I’m 61, married for 39 years now to the man that I started dating in high school. Still in love. 2 daughters–the main accomplishment in my life has been raising them to be delightful women.
I’ve read through your thread–you talk about wanting romantic love from a man that you love. I realize this is a forum and it’s difficult to express everything in your heart, but…my impression is that you’re not interested in loving a man as much as you are in being loved by a man.
When you are married, you give yourself to your spouse—entirely. What that means is when the romance fades—and it will fade, even if you never have children–you still love him with all your heart, and you still do the things that make him happy because that makes YOU happy. His interests are more important than your own.
Let’s just do a little what-if–
What if you marry a wonderful man and life is just beautiful–and then he is in a car accident and becomes paralyzed? This happens more often than we like to think about, not necessarily paralysis, but traumatic brain injuries that change personalities, or loss of limbs leading to more difficulty in physical activity.
As a spouse, you would need to shoulder a large share of his burden. And you would have to learn to keep on loving him.
Or what it…
As you get older, you both change. For me and my husband the changes are both physical and emotional. I have osteoarthritis in my knees, and many of the simplest activities; e.g., taking a walk in a park, are now painful and result in my sitting with my legs elevated and iced for a few hours afterwards. My husband also has physical limitations, but his biggest problem is worry about our financial future, as we still have too much debt and haven’t saved that million dollars that all the experts say we need to survive as retired people.
We are still very much in love, and there is romance and sex. But in a marriage, there are constant changes–loss of jobs, housing issues (the house you buy turns out to be a sinkhole for money, and Chip and Joanna aren’t around to help unless you have several hundred thousand dollars to spend!), goals that never get completed, dogs that die, etc.
I think it would be good for you to talk to lots of married couples of all ages about their lives together, with and without children.
I said earlier that raising my daughters well is my greatest accomplishment. At my age, I’m doing a lot of reflecting on whether I have accomplished anything lasting in this life, and it’s been discouraging. When I was young, I had so many dreams of writing a best-seller, or composing a great musical piece, or helping the poor, or hiking across the U.S.–and none of these dreams has happened. I haven’t given up (working on getting one of my musicals on Broadway!). But realistically, I’ve done a lot of working at my job (lab), and I’ve cooked a lot of meals, and cleaned the house a lot, and gotten fat and skinny and fat and fatter and probably won’t ever be skinny again–in other words, I haven’t done much.
But I’ve raised two strong women, and that’s something to take with me when I die.
