Prime Time - Jane Fonda [80]
I asked Jewelle how they kept the sensuality going all these years. “People don’t have good long-term sexual relationships who don’t have good psychological relationships,” she said. “Consistently good lovemaking to the same person doesn’t come from exciting techniques but from mental stimulation and excitement.” She described to me the beauty of getting sexually turned on by and making love with someone whom you’ve shared so much life with. “You can’t imagine, Jane, how fantastically special it is. There’s a different kind of richness to it that’s way deeper than when you’re young and it’s new.” I can only catch a whiff of what that must feel like, and this is a big regret for me. For me, it will never be “the long haul.”
I asked Nat if they’ve had major differences over the years, and what’s changed now that they are in their Third Acts. “One of our major differences was the children,” he said. “I am much more laissez-faire than she is. She is a believer in setting boundaries far beyond me, and that produced a lot of friction from time to time.”
“It was terrible, just terrible” was Jewelle’s description of it. “He thought girls didn’t get into trouble. Isn’t that amazing? And he wanted to be their friend and not their disciplinarian, so we fought a lot over it.” What this meant, though, is that unlike couples who suffer when the children leave home, Nat and Jewelle found that the empty nest meant that a source of tension was removed. Though they love their daughters immensely, that’s when, they say, they started really enjoying themselves, sharing a common interest in all the cultural riches New York has to offer.
In 2004 Nat retired from his law practice while Jewelle continued working. I asked her if this caused problems, the way it has for some couples. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “In the first place, he totally took over my kitchen. I like to cook, and it was just a mess. There were stacks of books and papers, and he had an office and never went to it.”
Although he was retired, Nat’s law firm had given him an office and a secretary for his use—hoping, perhaps, that he would stay involved with clients on some level.
“I know it was annoying to Jewelle,” Nat told me. “Why didn’t I use it? Why did I have to hang out in the kitchen? There were times when I felt sort of sheepish about not going to the office. I felt this tremendous internal barrier—I just didn’t want to go back there. I knew I would get involved in something. When I left that firm for the last day, I was just happy to go.”
These seemingly small issues have brought storms to many a calm sea. One retired husband I read about thought he was doing his wife a big favor when he reorganized all her kitchen cupboards while she was away on business. Needless to say, she pitched a fit. What Jewelle did was get them to see a couples counselor and, according to Jewelle, this woman helped both of them. Nat was able to see that invading Jewelle’s space and avoiding making a decision about where to do his work and put his stuff was a passive-aggressive act. “After that,” said Jewelle, “a lightbulb went off, he came home and, in two days, totally filed everything, and I had my kitchen back.”
The therapist helped Jewelle see ways that she, too, can avoid problems. “As you know,” Jewelle said, “Nat and I are very different, and now that he’s home more, certain things bother me. I’ve been wanting him to not depend so much on me for social life and for intimacy. I think he should have lunch with more of his friends, but the therapist said, ‘That is not your business, Jewelle. Lay off. Quite frankly, you have to pick the things that matter most to you.’ So, I started thinking about the things that really did not