We downsize the house. Simplify the wardrobe. Reduce our responsibilities. Become more sensible about ambitions. Stop taking certain risks. Stop wearing certain things. Stop wanting certain things. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Does this actually make sense? We keep learning, concluding, asking, dreaming, talking and listening as we always have; ya know: those things that always commanded a higher price, greater respect. And yet....

Without anyone actually saying the word, I’m somehow supposed to be smaller, of less importance, with a voice that doesn’t command attention. Just how does this make sense?

For women especially, there is an astonishing number of unwritten rules about what should disappear as we age. Audacity. Sexuality. Adventure. Reinvention. Visibility. Appetite. Romantic possibility. Career ambition. A willingness to make a fool of ourselves.

Well, there is this one: we’re allowed to be wise, but apparently, we’re supposed to become wise while sitting quietly in a very tasteful chair and keeping our opinions less opinionated!

I have a serious problem with this. Because there’s an obvious contradiction nobody seems to mention:

While society expects our lives to become smaller, we ourselves have never been larger.

Think about it. At 25, I had considerably less information about being a human being than I do now. I had fewer experiences. I had made fewer mistakes. I had survived fewer disappointments. I had loved fewer people, lost fewer people, recovered from fewer disasters, changed my mind fewer times and discovered fewer things about myself.

I had less of everything – experience – that mattered.

Yet somehow that was the age of limitless possibility?

And now—after decades of accumulating knowledge—we’re supposed to narrow the menu?

That makes absolutely no sense.

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Her life may remain busy, responsible, and outwardly successful. She may care for a home, manage finances, support children or grandchildren, maintain friendships, volunteer, travel, or continue working. Her calendar may be full.

And yet, she may feel strangely absent from her own life.

She is accomplishing things, yet not necessarily savoring them. She is functioning, yet not always feeling. Ironically, she is caring for everyone and everything around her with that nurturing sensibility women are taught to have, while gradually losing contact with the woman inside her who once responded easily to beauty, touch, music, fragrance, anticipation, and pleasure.

What is missing may be sensuality.

Sensuality is often confused with sexuality, especially when we speak about women. But sexuality is only one possible expression of a sensual life. Sensuality is a much wider experience: a slow celebration of the senses—sight, sound, scent, taste, warmth, touch, beauty, and emotional connection. It may be present in sexual intimacy, but it can also live in music, delicious food, comfortable fabrics, a beautifully arranged room, a treasured memory, the affection of friends, or the feeling of sunlight against the skin.

As I describe in my book, ‘Sex, Sensuality, and the Senior Woman’, sensuality is less concerned with reaching an intense peak than with creating an immersive experience that fills both the mind and the body. It can arise through fragrance, flavor, visual beauty, warmth, clothing that feels wonderful, music that stirs something inside us, or mementos that recall happiness. Unlike a brief moment of excitement, sensual pleasure can create a lasting sense of positivity, strength, health, and possibility.

Yet sensuality is frequently edited out of a senior woman’s life.

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A woman may begin to dress almost entirely for convenience. She may stop wearing perfume because there is “no reason.” She may reserve her beautiful dishes for guests who rarely come, stop dancing because she has no partner, or abandon the music that once made her feel expansive. She may accept a home that is practical but emotionally flat. She may no longer expect to be admired, touched, surprised, or delighted.

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There had been no dramatic rupture. No growing list of complaints. No conversation in which he told me he was unhappy, uncertain, or reconsidering. As far as I knew, we were still moving forward in the ordinary way two people do when they enjoy each other’s company and expect to see each other again.

And then he disappeared.

Completely.

He did not explain. He did not ask for distance. He did not offer one of those vague but socially acceptable statements about timing, emotional space, or needing to concentrate on himself. He simply stopped being present. He ghosted me.

Yet, what has surprised me more than his disappearance is my own response to it.

I did not fall apart. I did not spend days composing messages and deleting them. I did not interrogate every conversation, searching for the precise sentence that might have changed everything. I was not consumed by anger, humiliation, or longing.

Even more puzzling, I did not seem to question very much.

Perhaps that was where the real pattern had begun not when he disappeared, but when I first welcomed him into my life.

