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Robert Schwalbe is a man with a mission. “There is so much out there on aging women and so much focus on them that men have been ignored,” the therapist and author said in a recent interview. “I wanted to do something about that.”
He did, and the result is “Sixty, Sexy, and Successful: A Guide For Aging Male Baby Boomers.” Dr. Schwalbe, who lives in East Hampton as well as New York City, will be discussing his book at East End Books in East Hampton on Friday, July 25, at 6 p.m. Given that one in four Americans is a baby boomer, there could be quite a crowd.
The author has been there. “Six years ago, when I was 58, I knew I was aging,” said Dr. Schwalbe. “I felt it, I looked it, and people’s reactions to me were changing. I wanted to know what other men were going through and what I could expect down the road. I checked the bookstores and went online, and everything was written for men and women and nothing specifically for me. I know that men age differently than women and men’s expectations are different than women’s. I’m a baby boomer and there are 40 million men like me in the U.S. and we’re all going through this. I decided to write a book for this audience.”
His route to becoming a therapist and now a first-time author was not a direct one. He had a career in real estate until he turned 40, and after re-evaluating his life he went to New York University and earned a master’s degree in social work. He worked with AIDS patients at the Karen Horney Center until he turned 50, then it was back to school, at the School of Social Work at NYU, where he obtained a Ph.D. He now has a private practice in Manhattan specializing in middle-age men who are entering what Dr. Schwalbe calls “the third phase of a man’s life.”
Apparently, he has no lack of clients. “Most men can sail through this very well,” he said. “But there are the men who see aging and all that go with it as pretty stark stuff. They may be struggling very quietly or acting out. They have such issues as anger and depression, drinking too much, gambling, or having sex outside of a long-term relationship and potentially threatening that relationship. Those are the men I see in my office, ones who are having major conflicts with aging and they cannot come to grips with becoming older.”
“I’m careful to say ‘older,’” he added. “Nowadays, 60 is not old in this country.”
Asked what a man of 60 could be most concerned about, money or sex, he said neither one is at the top of the list. “It’s death,” he stated. “From 60 on it becomes more of a reality, it becomes a little bit clearer over the horizon. Sixty is when you start getting senior citizen discounts, have grandchildren, factor in Social Security, and men are grey if they still have their hair at all. Mortality really is an issue.”
“Sixty, Sexy and Successful” does deal with fear of death, but a lot more is covered too. Among the chapters are “Social Connections After 60,” “When Late Life Goals of Spouses Differ,” “The Retirement Question,” “Dealing With Our Children and Our Parents,” and “Psychological Adjustment After 60.” According to Dr. Schwalbe, the men most at risk are those who are not in a stable relationship.
“True, a man who is happily longtime married can still have issues with aging because there might be aspects he can’t talk about with his buddies, such as problems with sex, even with his wife, but he is usually willing to focus on and accept the transition to being older,” said the author, who has been married to his wife, Janie, for 41 years. “The man who is single because of divorce or another reason usually has a more difficult time of it. He is fighting aging tooth and nail. He will have plastic surgery, dress far too young, and do stuff he should not be doing anymore because it is an assault on his body. He sees himself competing with younger men.
“These men I pay very close attention to in my practice,” he continued. “They can easily slide into depression. They say they don’t care and that there is no reason to live. I encourage them to come in two to three times a week. I can’t flippantly say, ‘Everything will be okay.’ From their vantage point, the future is grim. But it doesn’t have to be at all.”
Okay, what about (gulp) sex? “Sex After 60” is also one of the chapters, and is likely the reason some, if not most men, will read this book.
“Men can very often be overwhelmed by humiliation,” said Dr. Schwalbe. “A man loses his erection and feels like a failure. It happens to every man at varying times, but now it is happening more frequently. Yes, things like Viagra are an answer for ED but only a temporary fix. A man experiences a whole host of reactions, a primary one being that the man feels he can no longer count on himself to perform sexually. All this brews inside, and he could go into a self-destructive area.”
What has been especially pleasing for Dr. Schwalbe is that in the short time since the book has been published, “I have been getting tremendous responses from women,” he reported. “Women who love their men and want to understand their men. I just got a letter from a woman who wrote that she’s been married for 44 years, and only now does she understand her husband.”
He explained that there are many men who are not comfortable discussing intimate and confusing feelings, even with other men. “Add to this that they don’t understand what is going on in their minds and bodies, so how could they possibly communicate that to women? There are even more challenges now because we’re seeing less of the so-called ‘traditional family.’ The stresses can be much greater as men try to navigate a changing family landscape.”
Writing a first book and addressing such weighty topics must have been difficult, right?
“It was not the least bit a struggle,” Dr. Schwalbe said. “So much of it came from my heart and my practice. The book was really a wonderful opportunity for me to create a road map of how to make the transition to being a reasonably contented older male, to look out for the pitfalls and how to deal with the problems that are going to occur. It was an absolute labor of love.”
on Jul 14, 2008