My health club is like an outpatient psychiatric facility where patients attend daily group therapy sessions between med checks.
It’s a free-floating phantasm we all play a role in creating.
The list of characters that make up this world are as colorful as the disorders that drive them.
Here are my top 10:
1] …
[up next]
Mason [on the right] wears the mark of truth [Urban Dystrophy t-shirt].
He is also 1/3rd my age and already gets it.
Hopefully, the general narrative will serve he and others of his generation well.
~~~
I’m the first to admit – brag, frankly – that I don’t cavort with a politically sensitive crowd no matter what their ages happen to be.
Nobody places boundaries on free speech and/or expression.
If someone is offended by something someone says, they let them know it and just move on.
I find this refreshing.
Every human being, both old and young, knows what’s acceptable and what’s back from the time they were kids — not since the last political convention.
As a parent to animals, I don’t know much about raising human babies. But what I do know is that the way I was raised didn’t kill me, and, in fact, probably led to my avoidance of federal prison.
With this in mind, here are 10 lessons parents should hammer into their kids heads before it’s too late:
1] Corporal punishment is a good thing when kids act up. As long as you don’t put your kid in the hospital, beating them with belts, paddles and boxing gloves is the way to go.
2] Tell your kids the truth about everything. If he or she looks like a tramp – or complete idiot – let them know in no uncertain terms before they learn about it on the playground where wolves will be wolves.
3] Hammer into their heads that the most important thing in life is financial security followed by health…and then love.
4] Life is a food chain. Everything you say and do can and will be used against you in the court of popular opinion, including job applications.
5] Take care of your health using exercise, particularly weight lifting, to help mitigate your psychiatric problems.
6] Sex is good. More of it is better.
7] If you have sex with someone, just know that they now have leverage over you, so always keep #4 in mind.
8] People are rarely altruistic unless it benefits them, which may also benefit you. So there’s that.
9] When guys get older, they don’t necessarily get weaker. So keep that in mind when you decide to fuck with a guy 3 times your age.
10] Holding onto money is always tougher than earning it, so earn a lot so you can play the odds without ending up under a bridge.
🙂
Melanie Hamrick, 29, is mother to Jagger’s 8th child.
BTW, who cares if it’s his 22nd child? He could father a nation and still support them so shut the hell up.
As for the rest of you, try having just one you can afford.
The rest of us are sick of paying your bills.
Jennifer Aniston is tired of being judged on her appearance.
I don’t blame her.
At some point we all bend over whether we like it or not.
Bottom line here is you can’t have everything, always.
We get youth and beauty, but no money or experience.
Or we get them all at the same time, and then land in jail or rehab or dead.
But the way it usually works is we acquire money and experience over time, but fall apart physically, even if it just looks that way.
For people [like Ms. Aniston] who leveraged their looks to sell a brand, it’s a battle she will lose no matter how much she bitches about being objectified.
Nobody cares what her reaction to aging happens to be.
They only care about what she looks like, as she knows, hence the attitude.
Death or boredom?
I’ll get back to you on that.
The concept of retirement has been around a long time. But since it’s inception it’s evolved.
In days gone by [around the time the Stones started touring the U.S.], most people were happy to work pretty much anywhere and die pretty much anywhere, because working and dying soon thereafter was considered a normal part of the human experience.
The short time between the day one decided to leave work behind forever and the day his eulogy was read was no more than a few years, so it made sense to take a few last walks on a beach before lights out.
Now a 60-year-old man in good physical and financial health is like an adolescent all over again, and, as you may remember, keeping them quiet for 5 minutes was a pain in the ass.
You’d have to lock them in a room and bolt the doors and windows.
Fast-forward 40 years or so and they reemerge, this time around with bucket lists that include 1] climbing specific mountains, 2] getting new and improved wives, 3] starting new business ventures…and/or finding ways to keep doing what they’ve always done, but on their own time.
You can’t walk a beach forever when you’re in your 60’s or you’ll be walking for the next 30 years.
I only know one man who still does this, but he’s in his late 80’s and didn’t officially retire until about 5 years ago, mostly because he ran out of funds to keep playing the game.
So no. Retirement is a premature death sentence to most people of retirement age who still feel very much alive and well.
