October 16th

I once thought I didn’t have any expectations about marriage.  Going into it, I thought that the two of us were so naïve that we just…got married because we were in love, and that’s what people did when they were in love.  We didn’t really think about The Future, didn’t have an agenda.  Over the years, I’ve come to see that is…bullshit. 

Because of course we had expectations.  Mine were, at the very least, to have one person in the world who loved me in spite of my flaws; and to have a partner beside whom I would negotiate life, sharing the joys and the burdens.  I don’t know that I could have articulated that expectation 43 years ago…but its existence has become obvious.  Driven home by the fact that this is not what our marriage has turned out to be.

Not even close.

And I have no idea what HIS unspoken, unknown-at-the-time expectations were.  No doubt, much of them had to do with sex.  (He was only 20 when we married…)  He once told me, in the midst of one of our heavier arguments, that “this is not what I signed up for.”  So, evidently, his expectations have not been met, either.

Even so, we have endured.

We like each other well enough.  We’re comfortable together.  Our relationship, after nearly half a century, is as much habit as anything else.  We’re concerned for each others’ welfare…we have good times together.

We don’t fight as much as we used to.         

I was just about to write, “But that’s not enough.”

But apparently, it IS enough.  I mean, I don’t think either of us would be happier if we weren’t in this marriage…if we didn’t have what we do have.  That it is what it is will always make me sigh and shake my head.  But if I’ve learned anything in the six decades I’ve lived on this planet, it’s that not everything can be or will be exactly as we would like.  And believing otherwise leads to a life of anger, frustration…a whole Pandora’s box of negative emotion.

Sometimes, you just have to accept what IS and make the best of it.

So…

Happy Anniversary, us!