44 years is a very long time

The hubs and I met in high school, in February of 1967.  Our senior year.  Just after Valentine's Day.  My friend Sue Schleicher helped me stalk him.  She drove me to basketball games, as it was my habit to fail driver's ed (just the driving part) and Dave's habit to go to basketball games.  As they say, I chased him until he caught me.  I am sure there have been times when he wished he could throw me back.

We got engaged in August of 1967 and married on August 10, 1968.  He was 19.  I was 18.  NOBODY thought it would last.  Sometimes, even we didn't.  We were so young.  We came from different backgrounds, different traditions, and different religions. We didn't have a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of.  We set up camp in married housing on the campus of the University of Michigan where Dave was going to college and I was learning to be a wife.  

We've been through lean times and flush, hard times and good.  We've been poor, we've been well-to-do.  The birth and death of our first child nearly finished us.  The miscarriage of our second while we were still in mourning was another hard blow.  But we were eventually blessed with two healthy, a beautiful girl, a handsome boy, and now have four gorgeous granddaughters.

We are now both fat and gray and full of aches and pains.  He has gout and reactive hypoglycemia.  I have a crumbling spine and diabetes.  Our bodies make more noise than we do.  Still, we are both pretty active people in a sedentary sort of way.  He has his career.  I have my church, my woman's club and my crafts.  

So maybe it's not romantic any more.  Romance requires mystery and uncertainty and risk.  How long can that last?  Once you get to know one another, you have killed all chance of romance.  You really stop feeling romantic about a person once they start using the toilet while you are in the bathroom.  Intimate, yes.  Romantic?  Not so much.

Which is probably just as well, because romance is exhausting.  Love is easier.  Even when passion wanes, love endures.  And if friendship persists as well, life is good.

So, the hubs and I just celebrated 44 years of wedded... well, not bliss, but something close enough.  I was once asked- in a public forum- what was the secret of a long marriage?  That was on our 25th wedding anniversary, and I stand by my answer.  Don't die.