Are you a Late Bloomer Bride (meaning got married for the first time over age 40)? I would love to hear from you and conduct a 5 question, e-mail interview for this blog. It doesn’t matter how long you have been married, just that you have thoughts on it! If you are willing (and want a little space to share), please direct message me. I look forward to hearing from you.
You can tell exactly what kind of mood I am in by the music I am listening to. This is a good thing, because Husband can then just listen and learn. And, I can do the one thing most women who get married later in life have trouble with – tempering my speech.
I have learned that sometimes, for the sake of marital bliss, not saying things is sometimes as important as actually saying them.
LBBs have trouble with this “not speaking” thing. After all, we never had to not express before. Our previous main listeners (girlfriends) are all about talking. But, for the sake of a happy home life, I have learned to communicate in different ways. For one, through my Ipod.
My Ipod is like Morse Code. If Celine Dion is crooning from the iPod, then all is well. When Evanescence is playing, I’m feeling fairly confident. (So, back off.) Pachabel’s Canon and other baroque favorites mean I am feeling a tad jangly and need to calm down. So, any negative news will just have to wait. If you hear Broadway show tunes, get ready for requests for trips to NYC.
And, there are just some days when you have to listen to Alanis. (Don’t tell me you don’t know who I’m referring to. See here for a primer.) Alanis gets me. She doesn’t know me. But, she gets me.
I have about 4,000 songs on said Ipod, which is a good thing because I have about that many moods.
I got Husband an iPod for Christmas one year. I think he has used it twice. But, then again, I think Husband has 2 moods – good and bad. So, I guess that fits.
Recently, a friend shared a poem I had not come across before. And, with today’s rain, it just feels right. Enjoy!
MEN – WOMEN – SMOKES
By Anonymous
Bad men want their women
To be like their cigarettes.
Just so many,
All slender and trim
In a case,
Waiting in a row
To be selected,
Set aflame – and –
When their flame has died –
Discarded.
More fastidious men
Prefer women like cigars.
These are more exclusive
Look better
And last longer.
If the brand is good,
They are not given away.
Good men treat women
Like pipes
And become more attached to them
The older they become.
When the flame is burned out
They still look after them;
Knock them gently (but lovingly)
And care for them always –
No man shares his pipe.
Any fool can have a trophy wife.
It takes a real man to have a trophy marriage.
~Diane Sollee, smartmarriages.com
In the ongoing hunt for advice for LBBs, I came across a really interesting article from 2005 that talks about how getting married kills your social life. (Diminishing Interest: Why getting married kills your social life, New York magazine, April 4, 2005)
Great.
The author, Amy Sohn, writes about how single and married friends sometimes have trouble adjusting to one another’s changing (or not changing) priorities. Evidently, once married, you can be labeled anything from being merely “unavailable” to being a “social pariah” because nobody wants to hear your petty little foibles about husband snoring when they aren’t gettin’ any.
The truth for the non-invitations is probably closer to this: everyone assumes you only want to hang with your spouse, so why bother asking you out?
Say “no” too many times and you could find yourself blacklisted on the social scene. Apparently, the frequency with which one goes out equals how much fun you are considered to be. And, it’s a hard reputation to shake.
As a single person, I had quite the social life. I mean, I used to live 15 minutes from Reagan National Airport and could (pre 9/11) grab the shuttle to NYC for dinner! And, those little spontaneous adventures only grew with added age. Let’s face it. Older singles have all the accoutrements for a rockin’ social life: Courage, a budget, no drama about what to wear, because you’re a big girl now and know exactly what to throw on. But, just when I knew exactly what restaurants to go to and how to get those great concert tickets, I got married.
End of spontaneity as we know it.
At first, it was pretty nice, actually. An excuse to stay home when you want to, a ready-made date, someone to watch movies with at home, someone who actually cared that you got home at all. But, then after a while (after the couch developed a permanent indentation of my butt), I realized just how much I missed shooting over to the wine bar for an “after work” drink out of the blue. And, how much fun it used to be to stay out to whenever with no one to check in with.
Once married, however, it becomes a negotiation with the spouse over what time you’ll be home, and whose car will be last in the driveway blocking the other, or what state you’ll arrive in when home (it was the tequila’s fault, really).
For me, it’s also an internal battle . Half of me wants to go swinging around town with the girls and the other half of me wants to stay home and snuggle with Husband and our remotes.
And, to top it off, there is the diverging interests of Husband and me. Husband doesn’t always want to do what I want to do. (What, you don’t want to do tequila shots on a Tuesday night?)
To top it off, he often doesn’t alert me to his plans (read: lack of desire to do anything) until that night. So, I’m left hunting for a companion – especially if it is a night where I am acutely aware of the butt imprint I’ve been leaving on my couch at home and I’m desperate for. something. different.
Of course, the fact that single gals aren’t used to compromising their social activities might be a big culprit. You mean I have to choose? Whhhhyyyyy?
Sigh. Who needs a drink?