Middle Aged Love On Valentines Day

A stencil painted on Valentines day depicting “First love” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Obviously, I didn’t mean to call him a ‘tosser’ by 8am on Valentines Day, but he knows I’m not good in the morning and frankly, he was being one.

The greatest thing about being middle-aged and married for what can sometimes feel like a life sentence, is that you don’t have to tip toe around each other anymore.

The kids have been nagging us for weeks about how we planned to celebrate Valentines Day. It was getting annoying actually – like we had to validate this commercial twaddle in some way, just so our babies didn’t get over-anxious about the status of our marriage.

At one point, I felt like changing my Facebook Status to ‘comfortably married’.

Neither of us are feeling particularly romantic at the moment. Not because we’re not in lurvvve and shit, we just have more important priorities. Wasting precious free time in search of a restaurant that hasn’t been booked up on the 14th for the last three months and doesn’t resort to tacky metallic red heart-shaped balloons and inflated prices, isn’t exactly high on our list.

Now some might determine our lack of effort as ‘dangerous’ to our relationship, but I’m far more excited about booking our annual holiday than sitting with a group of over–anxious, loved-up couples who feel the need to celebrate their love publicly.

I can imagine the torrent of sentimental slime that will fill my home page on Facebook today already.

CALL ME CYNICAL, but I don’t need a heart-shaped card or an expensive bunch of roses to a) know how the old man feels about me or b) to cement in my mind just how hopelessly unromantic he is.

There was a time when I cared, admittedly, but I think the dead Chrysanthemums from the local petrol station put an end to all that futile romantic expectation.

Anyway, the kind of love depicted by Valentine’s Day is not really how we feel about each other now. THAT love is the heart-flutter, pants-on-fire kind that is driven by desire, whereas ours has evolved into something a little different. Ours is mutual hatred a more mature love where our pants may not catch fire (probably because they’re a bit tight around the waist now) and we get more turned on by alcohol or an early night than lust. But our love is also more contained now – fewer fireworks and spontaneity, but much more depth.

Yes, we probably do take each other for granted.

But it’s nice not to be afraid in a relationship. I realised that when we were out in our local hangover-café last Sunday morning after the Pavlova night. Once we’d ordered our coffees and carbs, we sat at our table and stared blankly into the distance, silently trying to work our headaches into submission, while the younger couples all around us chatted animatedly.

I remember commenting to the old man in our twenties about how awful it was when middle-aged couples sat in cafés saying absolutely nothing to each other. And how we’d never become like that. 

Old Couple (Photo credit: Jan Tik)

We are now THAT couple.

And it’s comfortable at times, to be honest; not having to make an effort all the time.

I don’t even tut when he farts in bed these days.

Are you dangerously comfortable in your relationship?