I was willing to accept the relationship initially without much investigation. I asked few questions. I did not insist on knowing exactly what he wanted, what he was offering, or what had happened in his previous relationships. I did not ask how he handled conflict, disappointment, or emotional responsibility. You see, I knew he had overcome a two-decade addiction; clearly a loss of a tremendous amount of maturing; a loss of vital life experience. Yet, simultaneously, a huge life achievement. And he led with that. That was the first thing that he revealed, and it seemed to be the overarching element of his life that was either designed to compensate or justify or give me no reason to question anything else. After all: he had overcome what many never can once they have fallen into this all-consuming life trap.

I questioned nothing.

At the time, that may have felt gracious. Mature. Open-minded.

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He offered so sweetly. Compliments accompanied nearly every comment.

“Such a beautiful name.”

“A Queen deserves a throne.”

Then, with a wicked sense of humor, he offered his face as that throne while I sipped my morning coffee. The implication of his talented tongue required no explanation.

I laughed.

He was clever. Quick. Clearly intelligent.

His photographs revealed a handsome man with a fit body and an especially appealing backside that, judging by the frequency with which it appeared in his profile, he knew was one of his better features.

He wasn’t shy. His offers kept coming.

Massages.

Foot rubs.

Kisses.

Physical pleasure of every imaginable variety.

When I told him those weren’t the gifts I valued most, he shifted gears without missing a beat.

“I’ll sweep your floors.”

“I’ll refresh your drink.” “I’ll be your chair.”

Now that made me laugh. Still, I gently explained that I wasn’t looking for a collection of delightful services. I was looking for something much larger. A great romance. A true partnership. A life companion.

Undeterred, he replied that I could simply keep him around as my “one and only.”

One and only...what? That part remained deliciously vague. Trying to inject a bit of reality into the conversation, I reminded him that he might not even like me once we met.

His response arrived almost immediately: “I’ll be the judge of that.”

I smiled. “Okay,” I wrote back.

“Let’s find out what kind of judge you are.”

He’s thirty-five. I’m seventy-three.

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Had someone suggested to me even five years ago that I would be genuinely looking forward to meeting a man nearly forty years younger than I am, I would have dismissed the idea as absurd.

Not inappropriate. Not impossible. Simply unimaginable.

And that’s the interesting part. This story isn’t really about him. It’s about me. More specifically, it’s about discovering how many invisible rules I’d been carrying without ever realizing they were there.

Somewhere along the way, many women absorb an unwritten script.

By a certain age...

You’re supposed to stop being desirable.

Stop expecting romance.

Stop believing adventure belongs to you.

Become sensible.

Become invisible.

Become grateful for whatever attention comes your way.

Most of us never consciously agree to those rules. We simply inherit them. We watch them modeled. We absorb them from movies, magazines, family members, and sometimes even our closest friends.

Until one day they simply feel like facts. Except...

They’re not facts. They’re stories. And stories can be rewritten.

Three years ago, I was in a very different place emotionally. I was discouraged. My future felt considerably smaller than my past.

Then I began doing the deep inner work—not to find a man, but to find myself.

Little by little, something shifted. I became lighter. Curious again. More willing to say ‘yes.’More interested in possibilities than probabilities.

Today, I notice opportunities where I once noticed limitations.

I smile more.

I flirt more.

I laugh more.

I judge less.

Most importantly, I’ve stopped deciding in advance what life is allowed to bring me. Will this charming thirty-five-year-old become the love of my life? Probably not. Could he become a delightful afternoon over coffee? Perhaps.

Could he become a memorable conversation I’ll smile about for years? Absolutely.

But that’s almost beside the point.

The real plot twist isn’t that a younger man expressed interest in me. The plot twist is that I was completely open to receiving it.

No embarrassment. No apology. No internal committee meeting asking whether women my age are “supposed” to feel flattered.

Just curiosity. And joy.

There is an extraordinary freedom that comes with releasing the need to fit inside society’s expectations.

That freedom doesn’t guarantee romance. Or love. Or even a second date.

What it does guarantee is that your life becomes larger. More colorful. More surprising. More alive.

