We allow our elders to age, but not to love. When ancient Indian philosophy, Taoist docs, modern science all say intimacy in later life is a vital part of human flourishing, don’t cage it in silence instead

A man of 68 came to see me last winter, a little more than a year after he had lost his wife of four decades. He had met someone – a widow of his own age, at a music class his daughter had enrolled him in, precisely so that he would leave the house. They drank tea after class on Tuesdays. That was all. Yet, when he finally spoke of it, his first question was not about love, or loneliness, or even propriety. It was: “What will my children think?”

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