Sam on BBC radio, doing an interview, and talking all things Coming of Age, and why it’s worth hanging in there. Why things get better, and what there is to look forward to after 50. And the strength that comes from sharing that midlife is tough, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, and she’s living proof.

Click below to listen to the full interview. If you want to read Sam’s article, the one that kicked off this interview, you can read that here…

What is Midlife Coming of Age? It’s bloody brilliant, that’s what

Click here to listen to full interview

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The post Sam full interview on BBC radio – Midlife Coming of Age appeared first on Silver Magazine.

Our forties and fifties are a time of transition. For many of us, life around this time will involve a number of challenges, whether that’s bringing up children, caring for ill family members, facing redundancy, or dealing with divorce. And coming out the other side of these events can leave us feeling like different people. But why is Gen X increasingly drawn to polyamory? Because studies show that this certainly seems to be the case.

Going through these tough times can lead to a re-evaluation of your professional and personal life. And for many people this will include their sex and love life. Some couples who have been in a long-term marriage may feel that their relationship has been neglected or become stale due to the other demands being placed on them. Research has shown that Gen X-ers are more likely to go through divorce than other generations.

Midlife might be the first time in years that an individual has had the time and energy to address their sexual desires and unmet needs and, for some, that could be an exploration of polyamory or ethical non-monogamy (ENM).

What exactly is polyamory and why is Gen X all over it?

Polyamory is the act of being in a number of sexual and/or romantic relationships with different people, with the consent of everyone involved. It is different to swinging in that the relationships are romantic, and can be long-term. And it’s not necessarily always about sex.

Polyamory is something which has become popular with the younger Gen Z, which tends to have more progressive views on social and cultural norms, and often rejects the traditional relationships of their parents.

But why is Gen X choosing to explore this new sexual frontier when many will have spent many years being with just one person?

Time to explore your updated needs?

Therapist Susie Masterson says, “Growing up in the 70s and 80s, relationships were predominantly both monogamous and heteronormative.  Education around consent was still scant, and society was clearly gendered. This informed Gen Xers ‘relationship blueprint’.

“Many of my Gen X clients recognise that having an entrenched position to things – whether that’s relationships, politics or spirituality – effectively means shutting themselves off. This coincides with a time in life when they have fewer practical constraints and responsibilities.”

For the first time in many years, couples will find themselves alone in the house again…

These responsibilities could include your children growing up and moving out. For the first time in many years, couples will find themselves alone in the house again and clinical sexologist Marie Morice says this means that “there is actual physical space and time to feel sexual again. Just between you and your partner to start with. And you can then explore more if you feel like it.”

Tessa Krone, a polyamory advocate and the founder of the podcast Open Nesters, rejects the use of the label ‘empty nesters’ for these couples. “We are the Open Nesters. We are the Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers who reject the traditional roles that our parents played and the empty nest syndrome. We defy the stigma of ageism, ailing health, empty retirement and a passionless sex life.” She describes having this new freedom to be more sexually adventurous and curious as an ‘Act 3’ in life.

David

This is something David, 56, found when his children were grown up and no longer living with him. He had always been in monogamous relationships but when his marriage ended, he realised he was less keen on being tied down to one person. “I don’t think I’ll ever do that again,” he says.

I’m able to get all those needs met, by having relationships with a few different people

“It seems incredible to believe that we can have all our needs met in one person. In my own marriage, I loved my wife, but as the years passed, we stopped having sex, for example. We had amazing fun together, and made each other laugh. But I found myself missing things that I wanted to experience, because I’d committed to having just the one relationship. And now I find I’m able to get all those needs met, by having relationships with a few different people.”

Read a different article: Why I cheat on my husband

Liv

Liv, 47, is happily married and has four children who still live with her, but has recently been exploring polyamory with her husband. She has a demanding day job and a busy family life but says enjoying sex with other people has made her relationship stronger.