Perhaps that’s what personal transformation really is. Not becoming someone new. But becoming someone who no longer says “no” simply because it fits an assumed norm.

Maybe the most exciting years of our lives aren’t behind us. Maybe they’re waiting on the other side of all the rules we forgot to question.

And that, to me, is a plot twist worth celebrating.

There is a quiet assumption that settles around women as we age. At first, it is barely noticeable. A glance that passes beyond us where once, it would have landed, admiringly. A conversation that shifts toward younger women in the room, assuming they have more contemporary ideas to contribute. A salesclerk who calls us “dear”. A doctor who explains something slowly, to accommodate waning lucidity or hearing. A cultural message, repeated in a thousand subtle ways, that attempts to reinforce: your most interesting years are behind you.

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We are encouraged to be grateful, useful, pleasant, wise, helpful, and age-appropriate.

But desirable?

Magnetic?

Adventurous?

Sexual?

Transformational?

Not usually.

That is the myth of the invisible older woman. And I no longer believe a word of it.

For many women, invisibility does not arrive all at once. It creeps in, perhaps starting in the workplace. A woman who once felt authoritative suddenly feels bypassed by younger energy. It may happen socially, when invitations shift, conversations narrow, or her opinions seem to carry less heat, less value. It may happen in marriage, perhaps the most cutting place, where affection has faded so deeply that she can barely remember when she last felt truly wanted.

Or, worst of all, it may happen inside her own mind, her confidence cut down too often. That is perhaps the most dangerous form of invisibility: when a woman begins to agree with the culture.

She stops expecting to be noticed.
She stops expecting to be touched.
She stops expecting to be surprised.
She stops expecting the next chapter to contain anything wild, romantic, sensual, or brave and instead, she begins to live inside a smaller story.

I know something about that smaller story.

For years, I lived without the experience of being physically desired. I was competent. I was productive. I was a business owner, a friend, a wife, a responsible adult. I could solve problems, show up for clients, manage a household, make decisions, and keep moving forward.

But something essential had gone quiet.

Not simply sex, although that absence mattered. What disappeared was the feeling of being seen as a woman. Not just seen as capable, intelligent, responsible, or kind — but seen in that unmistakable way that says: you still have presence. You still have power. You still stir something.

That loss can do real emotional damage; for me, it surely did. And here is the part older women are often not supposed to admit: being desired matters.

Not because male attention defines us (I write from a heterosexual perspective; it’s the one I know). It does not. Not because beauty is our purpose. It is not. Not because every woman wants romance, dating, sex, or partnership in the same way. We do not.

But being seen matters because invisibility is not a neutral experience. It is a form of erasure. When the world stops reflecting back the assumption of a woman’s vitality, she may begin to doubt it herself.

What I did not expect, in my 70s, was that the mirror would change again.

After divorce, grief, shock, loneliness, I began to choose myself differently. At first, this was not glamorous. It was practical. It was survival. I needed friends. I needed structure. I needed new rooms to enter, new conversations, new ideas, new reasons to put on lipstick and leave the house.

So, I took classes. I joined groups. I saw friends. I opened myself to dating. I began to ask what I wanted, not what I was supposed to want.

And then something extraordinary happened.

I became visible again. Not metaphorically. Literally.

Men noticed me. Men complimented me; wanted to talk. Men wanted to flirt; wanted to meet. Men younger than I ever imagined would be interested in a woman my age expressed admiration, curiosity, attraction, and desire. It went like this:

At first, I was stunned.

Then I was suspicious.

Then I was amused.

Then I started to believe them and started to say ‘yes’.

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This was not because I had magically become 35 again. I had not. I was still a woman in her 70s. I was still living in the same body, with its history, weight, memories, strengths, and imperfections. What had changed was not that I had escaped age.

The myth of the invisible older woman depends on our cooperation. It needs us to shrink. It needs us to become embarrassed by our appetites. It needs us to confuse dignity with silence. It needs us to believe that sensuality, beauty, adventure belongs to youth. Even reinvention belongs to youth.

But none of that is true, unless, of course, you have a preference for it; and that’s ok.