As I’ve said so many times before that I’m blue in the face, people don’t die off at 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 the way they used to.
In fact, some don’t seem to die at all as evidenced by the number of childbirths attributed to men in their 80’s with wives in their mid-20’s who’ve been known to add another 20 years to a man’s life.
Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, 69, and his wife Sally, 38, tend to their newborns, Gracie Jane and Alice Rose.
~~~
In days gone by [lots of them], a man of 69 was, for the most part, on his death bed.
The very last thing he was doing was having children with a woman 30 years his junior.
Then something happened [a lot, actually], and this same man is now clean and sober [for the most part, I assume], propped up by the miracles of medical science, and thus, living like there’s no tomorrow.
This is what fame and fortune [fame + money = relevance] does for most men.
It’s like a blood transfusion that just keeps giving and giving.
You’ll note that many of the comments under the article are dismissive of him and his “relationship.”
People simply can’t resist the temptation to criticize his motives, and hers.
Nothing is real. It’s all one big endless past time for a man who has nothing left to do with the time he’s not touring.
Well let’s get real.
No one in their right mind has kids at 69 without the ability to afford nannies…lots of them.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to be a part of their lives, just not all of it.
As for his young wife, she’ll do her part, with lots of help, while her husband does what he does when he wants to do it, because like he’s Ronnie Wood and the scales have to balance somewhere.
Wealthy older men have reached a point in their lives where they just don’t give a crap what other people think about them and their lifestyles.
For one thing, they don’t have to. Nothing rides on their reputations in the office.
This is the beauty of success. No one can fault you for it no matter how you choose to live out your years.
It’s like a golden wrapper, a force field that follows you around wherever you go.
You walk into a restaurant, hotel, resort property – even local liquor store – and there’s a kind of parting of the waves.
It’s something you get used to, which is one reason men who find themselves suddenly without it blow their brains out.
The story here is really about what it’s like to feel validated for everything you ever dreamed of as a little boy.
For young men there is tremendous pressure to amount to something, to achieve.
And as we age we gauge our success by those around us, hoping that we’re still close to the front of the line, relevant, valid.
All older men validate themselves on their achievements whether they admit it or not.
They subconsciously sum up everything to a series of equations and derive a number that determines their relative worth.
And while some men do not base their lives solely on financial success, I don’t know any.
While vicariously living through one’s children is a fallback position, it really sucks to rely on their financial support.
The moral of this story is that life is a food chain no matter how you dice it.
You have to fight for every scrap, and then live to tell a very tall tale that you and people around you can easily quantify.
It is unforgiving, savage, and brutally objective.
This is why reality television focusing on the super rich is so popular, while anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults…and counting.
Now you know why people beat up on Ronny Wood…and why Daily Mail published it in the first place.
Concluding Remarks and Data Points
So yes, Ronnie was one lucky SOB.
Yea, I was there.
Thankfully, I lived to tell the tale.
The following is a true story and the world I describe is an accurate portrayal of addiction in motion.
~~~
While not a standalone DSM-5 disorder, exercise dependence is closely associated with individuals who struggle with eating disorders, for example.
Many use exercise as a way to compensate for binge eating (bulimia nervosa) by tacking on extra activity to compensate for all the empty calories. It’s not like they’re gorging themselves on chicken breasts and broccoli for God’s sake.
Those with anorexia [extreme caloric limitation] use exercise in a compulsive way to control their weight.
Medical complications from exercise dependence are legion: Cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes, absence of menstration, stress fractures, osteoporosis and other overuse injuries.
While some don’t suffering clinical eating disorders, they may still engage in compulsive exercise, spending excessive time engaged in physical activity in the name of health – or to ward off uncomfortable feelings – clinical depression high up on the list of usual suspects.
Typically, these individuals feel guilty when they miss a workout and experience signs of withdrawal, like irritability, anxiety, or depression when their exercise schedules are compromised.
In my world [successful middle-aged urban men], this is considered normal and healthy.
I’m joking of course.
The following are the most common signatures of exercise addiction among older men:
1] If I don’t work out all the time I’m going to fall apart like everyone else my age.
2] If I skip a day, I feel like crap…both physically and psychologically.
3] Though I’m in denial, existential pain is a bitch, and working out 5 hours a day is healthier than heroin.
