Louisa Simmonds

‘Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for’. Bob Marley

It would make life so much easier if we, like the simplest animal forms with little intelligence, only had to mate for the sake of procreation, and feelings couldn’t complicate the process. Wouldn’t it?

Wary applause from men.

Because “love” and the whole premise of loving doesn’t necessarily get any easier with the wisdom that generally comes with age in other areas of our lives, even though we assume it will when we’re younger. It would be nice if the timeline of a committed relationship was as simple as marriage, babies and Netflix.

The Love Boat is a bit rocky in our  house at the moment.

While NC suffers the trials and tribulations of the long-distance relationship, and Kurt (in his own words) ‘can get girls to the door, but they never seem to like what’s inside once they open it,’ I’m also increasingly aware that the old man and I need to rediscover the magic that set our hearts on fire all those years ago; which we have such a tendency to take for granted now.

I think the main problem lies with this new-found, middle-aged obsession of ours to make the most of whatever time we have left, to make our mark on the world if we haven’t done it yet, and to do it far too independently of each other than is healthy for our marriage.

I’m glad the kids are almost through those fledgeling, daunting stages of first dates; mature enough now to understand about the implications of nude pics, the ramifications of sexting and about respect for other people and their feelings and emotions. But they are also beginning to see that “love” is not something that once we learn to do it,  we master it, like riding a bike.

Because “emotions” are funny old things, and the rules of how to behave in love don’t necessarily become easier to decipher with maturity. We still get hurt, and perhaps we are even more vulnerable in a long-term relationship when we don’t make time to talk about our feelings as often as we should, which can mean we run the risk of laying ourselves open to hurt when it comes bounding our way, and are less responsible for the hurt we inflict upon others.

Perhaps we need to remind ourselves occasionally of how hard it was to find true love in the first place.

Living so blatantly vicariously through the trials and tribulations of the two young adults in our house is a daily reminder of how shallow the meaning of young love really is, when looming in the background is our real life mission, to find our soul-mate and play our role in populating the world.

Remember all the toads we had to kiss?  And how when we finally found the right one, we just knew? Even though no-one warned us that the procreation duty came with added complications like those “feelings” again and that we’d probably spend the rest of our relationship secretly worrying about losing “the one”and having to start all over again.

Last weekend with the old man was one of those that reminded me that a relationship where you don’t challenge each other is not a true one. As painful as it is, a relationship has to be tested by the boring day-to-day pressures like money, PMT and children, to add strength through an extra coat to it. And if those less than fine moments in our relationship remind us to stop in our tracks and tell our partners just how much we bloody love them, then no matter how many plates have been broken or how many tears have been shed, it means it’s real.

#middleage #Ageing #Humor #love #Marriage #Relationships