Do Most Couples Talk?

Finding your soulmate later in life has both challenges and rewards. The challenges include being set in your ways and carrying baggage from previous relationships and life in general. Without sounding too corny the benefits can be summed up in the Streisand/Adams song:

Meandering through the bad and the good involves much observation and discussion, so my late-in-life partner and I talk to each other…a lot. Many of our conversations involve how we differ from other couples, or to be clear, how we’re finding other couples differ from us. We talk about everything and we’re discovering that many couples, well, don’t.

A typical example would be I text the wife or husband of another couple about an upcoming event that we’re all planning to attend – and let’s say it’s about something minor but nevertheless important, like shall we travel in one car. I tell my partner we’ve decided to take one car and he says, “Great, we’ll all go together”. Yet shortly before the event, the half of the other couple that I did not text will ask me, “What time are you guys leaving, so we can follow?” They hadn’t discussed it with each other! This happens all the time – with most of the couples we know. They just don’t seem to talk to each other. We find it strange. (Or, are we the strange ones?)

Another oddity we’re discovering is the number of couples that don’t spend much time with each other. They don’t have any joint hobbies, they don’t watch TV or shows together, they sit in different rooms. We have different hobbies, but we spend lots of time together, eat dinner together, and sleep together. Heck, lots of couples have separate bedrooms and bathrooms. (Are we weird?)

Maybe it’s because we met each other late in life and sometimes feel like we missed out, so we want to take advantage of every moment we can. We met in our early 60s and now we’re in our early 70s. There may not be too many years left!

When I took interior design courses many years ago, one teacher used to joke about “newly-wed teak”. She explained that in the early 70s everyone bought chrome, glass and teak furniture and then ten years later wanted to get rid of it. She’d say, “One should not make lifelong decisions in their early twenties because you’re bound to change your mind!” Maybe this applies to choosing a mate? Many of the couples to whom I have referred got married when they were in their early twenties. Perhaps their choices would have been different if they’d waited until they were more mature. I know mine certainly was!

Everyone is different and I have no qualms about how others choose to live, I’m just curious. I only know that finally I’m happy with my choice of partner. We spend a lot of time together, talk a lot, laugh a lot, tease each other, go to bed at the same time, and look forward to growing old together. Otherwise, what’s the sense of being a couple?