4] I want people to be proud of me, respect me, give me something I can no longer find within myself, like youth.
5] My marriage is falling apart. What do you expect?
6] I may be gay after all…at 40 or 50 or 60 or 70…
7] When people ask me why I’m always at the gym, I tell them “what else do I have to do?” In addiction-speak: My world is devoid of balance.
Okay, you get the point.
So which exercises are most closely associated with addiction?
ANYTHING INVOLVING EXTREME ENDURANCE, LIKE LONG-DISTANCE RUNNING, SWIMMING AND CYCLING.
As everyone in their right mind knows, strength training in combination with flexibility work, cardiovascular conditioning for no more than an hour at a time, combined with a weekly recovery schedule is the healthy way forward for all aging athletes, not 10k runs in 90 degree heat…week after week after week.
And people wonder why most top athletes drop out of Hell Week of SEAL training – and these people are already top athletes in their early 20’s.
I know. Reality is a bitch.
~~~
I used to be one of those people, training 3 hours a day, 7 days a week, and nothing whatsoever to talk about but diet and exercise.
We tend to feed the addiction through camaraderie with other addicts.
In psych circles it’s known as codependency.
But whatever you call it, my little party was about to end.
One week after my 49th birthday, I awoke from a fitful night’s sleep with a raging fever of 102 with extreme inflammation from head to toe.
I knew right away that Tylenol wasn’t going to cut whatever this was, so I dragged myself to a nearby emergency room where I was diagnosed with Rhabdomyolysis [extreme muscle tissue breakdown that results in the release of a protein (myoglobin) into the blood], which can and will damage the kidneys if not contained.
Fortunately for me, I caught it just in time.
After I was stabilized, my personal physician and I had a heart to heart. he told me in no uncertain terms that I had to stay out of the gym for 30 days, get a personal trainer…and, if necessary, see a psychiatrist before it was too late.
I didn’t ask him to elaborate. I didn’t need to.
After a couple of weeks, the inflammation began to subside, but now depression took it’s place.
I felt like I was climbing out of my skin.
In drug addiction parlance, it’s referred to as the DT’s [drug withdrawal tremors].
While the actual symptoms are different, the downward spiral isn’t.
~~~
When I started with my trainer, the first lesson I had to learn was moderation.
This didn’t mean that my training wouldn’t be tough, but that it would take into account every aspect of what it means to be human.
1] I’m no longer 21.
2] Recovery is a critical component of performance.
3] A balanced life is a life well lived.
4] I will never be perfect, nor will anyone else.
5] Life gives and takes, but mostly takes when you don’t respect its boundaries.
~~~
How did this happen to me?
It happened to me the same way it happens to everyone else: Over time exercise becomes a reliable escape from existential pain.
You don’t have to take a pill or go to a therapist or even engage in discussions that lead to that rabbit hole of self awareness.
All you have to do is run, swim, bike, lift…crawl if you have to.
But nothing about extreme athletics is normal for anyone not involved in professional sports; particularly hitting the middle years and beyond.
After pulling through this nightmare myself, while at the same time losing close friends to exercise anorexia, I guess you could say I’m a bit resentful of the denial.
~~~
ARTICLES WORTH READING:
http://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/treatment-for-eating-disorders/special-issues/athletes/long-distance-runners-high-risk-to-develop-eating-disorder
http://breakingmuscle.com/endurance-sports/endurance-training-is-bad-for-your-heart
http://www.businessinsider.com/is-short-intensity-exercise-better-than-endurance-training-2015-1
I could go on and on and on and on.
But I’ve known junkies who’ve wanted to kill me over a conversation, so for many, this is an exercise in futility.
The reasons men of means have difficulty finding true love has everything to do with them, and nothing whatsoever to do with the relative health of their investment portfolios.
~~~
The following is a conversation between yours truly and one of these men.
By the time you’re half way through it, you’ll understand the dilemma.
“John” is a nom de plume.
JOHN
“I just met this woman who is perfect! Perfect body, nice skin, teeth…and she has a perfect ass. A little flat on top, but I can fix that.”
ME
“Where did you meet her?
JOHN
At a really nice steakhouse. She was at the bar having drinks with a girlfriend.