However, age does not make a woman less interesting as our culture too often assumes. Often, it makes her more interesting. It’s so obvious! Look - by midlife and beyond, a woman has survived things. She has made choices, lost people, loved imperfectly, worked hard, raised children or chosen not to, built careers or changed them, carried secrets, forgiven what she could, released what she had to, and learned the cost of ignoring herself.

That is not emptiness. That is depth.

Age does not make a woman less sexual. It may make her more honest about desire.

An older woman may no longer feel required to feign innocence, pretend indifference, or wait to be chosen. She may know what she likes. She may know what she will not tolerate. She may understand that pleasure is not frivolous; it is one of the ways the body says, “I am still here.”

Age does not make a woman less valuable. It may make her value clearer.

A woman who has lived for decades has acquired judgment, humor, instinct, resilience, and perspective. She may be more patient than she once was, but less willing to waste time. She may be more compassionate, but less available for nonsense. She may be softer in some places and stronger in others. That combination is powerful.

So why does the myth persist?

Because culture has always been more comfortable with older women when we are useful but not hungry.

Useful older women are welcomed. We can babysit, advise, volunteer, donate, organize, soothe, support, and listen. We can be wise, as long as our wisdom does not come with too much wanting. But a woman who still wants is harder to categorize.

A woman who wants romance, pleasure, recognition, creativity, money, travel, touch, influence, beauty, attention, solitude, reinvention, or adventure becomes inconvenient. She refuses the assigned role. She is not fading politely. She is expanding. She wants, and it entitled to want, whatever the hell she wants.

That is the woman I write for.

The woman who suspects that the old story is too small.

The woman who has been dismissed, overlooked, underestimated, or quietly set aside simply because she’s aged beyond the stereotypical age of desirability.

The woman who has lived through divorce, widowhood, illness, caregiving, career change, loneliness, or disappointment and still feels a pulse of “more” inside her.

The woman who wonders whether it is foolish to want to feel beautiful again.

The woman who wonders whether she is too old to flirt, date, desire, begin again, study something new, change her work, change her mind, or change the entire emotional temperature of her life.

She is not too old. In fact, may I say ‘no fucking way!’

The woman who has been polite for so long and who feels almost scandalous asking for more, for what she wants.

Ask anyway.

That question is where visibility begins.

Not with a compliment. Not with a man. Not with a photograph. Not with a dating profile. Those things may come later, and they may be delightful.

It begins when she notices what she has been minimizing.

Her needs.
Her body.
Her voice.
Her curiosity.
Her sensuality.
Her anger.
Her imagination.
Her standards.
Her appetite for life.

The world may still carry old assumptions. Let it. We are not required to obey them.

We can be older and still becoming; are there other options for those who breathe, who think, who feel every day?

We can be seasoned and still surprised.

We can be wise and still wanton in our imaginations.

We can be responsible and still romantic.

We can be grieving and still open.

We can be grandmothers, professionals, artists, widows, divorcees, caregivers, students, lovers, leaders, and women with secrets that make us smile.

The invisible older woman is a myth.

The visible older woman is not a fantasy.

She is real.

She is awake.

And she may be just getting started.

Not because I had given up on myself. Not because I thought I had disappeared entirely. I still wore makeup. I still cared how I looked. I still ran a business, saw friends, took classes, made plans, and moved through the world with a reasonable amount of confidence. But there is a particular kind of compliment that lands differently when you are no longer young.

At 25, you expect to be noticed. At 35, you still assume a glance, a flirtation, a spark. At 45 or 50, you may still recognize the woman you once were, negotiating with the mirror, deciding which parts of yourself remain familiar and which have begun to require wardrobe changes, emphasis elsewhere.

But by 72?

By then, culture has been whispering for decades. It tells you to be grateful for your health.
Enjoy your grandchildren, if you have them.
Volunteer
Be pleasant
Age gracefully
Shift or even, reduce, expectations

It rarely says: prepare to be desired; your sensual life may not be over.

It rarely says: you may yet become more visible, not less!

And it certainly does not say: one day, a man, much younger than you, will look at you with unmistakable admiration and say, “Oh my God, you’re gorgeous!”

