by guest blogger Randi Gunther, PhD, author of Relationship Saboteurs and When Love Stumbles

The media hype about older women seeking out young men for sexual contact has about worn me down. As a relationship therapist for four decades, I have certainly defended many unfairly labeled "dirty old men," who were just guys who fell in love with younger women for their beauty, energy, and potential for having children. Many of my older male patients have wanted to start families again and have created great second marriages.

Now I have a whole new group of valuable people to defend. In the past several years, I've had the pleasure of working with older women in relationships with often much younger men. They are not the "older women who frequent clubs to score sexually with younger men," as the new, and unfair definition is of "Cougars." They are quality, mature women who have been actively sought after by younger men for long-term, committed relationships. Yes, sex is an important part of their relationship, but there is so much more.

excerpt from The Estrogen-Depression Connection

Remember the stops along a subway system, where we can hop off to make a phone call, that is, to send a message? Imagine that estrogen has the ability to send a text message via cell phone. Estrogen helps direct the creation of the structures we mentioned earlier, and it also sends those biochemical messages. The biochemical messages, much like the text messages of our cell phone, are sent via chemicals known as neurotransmitters. Just as we need to have the right phone number to send the text message, we also need to have the correct neurotransmitter.

excerpt fromThe Estrogen-Depression Connection

Depression can occur in a subset of susceptible women

as a result of natural fluctuations in estrogen levels

associated with the developmental stages of a woman’s life.

Let’s break this sentence down into sections:

excerpt from The Mindful Woman

I vividly remember a time when I completely understood what the Buddha meant about seeing the miracle of single flower being life changing. My husband, Gene, and I had a trans-Pacific-ocean courtship. To help bridge the miles, he once sent me red roses. After my sons were asleep, I took the time to luxuriate in every aspect of the fullest rose, exploring its textures, colors, and the varying shapes of petals, stem, and stamen. To my surprise, tears of joy began to slip from my eyes, and I felt enveloped in love and connected to both the man who sent the roses and their creator as well.

Although my rapt attention to the flower was the act of a young woman wildly in love, the experience of it has become an enduring touchstone reminding me of the power and joy a few mindful moments can bring. Thirty-some years later, I clearly remember that particular rose and can revisit the pro¬found sense of wonder and awe I experienced while focusing on it.

Kelly McGonigal, author of Yoga for Pain Relief is featured on Forbes' list of "20 Inspiring Women To Follow On Twitter".

Excerpt from Stop Running From Love

"Distancing" is a big category. Distancers come in many shapes and sizes. They can be single or in long-term couple relationships, gay or straight, women or men, young or old. Here are a few brief glimpses of typical distancers:

Excerpt from My Mother, My Mirror

I recently looked at an afghan my mother helped me crochet in the later years of her life. Her hands were too arthritic to do more than a couple of model stitches at a time, but the pleasure she got out of teaching me seemed to outweigh whatever encumbrance in her joints she experienced. And I got pleasure from letting her teach me. She felt excited when I’d finished it (so did I, after ripping out a particular part one time too many) and was happy when family members could wrap themselves in it to keep warm. Though I’d chosen the afghan’s colors and design, and done most of the work, it was a cocreation in which yarn interwove as did my mother’s and my feelings.

Excerpt from My Mother, My Mirror

When I began to think about mother-daughter relationships, I recalled my seventh-grade lunch table. One of my schoolmates, June, would often say, after slowly unfolding the foil wrapped around her sandwich and peering inside with what seemed like dread, "Damn, my mother gave me shit on rye again." Each time, I would think, "How could she say that about her mother? She must not love her mother. I’d never say that about my mother."

excerpt from The Juicy Tomatoes Guide to Ripe Living After 50

Hang gliding. Studying Russian history. Opening a bookstore. Sitting in the hammock and staring at the clouds. After fi fty, the attitude should be “It’s my turn now, dammit,” and even if it’s still a few credit card payments off, you can start thinking about what your dream might be. You can even plan for it.

excerpt from Everyday Bliss for Women

After I emerged from years of paralysis, I felt a tremendous need to apol­ogize for being slow, overweight, and lacking in strength. I did this by telling the story of my broken back to everyone I met, elaborating on both how much I had suffered—and was still suffering—and how hard I was working on my recovery.

Thanks to brilliant, caring friends and an extraordinarily dedi­cated yoga teacher, I realized that I wasn’t simply a broken-back story and got on with living my life.