ME
Is she from here?
JOHN
I think so. She’s in school.
ME
How old is she?
JOHN
33
ME
So she’s getting a graduate degree or something?
JOHN
I don’t know all of that, but she is really into fitness and wants to workout with me at the club.
ME
I’m sure she does. What does she do for a living? Does she have a job?
JOHN
Yea, she’s in medical sales or something like that. She’s really smart.
ME
I bet.
~~~
So this is how it all starts.
There’s a checklist that runs in the blood.
You’ll notice the same list in 22-year-old men who don’t have resources and children that must withstand their poor life choices.
Such men can ebb and flow with the tides, relatively unscathed.
But when an older man of means gets caught up in what feels like a rip current, it can drag his entire life straight to hell before he has time to repair the damage.
The point is older men of means have a tendency to forget their age and financial station relative to the women they choose to date.
In their minds, they’re still at Stanford, and the women are on a field in front of them carrying lacrosse rackets.
This is the delusion that settles in like virus and hides out in their spinal columns for the duration of their lives.
It’s incurable, but it can be contained.
Unfortunately, containing it is akin to death to many, so it just does what the hell it wants until there’s nothing left to do.
I can’t tell an older man that his choices are ass-backwards. He doesn’t want to hear it.
What he wants to hear is that a beautiful young woman of unknown origin and lifestyle will love him for who he is.
He wants it to all the be same way things were 30 years ago.
This is the psychopathology.
This is also why these men rarely – if ever – find the “right” women.
They don’t exist anymore than the person they were 30 years ago exists.
Now they’re standing at a steakhouse bar in the middle of a massive metropolis, hallucinating.
And who takes advantage of their hallucinations?
You guessed it.
5 Bullet Points of Note
1] Never choose a woman based solely upon her appearance thinking you can fix the rest of it. In her mind, the rest is not broken. You are.
2] If a woman in a steakhouse says she’s in school at 33, she is in class where you’re standing.
3] Your fantasies are public knowledge, which means that the women you meet have your number.
4] Line items are fine, but not particularly practical.
5] Imagine your world without money and then place that template over the women in your sights.
So let’s say you’re an attractive 30-year-old woman who’s fallen for a man of 60.
While it may provide shelter from the storm of corporate climbing and adolescent pack animals, it’s not all roses.
There are inherent risks, difficulties, and pitfalls that may prove impossible to overcome.
But most women I know who find themselves in such relationships know exactly what they’re getting themselves into, and won’t leave without a severance package or SWAT standoff.
Generational Divide
An older man may find himself in the position of surrogate parent if the younger woman is substantially younger, or the man is more traditional and/or less fluid in his approach to life.
If, for example, he spent his entire career surrounded by corporate types, adhering to stodgy cultural norms, his ability to communicate with a creative Millennial, for example, may prove impossible.
On the other hand, if he’s lead guitarist for a major rock group or an A-list actor, she’ll assume the role of surrogate parent.
Strong, Powerful Men Didn’t Get to Where They Are by Accident
Older men may have mellowed somewhat with age and maturity, but this mild-mannered guy is only a cover for a ruthless and aggressive nature that got them to where they are in life. In other words, the nice house didn’t happen without a fight.
This usually means that as long as everything is going well, you get the cool older guy. But the moment the shit hits the skids, you get a first hand look at human predation from the perspective of prey. Men will defend and protect their financial interests and prosperity over all else in their lives, including you.
Of course, gorillas do the same damn thing, so it’s not exactly news.
Taming and Older Man is a Ludicrous Pursuit
Why women like to fix older men is beyond me. I can understand trying to get a 25-year-old guy to get out of bed in the mornings, and to get a life. But older men have been there, and at this stage of the game don’t give a shit what anyone thinks about their lifestyle habits.
He’s already self-sufficient. He doesn’t need you to pave the way forward. You can’t cut him off from his friends, or interests, or in any way undermine his life. It’s already worked for him. His entire psychological framework is built around decades of experience. Give it up.
If You’re Seeing a Married Man, Love Isn’t Enough to Shake the Tree
The married guys I know with “women-on-the-side” like the no-strings-attached erotic sex, even the fantasy that love plays a major role in all of it. But understand that it’s still fantasy. All of it. Your best bet is to find a recently divorced older man of affluence, or just go the married route in exchange for college tuition and be done with it. Graduate programs run 50k. Get real.
