Two Turns Make It Rigid

I met a woman who was walking her new puppy the other day. She was about my age. We stopped to talk for a bit, first about the puppy, then about our recent breakage injuries and physical therapists. Then, almost out of the blue, she told me if she had it to do over again, she would never get married.

Normally I'm very hesitant to ask really personal questions of strangers, but since she'd brought it up, I asked her why not.

Her husband does not have interest in doing anything she'd like to do, she said. She told me about a tropical vacation they took. He refused to participate with her in any activities. When she wanted to do things like scuba diving, she had to go alone. He stayed in the hotel to watch TV, or he laid on the beach.

She has to do everything alone? Hmm, I said, that sounds a lot like my life, only with baggage. While I'm lonely for a partner, she's lonely with a partner.

They've been married fifteen years. Their social life, she explained, includes only his family. She can't really have any friends. He is not willing to allow anyone else into their social circle, and he expects her to spend her time with him.

He also has a huge debt load that he hadn't told her about before they got married. I'd discovered the same thing in my second marriage which, for that reason and others, was very brief, so I couldn't resist asking her what seemed to me the obvious question: why is she staying in the marriage?

She has her reasons. Finances, age, whatever--it's a lot harder to start over at 60 than at 40. She plans to tough it out.

You know, I'm not always satisfied with my life, but I don't envy hers.