…they are happy for each other to play out their sexual fantasies with people outside their marriage

“This is my blowout. I get to let my hair down and get to be incredibly sexually liberated with the consent of my best friend,” she says. While the couple isn’t looking for separate romantic relationships, they are happy for each other to play out their sexual fantasies with people outside their marriage.

Liv says apps like Feeld and Hinge have made it easier for couples and individuals to meet others interested in ENM. Masterson says this is what happened with her client Karine who was re-evaluating her sexuality, having only experienced monogamous, heterosexual relationships previously.

After navigating a number of life transitions from divorce to kids leaving home as well as changing careers, Karine started using dating apps to explore connections with women. Masterson says Karine now only dates women and is currently in a polyamorous relationship with two people.

Polyamory takes some work…

A move away from having previously monogamous relationships does have to be treated with caution. Particularly if you were monogamous before, but have decided to open the doors to others in an already-existing relationship.

Issues such as resentment and jealousy can easily rear their heads if you’re in a relationship, or more than one. Psychotherapist Paula Gardner says “Strong communication skills, honesty, and setting boundaries are key to making this work, and that often means a lot of work which people might not want to do at this stage in life.”

You can’t predict what’s going to happen, so there’s a need for a lot of communication

Morice agrees that honesty is key to ENM working. “By their very nature and their level of uncertainty, open and polyamorous relationships are more intense than typical monogamous relationships. You can’t predict what’s going to happen, so there’s a need for a lot of communication to work through and navigate the unpredictability and the excitement on the journey.”

Communication is something Liv says has been key for things to work smoothly with she and her husband. “We trust each other completely, and where there’s an element of doubt we talk about it immediately,” she says.

“There’s a recognition that we need to be open all the time about how we feel, what we liked or didn’t like and being able to move on and learn from mistakes.

“I feel sad that I didn’t meet my husband earlier in my life as we could have been enjoying this before we reached middle age!”

Top tips for making poly great…

Open and honest communication
Regularly discuss your feelings, boundaries, and any changes in your needs or desires. Open communication helps prevent misunderstandings, and builds trust.

Set clear boundaries
Establish and respect each other’s boundaries. This includes discussing what is acceptable in terms of physical, emotional, and time commitments.

Practice compersion
Compersion is the pleasure of seeing joy in others. Cultivate joy and satisfaction from seeing your partner happy, even if you haven’t created that. This helps reduce jealousy and strengthens the overall relationship dynamic.

Manage jealousy constructively
Understand that jealousy is natural, whoever is feeling it, and can be managed through communication, discussion, and reassurance. Work on the root causes of jealousy rather than letting it fester.

Schedule quality time
Ensure that you spend quality time with each of your partners. Balancing time fairly helps each person feel valued and prevents neglect.

Be transparent
Be honest about your other relationships and any changes in your feelings or circumstances. Transparency prevents misunderstandings.

Prioritise self-care
Take care of your own emotional and physical wellbeing. Taking care of yourself helps you stay well, and be able cope with the complexities of polyamory.

Seek out your tribe
Polyamorous relationships are still in the minority. Join polyamorous communities or groups, or seek advice from a therapist who understands polyamory if necessary. External support can provide valuable perspectives and coping strategies. Not everyone is going to support what you do, probably.

Educate yourself
Read books, attend workshops, and engage with resources about polyamory. Continuous learning helps you understand different dynamics and improve relationship management skills.

Respect each relationship’s unique dynamics
Recognise that each relationship is unique and may require different approaches. Tailor your interactions and efforts to meet the specific needs of each partner.

Stay safe
Make sure all of you in your extended relationship practices safe sex, or is regularly checked for STIs and so forth. Take care of each other.

Kat Storr

Kat has been a digital journalist for over 12 years after starting her career at Sky News where she covered everything from terror attacks to royal babies and celebrity deaths. She has been working freelance for the last five years and regularly contributes to UK publications including woman&home, The i, Stylist, ES Best, Metro, and more.

The post Why is Gen X increasingly drawn to polyamory? appeared first on Silver Magazine.