The Sexual Equation
No matter how successful and older man is he cannot reverse the aging process. Understand that as you turn a year older he turns 7 years older [after a certain point in life]. So if you want to build a long-lasting relationship with him, you better make damn sure your sexual rhythms and desires are on the same page.
While adventure and passion are still very much on the table, things will eventually change.
Of course, it’s also important to keep in mind that a young man will eventually get bored with you, especially after he’s achieved success in his 40’s, and will often replace you with someone half your age that he won’t be bored with. It’s a cycle that tends to repeat itself a few go-rounds in life.
Parental Issues
In my case, the woman in my life’s parents refused to speak to me for the first 3 years of our relationships, assuming that I was buying her love, and at the same time, stealing her youth and opportunity.
Thankfully, it passed and we now have a wonderful relationship. But it was awkward. Be prepared for that.
Completely Different Entertainment Preferences
In many cases, taste in music is a major marker of significant age differences. In my own relationship, though, our tastes were identical. In fact, she had more Zeppelin albums than I did. Another ironic twist of fate was that I was the one going out every night of the week, while she preferred evenings at home watching TV, painting or video editing.
I could argue that she made me grow up, and that all had to do was provide financial stability, love and commitment in exchange for a more adult lifestyle. It was a small price to pay, and probably paid for itself given my wayward leanings.
OVERVIEW
Affluent older men do NOT choose women unless they’re prostitutes. It’s the other way around. This is one of life’s biggest misconceptions about the older man/younger woman paradigm.
This being the case, she will decide whether or not she can handle the difference in age, the disparity between their respective success and power, his intransigence, the sex and whether or not he knows – or gives a crap about – Taylor Swift.
This statement is thrown around a lot these days, mostly by older women who are sick to death of older men acting like juvenile delinquents.
But I can assure you, I know just as many 40-60-something women who make them look like choir boys.
~~~
Okay, enough with the stereotyping.
It’s boring, mostly because it’s true.
Older men who can afford to “act out” [when I was a kid, they called it “acting up”], do so because they can.
And because they can, they do. Not all, but those who can afford the fallout.
This is how many gold-diggers spot their marks, by the way.
Anyone who can afford to stand out does so for reasons that have pretty much everything to do with the fact that they can do so with impunity.
The same is true of divorced older women who go on jaunts to Cancun with their single – and married – girlfriends only to come back knocked up by teenagers at beach raves.
Understand that, from an actuarial point of view, there is nothing ahead that remotely resembles “I’m getting hotter,” or “Aging is an abstraction.”
It’s in your face and it’s mouth is wide open.
What better to do than go back to a time before all the existential crap laid its wicked hands on you and stick it to time, even if you’re still sticking it to yourself.
Affluent older men [and women] do, in fact, buy sports cars and motorcycles, drug themselves silly, engage in risky sexual encounters, do stupid shit like jump out of airplanes, climb mountains and play with gold-diggers as though they were domesticated animals.
It happens to all of us at some point along the way, when time is slipping so fast you start with the opiates to slow the shit down.
Not to bury the lead here, but it’s obvious by now that both genders play the same game.
Perhaps it could be argued that for men aging is a tougher pill to swallow.
The hunter/predator/drone paradigm only works when the joints are nimble and quick to react.
But women who take on traditionally male roles suffer similar fates as time beats down the doors, wreaking havoc on once vibrant skin, teeth hair, nails and everything else for that matter.
Neither gender fares particularly well where the body is concerned.
The bottom line is this:
Older women want men – within their age demographic – to kick the older man/younger woman habit so they can have a fair shot at settling down with one of them.
And while there are ample studies that suggest older women are just fine being alone or in the company of friends, it is only so when faced with the alternative of an average older man.
This is why we see so many of them revisiting adolescence on Spring Break before finding themselves empty, depressed and alone.
See, men are superficial enough to keep this thing going until the day they die.
Women, on the other hand, can only keep it going long enough to prove a point before moving to Florida, joining a book club, and outliving men by 10 years.
Revenge at last.
[Depending on your point of view].