When I’m 64
Today is Kim’s birthday, and yes, she turns 64 years old. So, naturally, the Beatles 1967 song from The Yellow Submarine album comes to mind. That song was written by John Lennon, who would be 82 this year and Paul McCartney, who is 80 years old this year. I am four years past that milestone birthday and that would hardly qualify as a milestone were it not for this very song. The song asks the eternal question, “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?” I doubt there is a person turning 64 who doesn’t wonder for a moment if them reaching this mark is meaningful and if The Beatles were prescient about suggesting that at this age we all start wishing we were elsewhere or at lease with someone else. That is a valid concern given that everyone thinks the divorce rate is about 50%. Actually, that statistic is out of date and has been declining in the U.S. over the last twenty years. It now stands at about 39% in the U.S. The U.S. has long been an extreme outlier in divorce rates, far exceeding the global norms where only about 4/10% of the global marriages end in divorce. Even in places like Russia, where life can be admittedly harsh, that rate only goes as high as 19%. Sociologists attribute the higher divorce rates in the U.S. and elsewhere to our level of economic development, to the higher level of women in the workplace, and our generally higher degree of education. That is a bit of a sad commentary since it implies that we are evolving to a state where we are either more demanding of one another or simply need one another less than we used to. It is equally distressing that the divorce statistics for the United States are falling as they have, because that implies a lowering of economic and social conditions quoted above. What a conundrum.
We would all like to think that we evolve to a higher and better plane and that we become more tolerant and more appreciative of what we have, but that belies some of the underlying conditions that led to high marriage rates in the first place. I think it is probably the case that marriage is a state of being that came about for convenience rather than the vague principle of love. Early man undoubtedly needed a partner, whether to have an efficient division of labor or just to watch his back while he fought the Saber-toothed tiger. That may be a pedestrian way of thinking about it, but it’s most likely also true. Collectivism, even its most elemental form of marriage is something that man has always gravitated towards as an aide to survival. Even The Beatles in 1967 thought it all boiled down to need and feed and I don’t think that was just a convenient rhyming couplet.
Recent studies have shown that one of the reasons for the drop in divorce rates is that Millennials have been deferring marriage decisions and the average age of marriage has been pushed to 30 and 28 for men and women respectively from a 1960 level of 22 and 20. The reasoning goes that by waiting for that marital decision point, Millennials are less likely to make mistakes in their selections and pairings, though that is a hard aspect to verify with any great certainty. The impetuosity of youth is a well known failing and it follows that lust and romantic illusions might drive bad decisions for one in their earliest stages of adulthood.
I remember a movie from thirty years ago called The Marrying Man starring a young Alec Baldwin as a millionaire playboy who has to struggle with the marriage question between his long-time girlfriend played by Elizabeth Shue (a woman hard not to like in her prime) and a recent party-girl fling with Kim Basinger, one of the most lusted-after women on the planet. While I am no Alec Baldwin, I too was and am a marrying man. Some men prefer to be in a state of constantly playing the field, but I have always craved the permanence of a primary relationship. I have convinced myself repeatedly that I can be happy with any number of women and that the concept of the one soulmate was highly overrated. At least that is how I felt until I met Kim. Kim has been a different experience altogether. None of that is to impune either of my first two wives, or even the other women I dated along the way, but simply to say that none of them proved to be my soulmate for eternity. Kim is just that. Whether at age 47 when I met her or at age 64 as she stands now or at age 90 where I hope she will one day be, she is all that I want in a mate and companion. I will still need her and I hope she will still feed me when I am long past 64, 74 and 84.
What makes for a strong marriage and what makes me say that Kim is my eternal soulmate? Well, I will avoid the physical issues since they all morph with time and I will refrain from the spiritual since they are so very hard to describe in any meaningful way. So, instead, let me just describe what I like that Kim gives me. Most importantly, she makes me feel loved and respected every day. That cannot be underestimated. The feeling loved part is the essence and I believe is universal. To begin with, this requires her to be a person with the capacity for that and Kim seems to have a limitless capacity for love. That probably makes it more likely that I can get that feeling from her. No everyone has a limitless capacity for love. I know some very good people who are constrained in that department for one reason or another, usually the result of their upbringing in some way. Kim was a late-stage child that her mother seemed to adore immeasurably. She seems to have lacked sufficient love from her father (as per her own interpretation) so she came to understand the importance of sharing and showing love by virtue of both getting it in volume from her mother and getting it insufficiently from her father. As for the respect, I would like to think that I am worthy of respect on an absolute level, but that is very self-aggrandizing to suggest. I prefer to think that Kim is empathetic enough to know that I need that and therefore to give it to me as part and parcel of the love she has chosen to give me.
Kim also has a sensibility and a sense of humor that is very consistent with my own. She laughs at the same jokes for the most part and finds the same quirks about people funny. We rarely disagree on perspective since we seem to look at the world through very similar eyes. People sometimes say opposites attract, but in our case like-mindedness is a critical aspect of our closeness. We are each other’s best friend. That does not mean we do not have other close friends, though Kim is simply a kinder person than I am and therefore has more friends she can call close. In fact, one of the things I love most about Kim is the fact that she exudes love for everyone and everything. She cries for the little children and the dogs of the world and finds compassion for every living thing.
At age 64, Kim is even more to my liking than she was at 47 when we met. It is a strong testament to a person if you find new heights of love for a person the older they get and the longer you know them. So, in summary, yes, I will still need her and if need be, I will still feed her until she is well beyond 64.