C'mon Ageing Gentlemen

Longevity is 93% Lifestyle

Our little plane is bumping its way up into the sky, blown about by Storm Darragh. It’s a dark and stormy night leaving London. When the stewardess gets on the PA to reassure you that we are ‘in good hands’ with Alex our pilot, you know things are bad. But we are promised a calm landing in Bologna, a city whose name elicits, in everyone I speak to, a tender, mouth-watering memory of an Italian foodie extravaganza.

Several friends have sent me lists of their favourite restaurants. Others are whispering the treasured name of their favourite gelato place. I’m treating the man to a little getaway for his 70^th birthday. And there can’t be any better way to launch into one’s eighth decade than to enjoy a few days warming up December with hearty Italian Barolos and platefuls of Bolognese.

My man just can’t believe he’s 70. I can. A neighbour dropped by this morning and shared the horrifying news that her husband, a recent cross-over into this fateful decade himself, had suffered a bad asthma attack. The gasp didn’t come from the fact that he’d been checked into our local hospital. But that he’d been checked into the ‘geriatric’ ward! I had to scoop my husband off the floor.

There’s a lot of resistance to ageing among some of my most beloved gentlemen friends. So I was commiserating with the young trainer at (one of) the several gyms I go to. When he heard what I do for a living, he started sharing his dismay about his father. Fired at 50 from a well-paid senior Exco job at a big British retailer, his dad seems never to have recovered. Losing his job and his raison d’être in one fell swoop, years later he hasn’t recovered. Now nearing 60, his son says he’s a desperate, hanging-on-for-dear-life-and-relevance workaholic who started his own business but is physically fading before his eyes. His personal-trainer-son can’t get him to move. His wife, who is in super, son-guided excellent shape, is tearing her hair out.

Chris Patten, the last Governor of Hong Kong and long-time Chancellor of Oxford, just turned 80. He was a guest on Leading, the UK’s most popular podcast. When asked what he most regretted in life? “Not exercising more.” So how do we get our boys to move before it’s too late?

Life Expectancy is 93% Lifestyle. Repeat After Me.

What the hell is going on anyway? Two seconds spent anywhere near the longevity space and you learn that the No.1, undeniable, unavoidable positive impact on your healthspan is exercise, exercise and exercise. (The others are good sleep and real food.) Life expectancy is 93% lifestyle, and the old, educated guys I mostly hang out with should know better. This ain’t rocket science. In fact, despite all the hi-jinks about bio-hacking and genetic tweaking, the hilarious reality of improving healthspans is so incredibly basic. It’s even cheap, accessible and largely within our control. I’m not talking about becoming a Wim Hof/ Peter Attia age-denying extremist. Just about acknowledging the science and investing in prevention so that you don’t suffer some of its more sudden or ignoble manifestations. So what gives?

Since I never met a phenomenon I wasn’t ready to throw a theory at, especially as a way of forgetting the absurdly heavy weights I’m supposed to be lifting, my young personal trainer and I started comparing notes. We thought there might be three different strands to the issue of the gentlemen and their resistant relationship to the gym: self-esteem, grandiosity or just plain denial.

• Self-Esteem: We agreed that self-care and the discipline it requires is grounded in a certain degree of healthy self-esteem. One of the challenges midlifers feel – and I think especially men – is the feelings of shame and worthlessness that come when they no longer have a formal, recognised role and title in the world. There’s a huge amount of talk about menopause, I’d like a bit more talk about men’s ageing challenges. I wrote about this in a FORBES piece entitled Retirement, Redundancy, Rejection: The Extreme Emotionality Of Endings.
  
  The more senior they were ‘before,’ and the more reluctantly they left (or worse, were ejected) from the system, the harder the fall. And they don’t really want to talk about it, or seek solutions for it. They tend to bury it deep and soldier on. Exercising requires a feeling that L’Oréal tapped into for women, but didn’t think men needed: “because I’m worth it.” Older guys need some bulking up - both physically and psychologically.

• Grandiosity: For others, it’s grandiosity at play. I’m a big fan of psychotherapist and author Terry Real who’s written a lot about male depression and grandiosity and how it plays out in couples relationships. Here’s how he defines it: “The grandiose position is the other side of the shame coin. It’s feeling superior, feeling entitled, feeling above the rules, feeling contemptuous of the people around you or of one person around you, feeling better than. It really is just the flip side of the inferiority of shame.” These are the ‘exercise is for wimps’ brigade. They think that striding through the world disdaining others who exercise (including their wives) is more than enough of a workout.

• Plain & Simple Denial: Some men have always sailed through life, careers and success a bit effortlessly, without bumping into any major road blocks, or what Bruce Feiler calls ‘lifequakes.’ Their bodies never gave them too much trouble and they didn’t have to pay attention. They used and abused their bodies in the name of highly valued social activities - like workaholism, boozing or bouncing around global time zones. I still remember being on a panel in Berlin with two male CEOs who boasted and competed about how many days a year they travelled. Both were over 200. They see no reason why they should have to start worrying now. Until it’s too late.
  
  Most men have had more linear, uninterrupted career paths than their wives. So women, on the whole, are more used to the bumpy road of career in’s and out’s, re-invention and an endless stream of identity shifts. Which seems to prepare them better for transitioning into life’s 3^rd and 4^th Quarters. Or at least for understanding that preparation is required.
  
  Not to mention that the societal pressure to look good may actually, in a weird way, serve women well in our latter decades. It usually got us exercising early and accepting the gym as an intrinsic part of life, like brushing your teeth.

Agree? Disagree? What’s the regime in your couple?

Luckily, young men are changing. I know I’m not the only older lady preaching prevention at my kids. They know now (roll of the eyes) that longevity has its roots in the rhythms and habits they build early. But I’m talking about the guys my generation are married to - and will likely care for when their lack of self-care comes to roost.

I was interviewing Brian Clark for my 4-Quarter Lives podcast this week (Season 8 airs in January). He’s a content marketing entrepreneur who transitioned in his own 3^rd Quarter into the longevity economy by exploring midlife transitions in his blog Further. I thought that being an almost-60, nice, GenX all-American guy, with a background as a serial entrepreneur, he might have attracted a following of men interested in transitioning into Q3. But even he admits that most of his followers are women. He’s not sure why.

Just the same as Chip Conley at the Modern Elder Academy (MEA). MEA attracts mostly women. This week, I hosted a Christmas gathering for MEA alumni in EMEA. Mostly women, again. The few men who were there were wonderful - open, curious, and ready to listen deeply in a way I find rare among a generation of men often groomed to talk and tell stories. MEA alumni, having mindfully opted for midlife reckonings are a delightful community of ‘searching’ types taking their futures into their own hands and career pivoting, getting new degrees, moving cities and countries, and mindfully choosing what they want to do with their next chapters. They also seem to be doing a lot of strength training. In fact, it’s been a while that I’ve met a woman over 50 who isn’t lifting some weight.

I wish the same could be said of the men who love them.

As I told my man, it’s not OK to say you love a woman, especially one younger than you (most men marry women slightly younger than them, on average), and at the same time not take care of yourself. Because I know, and you probably do too, that statistically speaking she is likely to care for you at some point in the future. And if you really loved her, you’d do everything you could to push that time as far into the future as you can.

So this Christmas, give the ultimate gift to those you love. Take care of yourself.

I’m off for some bolognese. And then a yoga class.

Writing With A View