There isn’t a gold standard for what a marriage ought to be. A good marriage, at any age, takes work and lots of “imagination over intelligence”. Thanks, Oscar Wilde, you saw through it so long ago.
Keeping your marriage happy and enduring needs patience and forgiveness. Still, marriage is worth all the hard work – if you’re not living with a jerk, that is. Surely an abusive relationship needs to be ended as quickly as possible. Marriage without love is not worth having.
Many of us older marrieds relish being in the company of one we can trust and feel safe with. Marriage means you can become wrinkly and soft in the belly, and that someone loves you just the same, and is there waiting for you when you come home. Just knowing that there is a spouse you can rely on in a world that has gone dark and daunting, makes marriage worth it.
Loving does change in many ways over the years. Life as a newly married couple is very different from life 40 years later. But the love is still core. It’s the linchpin that holds a marriage together, the cog in the system.
I love this ageing marriage of mine – the ease of familiarity feels better with each passing year. Two oldies melding into each other’s quirks and habits. Both of us have put in deep effort to get the marriage we have today.
It is no secret that a husband can be annoying. All married couples fight or have arguments. But knowing when to lose humbly or fight fairly, are ways to make a marriage last. I learned a long time ago to laugh when you can, especially at yourself. It helps to keep the sanity on a difficult day.
If you marry a good man, your life can be richer and happier. Because of him, you have children. He drives during a journey, manoeuvres city traffic chaos while you have a shut-eye in the passenger seat. We are also glad to have our man change an empty cooking gas tank, check the car’s tyre pressure or even pry open a durian for us. We also know that life is easier when you have someone to share your problems with in confidence.
It is the little things he does every day that I love the most: Buying breakfast, grocery shopping, topping up the rice bucket, mopping the floor, cutting apples, making drinks, and pumping up my bicycle tyres before I cycle to the park for my morning exercise. These are the day-to-day things that make up a lifetime of loving and caring and keeping it together, weathering the good times as well as the bad.
As in many long marriages, one spouse falls ill or has a health scare and the whole family shares the burden and sadness together. To be there for each other “in sickness and in health” is part of the journey of a married couple. To sit beside my husband as the toxic chemicals coursed through his veins when he underwent each chemotherapy session; to feel his pain in swallowing food after each treatment, is part of my marriage commitment to walk together in the valleys of life.
Life is never straightforward. Things change. One moment, life is as snug as a bug in a rug; the next, you feel like you’re being tamped down by a steamroller. As a couple, bad news is shouldered by two; you’re not alone. Better still because we know each other so well, we dare to voice out our fears, and are not afraid to cry or show our weakness. Marriage does give a soft landing to life’s vicissitudes so that, like two battered soldiers, we can lean on each other for support in the marital trenches.
The first half of marriage involves raising children, buying a house, starting a career, and taking care of our aged parents. The second half of marriage is wonderful and can be a privileged time. Your love would have matured and you can enjoy the retirement years together. Suddenly all the things we had delayed until the kids were grown are now possibilities.
But what we did not add to the mix of delightful opportunities is that our own bodies have aged and there comes, unbidden, an assortment of age-related aches and pain. Our own social life has been pared down as our favourite people have passed away, one by one. And now we are taking our days one doctor’s appointment at a time, feeling grateful for the availability of medicine to hold our “scaffoldings” up.
No relationship is without its challenges. There will be times when we hurt each other or let each other down. My husband and I like these lines from the Book of Ecclesiastes as a touchstone for our marriage:
“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But pity the man who falls, for he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm but how can one be warm alone?”
After 42 years of marriage, my husband and I are like best friends. Wifedom can be a mixed blessing – if you don’t delve into the complicated parts such as: Why can’t he get Valentine gifts right? Why does he like to keep junk which takes up space?
We can still make each other laugh. The blessed thing is that he has a well-developed sense of humour. And I have this funny kind of imagination.
It takes years and years of adapting and evolving, life lessons and loss, for a marriage to mellow, stabilise and become strong.
Marriage is knowing both love and disappointment, hurts and forgiveness, frustration and tenderness. Love can come in like a whirlwind with all the emotional stuff. But you need to be prepared to be fed into the “meat grinder” of domestic responsibilities. Joy and sadness are intermingled in the complexity of life.
Then when you grow old, you realise that marriage is like a marathon of madness. When I look at the chinks in my breastplate, the dents in my armour, the scars of many battles fought, I know I have weathered the storms and survived.
And so to my long-suffering, good-looking and down-to-earth husband – whom I lovingly call Swamp Thing – the captain in our little row boat of life, unwavering witness to my many moods and bloopers, unsung hero in the ebb and flow of married life, and keeper of our home and larder: Happy 42nd Wedding Anniversary and a loud declaration of love.
Mary Eu is a retiree who has a passion for writing. When she is not prowling the shopping mall looking for a dress to scream into, she can be seen reading, writing or home decorating.
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