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Illustration by Juliana Neufeld
In a few months, my husband and I will have been married 48 years. That’s not a major milestone, but it’s close enough to 50 to make me wonder: How will we celebrate? Will we throw a big party, with all our friends? Take a trip with our kids and grandkids? Really, anything will do; at this stage of our lives, we don’t need grand. Maybe we’ll just take our little dog for a long walk in the woods.
But as we approach the date, there’s a few other things I’m wondering about. The first one is kind of unsettling: In the 21st century, is making it to 50 still a reason to boast? When we were married in the 1970s, golden wedding anniversaries – like gold watches – were emblems of constancy and devotion. But cultures shift; maybe now those emblems aren’t just throwbacks, but subtle signifiers of underlived lives – of playing it safe, clinging to familiarity, avoiding change.
After all, so many former signs of stability, such as staying married to the same person, working for the same company, living at the same address, etc., have become demographic relics. Do they also describe overly cautious people? People who have fallen short in taking risks, pursuing novelty and adventure?
And I wonder sometimes, at this stage of our lives, where does my husband fit in? These days, most of the older women I socialize with are single. Widowed, divorced or separated, they are former spouses who now live mostly women-centric lives. Of course, that’s partly the result of partner attrition, but sometimes, as I fill my calendar, I feel like the young mother who’s the first of her friends to have a baby. Her social circle hasn’t started accounting for children, and mine has mostly stopped accounting for husbands.
Sometimes, it feels like by now, my husband should be … over.
But he’s not over.
Every morning, he comes down the stairs with a groan, followed by a grin and our day together begins. Somehow, at the end of it, affinity and rapport outweigh friction and annoyance. Somehow, harmony overcomes discord, better natures prevail and unity ever so slightly maintains its edge.
How did we manage that? For years, I avoided all commentary on the secrets of a lasting marriage. I didn’t want to find out that we scored a score of two on the 10-point scale of marital compatibility, or that we had all 12 signs of a doomed relationship. But lately, I’m like a patient who smugly checks the symptoms list after testing negative for the disease.
After almost 50 years, it feels safe to find out where we stand. My belated research tells me we are somewhat compatible and only slightly doomed, which sounds about right.
Years ago, I was invited to dinner with the family of a woman I was just getting to know. Not two months later, my friend invited me back, and I was surprised to see a completely new partner occupying the chair of the former spouse. I remember noticing that nothing else had changed. The same table was set with the same cloth, the same vase of dried flowers sat in the middle, and even the same (slightly shorter) candles had been lit. I remember hoping these signs of permanence were reassuring to the same three children who took their places.
Not so long ago, my husband and I went to a concert-hall event. We drove there and as we arrived, we had the same old argument: I wanted to do the easy thing and pay to park; he wanted to drop me off and drive forever until he found a free space. Eventually, I gave up and headed into the show, just as annoyed as I’d been the first time we had the parking argument. Waiting at my seat, I watched the audience stream in. Okay, I thought, while you’re walking from the other side of town, I’m going to get a little shameful revenge by letting my eyes wander – among the thousands of patrons, there’s bound to be some handsome music lovers. After 10 minutes, I was still wondering where they were. But as the lights started to dim, I spotted a tall figure coming through the door on the opposite side of the hall. With quickened pulse, I watched the figure move confidently through the crowd, and thought, “50 years, how boring. A spouse, how inconvenient. Only one love, how limiting.”
Then the figure reached our aisle and stopped at our row. The theatre was dark by now, but an usher stepped forward and shone his light.
“Oh my god!” I shrieked, startling the woman beside me right out of her seat.
“It’s my husband.”
Liz Mayer lives in Belleville, Ont.