Editor’s note: Abigail Trafford is the author of several books including the just-published As Time Goes By: Boomerang Marriages, Serial Spouses, Throwback Couples and Other Romantic Adventures in an Age of Longevity. Trafford is also a public speaker and journalist. She was the health editor for the Washington Post and now writes the health column "My Time."

The symptoms were familiar: the pull in the stomach, the tingling in the arms and lips, the fluttering in the lungs. The phone rings; the phone doesn’t ring. The obsessive longing — the wild bouts of fantasy!

But this time, I was not 16 or 22 or even 30. I was inching toward 60.     

Falling in love is usually associated with youth — with the thunder of hormones and evolution’s goal to produce the next generation.

Then it happens again. You’ve got crow’s feet around your eyes, an extra inch or two around your waist. Cupid’s arrow finds its mark. How could this be? You are hardly a teenager. Yet you feel like one. This is what the French call a coup de foudre — a bolt of lightning, out of the blue. BAM! And at your age! The social grapevine gets to work. Adult children get worried: Has mom lost it?

Not at all! Longevity is opening up a whole new culture of connection. There is more opportunity for older women to pursue different kinds of relationships from friends to adult children, from neighbors to partners. It is a time to rekindle the spark in a long marriage (unless the union is a cold case, and then … ). A time to review old loves — what happened to that guy you had a crush on in college? And it is time to fall in love again. Coupled or single, you ponder the role of romance in your life.

The classic coup is overpowering, ecstatic — and temporary. A coup can metamorphose into attachment, stumble into friendship, turn into hate or simply dissipate. (My coup eventually faded.) But whether it lasts a few months or launches a long relationship, the experience stays with you forever.

Why do you fall in love when you do?

The answer is found in the link between love and loss. People tend to fall in love after they experience loss or are separated from the familiar, researchers point out. Teenagers fall in love as they "lose" childhood and separate from their parents. Shipboard romances flourish, as do conference flirtations and travel trysts, because people are away from home — they have "lost" their moorings. Wartime love explodes under the urgent shadow of separation and loss of life.

Longevity creates another kind of urgent shadow. This period that promises vitality to many is also a time of losses. Death and disease are constant realities. As you get older, there may be a reduction in hormonal drive but an increase in losses. Story continues: Click here to keep reading …