A successful long marriage

 When my parents were my age, I was still young. ‘Well, obviously!’ you say, not unreasonably but the point is, I’m still young. In my head I haven’t become the old person I thought my parents were at my age. However, the signs are there.

I have noticed that a long successful marriage settles into something that looks a little like thanking each other for doing domestic chores, asking each other what you want for dinner and sexual innuendo.

‘Thanks for doing the washing up.’

‘What shall we have for tea?’

‘Oh, I don’t mind, you choose.’

‘I chose last night but we have got those sausages.’

‘Have we. I don’t remember buying sausages.’

Goes to fridge. Finds keys.

‘Oh my. Look at the size of those. That’s a mighty fine sausage you have there.’

Spends all of dinner time being asked, ‘Fancy a bite of my huge sausage?’

I notice that the viral clip of the male gorilla tweaking his partner’s nipple and getting a slap for it, is doing the rounds again, with women sharing it with a caption that it perfectly describes a long marriage. If they showed it to their partners then the men would be irritated. ‘Is that how you see me? I’m not…’ but they are and it is with affection that their wives are pointing it out. There is something comforting in the familiarity.

I remember a year when my mum bought my dad an anniversary card with an old couple on the front. The woman had bent down to pick up her glasses and the man was saying, ‘While you’re down there!’ I must have been a grown up with my own children at the time but I remember being mortified. These old people might still be at it and were worse still, putting it on their mantelpiece. 

I was never going to become that embarrassing old person but here I am, blogging about the phenomenon before going to ask the LSH what we’ve got for tea tonight.