®

I’m speaking as someone in her seventies—not because age grants authority, but because it offers a longer view. I’ve lived long enough to see what endured and what quietly loosened its grip. I’ve also lived long enough to know that anxiety about love does not belong to one stage of life. It simply changes its language.

 

In our twenties and thirties, anxiety often sounds like When will it happen?
 

In our forties, it may become Did I choose right?
 

In our fifties and sixties, it can sound like Is it too late?
 

And later still, it may soften into a quieter wondering: How do I live well with the life I’m actually living?

 

I don’t have answers that dissolve these questions. What I do have is a life that didn’t follow the romantic arc I once assumed—and that life has still been deeply meaningful.

 

One question I return to, and often invite others to sit with, is this: What do I hope for in love—and what has my life given me alongside that hope? Where have I been strengthened, not just spared?

 

That question doesn’t close the door on partnership. It doesn’t require acceptance or resignation. It simply asks us to notice what has been growing at the same time as our longing.

 

We are living in changing times. Quietly and structurally, the old survival-based models of partnership are loosening. Intimacy is no longer organized primarily around economic need, fixed gender roles, or biological necessity. People form lives and families in many ways now—and culture no longer requires a single lifelong pairing to confer legitimacy or meaning. That doesn’t make love irrelevant. It means no single relational form is required to legitimize a life.

 

That change brings relief for some—and anxiety for others.

When people feel anxious about relationship, it’s often not only about love and romance. It’s about belonging, recognition, and the fear of living outside an unexamined expectation. Another question worth asking—gently—is:

 

When I felt anxious about love or partnership, what is underneath it? Am I afraid of being unseen? Does solitude feel like exile?

 

For me, romantic partnership did not become the central organizing force of my life. Meaning did. Companionship has taken many forms. Creativity became a conversation I could return to daily. Humor—especially the ability to laugh at myself—proved surprisingly sustaining.

 

I’m not sharing this because I need consolation. I’m sharing it because too many people quietly believe that without romance, a life is somehow diminished. That belief creates unnecessary suffering at every age.

 

A meaningful life does not require a permanent romantic witness. It requires coherence—a sense that who you are, how you live, and what you value are in relationship with one another.

 

For some people, that coherence includes partnership. For others, it includes friendship, work, service, solitude, curiosity, or a deepening relationship with themselves. For many, it includes different configurations across different seasons. And it's natural to want intimacy, touch, desire, and sex alongside emotional connection. Wanting doesn’t make you confused or unrealistic.”

 

So a final question I often leave people with is this: If romantic partnership were no longer the primary measure of a good life, what would I feel invited to give more attention to right now?

 

That question isn’t meant to replace love. It’s meant to release it from carrying more weight than it can bear.

 

I’m not offering conclusions. I’m offering companionship in uncertainty.

The world is changing. Our ideas about partnership are changing. What hasn’t changed is the human need to live honestly, to remain kind, and to recognize a meaningful life while we are inside one—even if it looks different than we once imagined.

​

—Deborah Singletary