The Scala started life on London’s Tottenham Road as a cinema club in 1978. Before later moving on to grander premises in Kings Cross in 1981 under the management of Stephen Woolley. In an era when multiplexes were starting to expand and ultimately snuff out many smaller cinemas, the Scala was a weird and wonderful anomaly. Until the wild ride came to an end in 1993.

Those who were part of the Scala during its heyday, complete with terrifying toilets, resident cats, sex scenes on and off screen and the occasional death, will no doubt enjoy Scala!!!

By operating as a members-only club, the Scala was able to get away with screening an astounding range of films that you probably weren’t going to experience at the local Odeon. Debuting (and closing) with the original 1933 King Kong, from 1978 until 1993, the Scala was a hard-seated, graffitied, tube train-rattled haven for the likes of Salo: The Last Days of Sodom, anything made by John Waters, (sometimes literally) eye-popping horror and films you probably wouldn’t watch with anyone of a nervous or prudish disposition.

Directed by Jane Giles and Ali Catterall, Scala!!! chronicles 15 years of a cinema that was as much about the “weirdos and misfits” who frequented it and the challengingly magnificent building as it was about the films.

Known for all-night screenings of back-to-back movies, it was not just a place for film fans to indulge themselves. It was a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community in an era of oppression thanks to Section 28 and the stigma of the AIDS tragedy.

A place of warmth on cold, brutal nights in pre-gentrified Kings Cross. And an alternative to expensive London hotel rooms for bands from out of town, such as The Jesus and Mary Chain.

Those who were part of the Scala during its heyday, complete with terrifying toilets, resident cats, sex scenes on and off screen and the occasional death, will no doubt enjoy Scala!!! for the genuinely heartwarming, riotous romp down memory lane that it is. For those who were not part of that scene, usually for reasons of age or distance, there is still so much to love about this film.

The Scala’s politics and activism is an important part of the documentary

For me, the last days of the Scala coincided with my early 20s, which were spent in Sydney. So I’ll never know if I would have hallucinated my way through an all-nighter or thrilled to the spectacle of Divine eating dog poo in Pink Flamingos. But as someone who spent a lot of time in the UK as a child and, with a history teacher father in a house where the news always seemed to be on, I was acutely aware of Thatcherism and have fond childhood memories of catching the tube with punks in the ‘80s, which made Scala!!! resonate with me as a catalyst for my own memories.

The Scala’s politics and activism is an important part of the documentary and a timely reminder of how awful things were for the LGBTQ+ community then – and how, despite changes such as marriage equality, discrimination has not been eliminated. The recollections of Vic Roberts, a proudly queer usher at the Scala, and Jim MacSweeney, manager of Gay’s The Word bookshop, are profoundly moving.

When Roberts talks about how the Scala allowed everyone to be whoever they are and MacSweeney recalls the cinema holding a benefit for his bookshop after a ridiculous police raid threatened its future, the documentary instantly becomes part of the wider narrative of London’s LGBTQ+ history.

Watching Scala!!! made me wish I had moved permanently to London a bit sooner than 2011. But equally it was a joy and an honour to hear the stories of the people who made the cinema the unique place it so clearly was.

Paul Burston, author and participant in the documentary, told me the Scala was “many things – a cinema, a party venue, a community hub and what we’d now call a safe space.” Recalling his experiences as a young, gay man, he says the 1980s were “a hostile time for minority groups and the Scala provided refuge.”

He says the cinema’s lasting legacy was the strong sense of community it created. “All sorts of outsiders felt equally at home there – it was intersectional before it became fashionable.”

Directors Jane Giles and Ali Caterall at the screening

The Scala cinema club closed its doors amid financial pressures exacerbated by a court case involving the screening of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. It was a heartbreaking time for the community it created in a part of London that was seedy and often dangerous… but not without its dark charms.

For anyone who wants to try and experience a taste of what it was like to be a Scala cinema club member, Burston recommends a small cinema in Hastings called The Electric Palace where “the programming is eclectic and the seats are uncomfortable.”

