Married TOO Long?

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1975, the husband and I became a couple. We’ve spent the last almost 29 years…at first, growing up, and now, growing old together.

One of the more interesting aspects of being with one person for so long, is how the personalities become so intertwined that it’s hard to determine where one ends and the other begins. We tend to finish each other’s sentences. Or we’ll open our mouths to say exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. Or one of us will say something a split second before the other one was about to say the same thing. Invariably, when this happens, we’ll look at each other and laugh, "Oh, God, we’ve been married TOO long!"

Would that it was only the good aspects of each other’s personalities that we’ve absorbed over the years. A more disturbing metamorphosis has also been taking place. We have started to sport each other’s boogers and warts as well. Fighting has become interesting…I look into the eyes of the "enemy" and find I’m looking in a mirror. In the heat of battle, a grenade comes flying over the fence that looks very much like one of my own. And I’ll look down and find I’m shoveling ammunition from a crate stamped "Republic of Matt." "I’ve been mad for three days…Couldn’t you TELL?" he says, lobbing a small bomb that I used to use on him just after we were married. "You just do what YOU want to do, and you never think of anyone else!" Another one of my own grenades goes whizzing past my head…

I have met the enemy, and he is me.