Q&A: The new rules of marriage

Terry Real, 56, is the author of I Don't Want to Talk About It, How Can I Get Through to You, and the forthcoming The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Love Work. He has spent nearly three decades as a couples therapist, specializing in relationship turnarounds. He has been married to his second wife Belinda for 22 years.

A lot of Eons users say they want to get married.

Isn't that amazing? Because there are so many single people out there.

Why do people over 50 want to get married?

It's an interesting question. Some people don't feel the need to get married, they are boyfriend and girlfriend, for example Oprah Winfrey, who don't feel the need to make it legal. Yet a lot of people want stability, they want commitment for life, they want a public pronouncement that "We are a couple." And they want the same legal privileges and protections as a married couple. They're in love!

Ben Jonson said that second marriage was the triumph of hope over experience. But research tells us that second and even third marriages do much better, that people by and large actually learn a thing or two from their previous mistakes.

Are there advantages to getting married when you're older?

I think one of the really tremendous advantages of older marriages is that a ton of stressors that hit younger people are somewhat settled. It's rare that you're going to raise a new family. You do have the stress of trying to blend families, even older children, but you're not changing diapers as a rule.

The other great thing is you're often somewhat settled in your career and financially. You may not be in the world's greatest shape, but whatever point you needed to prove to the world, you've proven. There's some wisdom.

What I've found with a lot of latter-day relationships is there's some wisdom about relationships, you're more appreciative and less fussy. You're less inclined to sweat the small stuff.

All in all, if you're a veteran of several relationships, you tend to be more relaxed. Your expectations are a little more realistic, and you can really enjoy each other.

What about disadvantages?

Unfortunately, there are some people who don't learn anything from their previous experiences. One of my clients called it "30 years of repetition misnamed experience." Some people, and I would say perhaps men in particular, can go through one, two, three, four relationships and be the same jerk. Unfortunately, that kind of guy is not a good bet. The idea that you're going to get through to him and you're going to be special and no one else is is probably naïve.

It's really critical that you ask people about their previous relationships. Listen to how they speak about them. Are they bitter? Are they positioning themselves as an angry victim? Do they speak about other people in their lives with some respect? Do they take any responsibility for their part in things? There are certain red flags: Is this person an excessive drinker? Are there references to anger? Fighting? Affairs? What's amazing is that when you start to date people, they will reveal themselves if you're paying attention. If their previous relationships were riddled with nasty issues, you've got to ask yourself "Why wouldn't this one be?"

There are times when it would be -- if a person is a recovering alcoholic, or has had some therapy and sorted things out, but if there's no intervening force, unless there's a reason to learn something different, they'll probably get comfortable and start behaving like that toward you.

I think the other thing that's an issue is that it really pays to sort out what your expectations of marriage are at this point. You might have a vision of a very romantic marriage, and you might be dating someone who's really looking for a friendly companionship.

Any sage advice for blending families?

In any marriage, the point of being married, rather than just being an informal couple, is that you are publicly declaring yourself a family. In any healthy marriage you have to establish a boundary of primacy around the couple. What that means is that my primary commitment is to my partner. That has to be respected. If my partner and I are having dinner and my kid calls, unless it's an emergency, it's appropriate to say "I"ll call you back" rather than let your new partner sit there while you gab.

Similarly in blended families of all ages, people don't understand that the person is responsible for being the gatekeeper of his or her family. If you and I were to be partners in a blended family, the person responsible for how my family treats you is me, and not you. Sometimes you literally need to say "This is my new spouse, and you are to treat this person well out of respect for me."

On the other side, if you're dealing with someone else's family, you do not have a platform to take them on in any way. You're on really thin ice if you do that. If my 14-year-old kid isn't all that nice to you, you'd be up the creek if you tried to ask him to clean his room. Your move is to go to your spouse and talk about how to do this together. Your job is to be frank and be a consultant to your partner, but your partner is the one who has to execute it. A lot of people are loath to do that. It's a huge problem.

What you do have the right to be treated with the same respect and cordiality that you would if you were a boarder, someone living in the house who paid rent. You have the rights of any adult, but you don't have parental rights.

What about issues around money?

I think there's no rulebook about money. There are some couples who like to throw everything in a pot. In middle age and beyond, there are certainly people who come to a marriage with different levels of resources. There's nothing wrong with a reasonable prenuptial agreement. I would just urge people to follow the principle of reasonableness.

So what are the new rules for marriage?

The reason why marriage has been such a disaster in the last few decades is that the nature of marriage itself is going through a sea change. When historians look back on the late 20th century, one of the great changes is the changing role of women. Women no longer depend on marriage to survive. The bar has been raised for everybody. Before, the model was companionship marriage, that was all that was really expected. The 21st-century marriage is what I call really intimate marriage. We put expectations on top of that marriage that are really reserved for lovers, like intimate talks, and great sex. These quality-of-relationship issues become make-it-or-break-it points for marriage.

The conservative right has understood that women are asking for more from marriage, and their response has been that women should all go back to the '50s. Don't hold your breath. Women are asking for levels of relationship skills that we haven't really raised boys and men to deliver. The qualities most boys learn, like being silent and stoic, not being dependent, not being vulnerable, are the qualities that guarantee that by today's standards you're a lousy husband. You can't be an intimate husband and invulnerable at the same time.

So my work has been to help women insist on more intimacy in marriage, but to do it in a way that has a snowball's chance of work. Most women take a passive position, they wait for the guy to fail and then they scold him under the guise of expressing themselves. It's just not going to work. So this is about how both partners can ask for what they want, and reward each other for trying to do it.

What advice would you give to someone over 50 who is just starting to date?

I would say if you're a woman looking for a man, don't try and look for the perfect spouse. Look for a spouse who's educable. Look for someone who is good-hearted and sophisticated enough that they would be willing to learn how to do it right.

If you're a man, I want you to beware of seduction. When everybody's in their dating phase, what I call the "audition phase," they're on their good behavior, we lie. You've got to ask yourself not how great is this now, but what is this person going to be like after the honeymoon settles down. Men can be such little boys, unfortunately. We're sort of gullible in a way. If someone is great with us sexually, even though you've heard that her last three marriages were, you know, Beirut, somehow that doesn't register because you're having such a great time.

Any other advice for people 50 and over?

One of the unspoken things that I think needs to be spoken is that sexually you're not in your 20s. There are people taking antidepressants, which often impedes things sexually. Both men and women need to have a realistic acceptance of their age. This culture is so youth-focused. There's a real disjuncture between images of being in a new relationship and the realities of being older. I would love to see some images of what it's like to be in love when you're older, what it's like to be in the beginnings of a sexual relationship. We don't have models for being 60 and in love.

You shouldn't expect or try to live up to what you were like in your 20s. A lot of men, in particular, feel a great deal of shame about that. There's a lot of blessings in being older, but you may not look great in a bikini, and you're just going to have to deal with that on both sides.