“I attended a friend’s 50th birthday party there with a screening of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Several guests said it felt like being back at the Scala, albeit on a smaller scale,” says Burston.

In the meantime, check out Scala!!! for yourself. It is being released at cinemas across the country. And, on 22 January, it will be released on Blu-Ray and available on the BFI Player.

Georgia Lewis

In a career that has spanned Australia, the Middle East and the UK, Georgia has written about all sorts of things, including sex, cars, food, oil and gas, insurance, fashion, travel, workplace safety, health, religious affairs, glass and glazing… When she’s not writing words for fun and profit, she can usually be found with a glass of something French and red in her hand.

The post Scala!!! A nostalgia trip, even if you weren’t there appeared first on Silver Magazine.

The pandemic has been hard on families. Not actually being able to touch loved ones living in a separate household has been difficult, for example. Until recently you weren’t even able to let your dear old mum hug your reluctant teen (always hilarious), let alone host a roast with all generations in attendance.

But we’ve got through it right? Only increasingly, as ‘woke’ faces down the old school, it seems that inviting your fam into a social bubble for dinnertime chat might make your relationship with them all go…

…Pop!

There are so many schisms – and isms

It all started with Brexit – discussions about which ruined many a family shindig – and it’s currently hanging out with #BLM and the TERFs.

The language your grown children speak is almost the polar opposite of your parents’

It seems like there’s nothing binary in the world any more. Well, unless you’re talking 5G maybe, but even that’s controversial (remember when David Icke just had an opinion on football?! Ah, those were the days).

There’s a Brave New World of hashtags, acronyms, and pronouns bringing inter-generational strife into your life. The language your grown children speak is almost the polar opposite of your parents’ take.

And whilst in the past that’s been confined to ‘ugh what do you understand?’, now the chasm is far wider and has more words. It’s embedded in misunderstandings around racism, misgendering, and sexist or political differences.

And poor old Generation X is stuck in the middle. Kinda hoping against hope that everyone can be reasonable. Yay.

It used to be easy to spot who was in the wrong

They’d usually have had one too many at the golf club do. And start bandying around the words we all knew were shameful, whilst at the same time asking the mortified (underage) waitress for a quick peck on the cheek.

These days you can fart in the wrong direction and upset someone.

In those days it would oh-so-humorously still be called being ‘politically incorrect’. Being liberal was to be applauded and there was still comedy on TV.

But at least you knew where you were. These days you can fart in the wrong direction and upset someone.

Gen X, the peacemakers?

So here we are, Gen X silvers, pleading with everyone to ‘play nicely’, as the roughhousing gets out of hand. Wondering how we handle the inevitable discussions about toppling statues, burning flags, and the need to rethink the history syllabus without giving Grandad an aneurysm and letting wrongs go unchecked.

Surely there’s some middle ground? How can we #BeKind to everyone and move forward? Indeed, can we?

If you’re concerned that your, ahem, micro-aggressions might be triggering your favourite snowflake, here’s a guide. And yes, it’s supposed to be funny. Keep your wig on. And no that’s not baldist.

How to handle the woke, without alienating the Daily Mail reader in your life:

Do…

Get a gender-neutral sign for your toilet door. Your ageing parents will be none the wiser, but your Gen Z will grudgingly appreciate this when they visit. If they visit, obviously; they have a march most weekends.

Ignore social media virtue signaling. Does it really matter that your vegan goddaughter is sharing her work with PETA online every single bloody day? If she wants to tell the world that she’s ‘being the change she wants to see’, let her. Who cares?

Try to understand white privilege. If you’re unclear (because let’s face it, you didn’t learn it at school in between canings and talk of the Empire), it describes the unseen, unconscious advantage those with white skin have. Like when you go tights shopping at John Lewis, they have a whole host of hosiery that matches your legs? And how nobody calls up the police just because you’re outside their house? That kind of thing.

Accept that for some, being a polemic is a lifestyle choice. It might not be your lifestyle choice, but there you go. It takes all sorts and 2020 is all about tolerance. Unless you’re gluten, nobody likes gluten.

