really deep therapy and was stayed for seven years. And the family gathered round him and celebrated. And they named that at the end as their legacy to their children. You don't pass on your wounds. You stop and you address them. These people, they didn't name their financial stuff or their careers, but they named we did not pass on our wounding to our ancestors. We stopped and faced them. And I know I've said to Jay a number of times, one of the greatest gifts he's given me is being willing to go into counseling. It's not easy for men.

[43:56] Karin: It is a recurring theme that I have heard over the past year. I have so many people that I have spoken with who come from all different kinds of work around relationships, but so many of them say that same thing. And that's why I call myself both a self development and relationship coach, is because you got to do your own self development work. And once you do that, you have a much greater capacity to then connect and be in relationship with others for men.

[44:31] Jay: And I have to say myself, in the generation that I'm from, to do that work means you've got to work through the whole notion of vulnerability. And we were never taught to be vulnerable. We were taught to actually to be as strong as we possibly could be. And any crack in the armor was seen as a weakness. And I'm not alone. I'm in two men's groups. And all the men, they all say the same thing, that we were trained to be competitive, we were trained to be dominant, we were trained to be assertive and trained to be successful. And such things that losers come in second. I mean, I know this sounds like almost like a joke, but there's truth to this.

[45:28] Karin: Yeah.

[45:29] Jay: This is the part of the patriarchy that men, once they start to look at it, they see the scripting that goes on, and it's unconscious. And I have yet to meet a man. If I say, do you want to go around unconsciously and do things that are coming out of the unconscious? And everybody says, no, I said, well, so what do we have to do to become more conscious? And so that means looking at things that are very uncomfortable in myself. And this is what Carol's saying and that we saw in the couples, is that doing your shadow work means really knowing who you are. Back to what Socrates was saying about know thyself. I think that's what he was mean. I'm sure that's what he meant. And I am very hopeful that couples and individuals in relationships can invest in their relationships, can develop relational fitness. And we've seen evidence of this.

[46:31] Caryl: And one other thing, I would add that a surprise was just perspective on our generation, the baby boomer generation. There's just so many stereotypes of us. But I came out really kind of loving this group of people. There were so many women who had been first at something like Laurie.

[46:57] Jay: I was just thinking about it.

[46:58] Caryl: Lori was the first rabbi. Well, they met in rabbinical school in Jerusalem before women could even become rabbis. The women in particular, really were groundbreakers in our generation without a lot of unconscious hopes and expectations that were quite a bit to carry and no role modeling from our moms. And also, I think, on making up for some of our mothers unlived lives. And then for the men, there was a lot of sadness about their relationships with their fathers. Their fathers didn't hug them. They didn't tell. They love them. Many of their fathers were lost in alcoholic fogs and just a real strong sense of loss about their connections with their dads.

[47:54] Jay: I think missing a dad. Yes, even though there was a dad there, but being lonely with that dad.

[48:06] Caryl: You called it father hunger.

[48:07] Jay: It's father hunger.

[48:09] Caryl: And then we had all these expectations we were going to be different. Well, the women's movement didn't even really happen until we were out of college. And so we were such a transition generation. I mean, it is just really apparent. And we struggled, and we didn't really get that far relationally. This is what Terry Real taught us, too. We had these ideals, but in truth, we kind of recreated a lot of the patterns that our parents demonstrated for us in the we're watching our children, hopefully building on that and getting further with more equality and mutuality, if you will.

[48:49] Karin: Yeah. So what role does love play in the work that you've been doing?

[48:56] Caryl: Well, love is a big word. That's why you're here, to no, I think it's right at the center of what we're talking about, because you have to come from your heart, really, to connect with each other. And that sounds easy, but our hearts are pretty protected. Right. And coming from the heart means authenticity of sharing, really, what's real and what's true and trusting your partner with that, they will hold you gently and with mercy. And I think from the heart comes forgiveness. We love that. Thomas Merton, when he was asked, how did you live in the monastery with all those people? And he said, Well, I'd stand up, I'd fall down. I'd stand up, I'd fall down. And I think it's that way. In relationships, we fail each other, and we succeed, and we fail. And so I think love has room for all of our humanness, our wholeness.

[50:09] Jay: Well, we've definitely experienced a broken heartedness in each other, in our relationship at times. And we've also seen what happens when we do our work around it. That our heart is broken open, and that's when change happens. And that's when we can take it to a deeper level. And once you get through the pain and how scary it is to look at these things, we always come away feeling closer. It's just amazing. You want to be close. You want to be loved. You want to love. And yes. Sign me up for that.

[50:49] Caryl: It's weird to get closer. You have to make things worse.

[50:54] Jay: Yeah.

[50:55] Karin: Conflict really can bring people closer if they choose to do it that way.

[51:01] Jay: That's right. That's a choice and we see in the world right now when we choose other ways to do it, and it's just heartbreaking.

[51:10] Karin: Yeah, absolutely. So how can people learn more about you and your book?

[51:16] Caryl: Our web page is www.sidebysideaging.com. We've got so many resources on there for free ways to buy the book and also just to write to us if you have any questions. We are doing two more retreats, one in Portland in February, which we'll put up on our website. Pretty.

[51:38] Jay: Got one in San Francisco.

[51:40] Caryl: But I want to also lift up that there are clips of each interview. So if you read a chapter, and if you do, I encourage you to read it with your partners, and then you can go on and see a five or six minute clip of the interview couple. So those are really fun, and it brings it more to life.

[51:58] Jay: And you can find our book everywhere. You can go to Borders. They have it. You can go to Amazon.com. They have it. And there are other places as well.

[52:07] Caryl: Yeah.

[52:09] Karin: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for taking the time thank you. Sit down and talk with me and work through the technology issues and make it happen.

[52:19] Jay: Always worth it.

[52:20] Caryl: Well, they're nice to meet you. Thank you for inviting us on.

[52:22] Jay: Yes.

[52:23] Karin: Oh, it was great to have you.

Ourto:

[52:24] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on Love Is Us. If you liked the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like. To follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Ali Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.