That sentence startled me because it landed in a place I thought had gone quiet. For many years, I had lived without the experience of being desired. Not merely without sex, but without the particular current of being seen as a woman — not as a worker, wife, friend, neighbor, client, volunteer, organizer, problem-solver, or dependable adult, but as a heterosexual woman whose presence stirred something physical in a man. That absence does something to the spirit. For me, it was a negative shift; a loss of one of the components I saw as ‘me’; one that added a kind of joy that is unique.

Are older women allowed to acknowledge this? Are we supposed to be beyond such things? Should I have evolved past the need for admiration, flirtation, attraction, touch, romance, and sensual validation? I certainly didn’t. It wasn’t just the anticipation of pleasure of physical touch; it wasn’t only about the disappearance of having physical impact on a man.

It was about being seen; boy, does that matter!

Not because a heterosexual woman’s value depends on male attention. It does not. Not because romance is the key path to fulfillment. It is not. Not because physical beauty is the highest achievement. Absolutely not. Being seen matters because invisibility is an injury that doesn’t heal; it creates inner scarring that deepens and expands its impact.

Too many women arrive at midlife, carrying the awareness of having been overlooked by too many; perhaps by a partner, her workplace or children. Sometimes by the marketplace, the media, the culture, the medical profession, the mirror, or the world at large.

The message may be subtle, but it is consistent and a norm of American society: your most exciting chapters are behind you.

I do not accept that, and it took a series of life changes, significantly good and tragic, to show me there’s so much more to anticipate, to enjoy, to gain.

My own life took a dramatic turn at 70. Divorce, grief, shock, added responsibility, loneliness all arrived in a relatively short period of time. There were moments when I was emotionally flattened. I wondered whether the life I had imagined for myself had been replaced by something smaller, sadder, and less alive.

And then, slowly, with intention and sometimes with pure accident, I began to choose differently. I chose to put myself back into the world. I chose classes, conversation, friendships, curiosity, dating, honesty, and risk. I chose to ask myself what I still wanted, not what I was supposed to want or what I’d been handed. I chose to question tired assumptions about aging, femininity, sexuality, and possibility.

And the world answered in ways I never expected.

The range of those answers was funny, shocking, tender, erotic. I learned a new way to protect myself, to be cautious, while some were so affirming they changed the way I walked into the next days and months of my life.

The compliment — “Oh my God, you’re gorgeous” — was not really about one man, one moment, or one sentence. It was about the collapse of tired, outmoded expectation.

It was about realizing I had been wrong. Or, more accurately, that the culture had been wrong for me and for generations of women who were taught that sensual or sexual expectations, experiences, were no longer to be had, to be wanted.

I had absorbed the idea that a woman in her 70s could be vibrant, wise, generous, perhaps stylish, perhaps respected. But desired? Sought after? Flirted with? Pursued? Admired by men younger than she? Seen as sensual, compelling, and alive?

That was not part of the story I had been handed.

So I am writing a new one.

That is what this Substack is about.

It is not only about dating or sex, feeling attractive, or wanting more, beyond the typical playbook for middle and senior-aged women. Those things may appear here, often with humor, candor, and an occasional raised eyebrow.

But the deeper subject is personal transformation.

What happens when a woman decides the best is still ahead?

What happens when she stops organizing her life around disappearance?

What happens when she asks not ‘What is still available to me?’ but instead: What do I want now?

That question is powerful and can lead anywhere she wants to explore, decides to go. New friendships, new work, new art, new travel, new spiritual practices, new boundaries, new confidence, new rooms, new risks, and new language for the self.

Older women need new expectations for life because the old expectations are too small, simply not enough. They do not account for appetite, intelligence, humor, erotic imagination, resilience, ambition, creativity, and capacity for surprise. And hey – they don’t account for the men who want her, who seek her out and crave her companionship.

They do not account for the woman who knows what matters to her.

They do not account for the woman who want to say ‘yes’ more often than societal expectations may have assumed.

They do not account for the woman who looks in the mirror at 60, 70, or beyond and wonders what’s next? Where do I want to play, grow, be now?

Don’t be fooled: There’s more, more, more. Regardless of your circumstance or resources, there is more than you might have been led to believe.

That is the plot twist. And it’s here to make you smile, often!