Agree to be in a TikTok. Just make sure you look bougie. Like Judi.

Don’t…

Say ‘all lives matter’. Not because it’s not true, but because the point behind the Black Lives Matter campaign is that it is black people’s lives that are undervalued and under threat. It’s a lesson in human rights, not in grammatical nuance. This is their moment, not yours.

Appear on Question Time and roll your eyes. In fact eye rolling anywhere is to be avoided. If you find you need to, go into the bathroom and do it alone. You filthy frustrated beast.

Mention how incomprehensible you find Sam Smith and his, ahem their, pronouns because correct grammar was drilled into you at school. Almost literally. You’ll just open a whole another can of argh.

Plop yourself down on public transport and open your legs as wide as possible, if you identify as a man. It’s called manspreading (that phrase probably needs updating) and it’s the epitome of entitlement. As in, I’m entitled to your seat as well as mine. It means something else entirely if you don’t identify as a man though. Also avoid, probably.

Have an opinion on Twitter. Ever.

And finally, don’t @ me, because I’ve switched off commenting. I’m all for freedom of speech, unless of course, it’s directed at me.

Vanessa Holburn

The post Generation X. Mediating between the woke and the outspoke? appeared first on Silver Magazine.

Do you wonder where your life has gone?

Anyone in the care profession knows how overwhelming the demands of the job can be. This is particularly true if things don’t work out well, or when you have no control over a situation. As unoffical caregivers looking after family members, it’s no wonder that Generation X is a bit stressed.

This stress can pile up and cause a toll on your state of mind, relationships or health if it goes unchecked. When fatigued, it’s difficult to indulge in anything else, and it’s becoming a necessity that you take care of yourself.

In this article, psychology expert Marcus Clarke explains five ways to regain your energy and optimism…

1. Get empowered

The chief contributor to burnout and depression is the feeling of powerlessness among caregivers, but there are ways to change your mindset and feel hopeful and happy. If you embrace your choice and make a conscious objective to provide care, the task will be more fulfilling.

Don’t dwell on the issues that are beyond your control, but try to refine the manner in which you respond to problems.

The chief contributor to burnout and depression is the feeling of powerlessness

2. Get support from friends and family

Don’t struggle alone, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Taking care of all responsibilities with no breaks can lead to burnout, so try and enlist the people living close to you to help so that you can have a break.

Speaking up is very helpful, as sharing your thoughts and concerns can improve your situation. Work to spread responsibility.

3. Find time to catch a break

For caregivers, particularly those who live with their patients, whether they’re spouses or a professional patient, taking some time out for leisure is essential for your wellbeing, and influences the quality of the care that you provide. Getting some time off to rest and do something different that you enjoy is critical.

It’s also essential to maintain close personal relationships, as they sustain you and keep you motivated. Treat yourself with small luxuries to boost your dampened spirits, like taking a long relaxing bath or getting a massage. A carer often stays indoors for long hours, so get out more often to see the world.

4. Look after your health – mental and physical

If you neglect your body, the stress can cause avoidable health woes, so try not to skip medical appointments and check-ups just because you’re busy taking care of loved ones. Being healthy is essential so that you in turn can provide better care.

Go out for daily jogs or walks, or devise an exercise regime to help remove fatigue and boost your energy levels. Meditating can help with stress and increase your wellbeing, as well as raise your feelings of positivity. Proper nourishment fuels your body to perform optimally too.

9 Ways to Boost Your Feel-Good Vibes

5. Join a support group

There are caregiver forums with other individuals going through the same troubles as you, which is an excellent way of sharing your daily experiences.

As you exchange views, not only will you get help, it’s likely you’ll be able to provide support to others. This forum contains a safe feeling of knowing that other people are going through the same situation, and the information gained here can prove invaluable.

Marcus regularly writes at writerZone and blogs at psysci, a psychology and science blog that examines the latest research, and explains how findings can impact and improve people’s lives.

Carers’ Rights. Is there help you’re entitled to? Check HERE

Marcus Clarke

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