RELATIONSHIPS

How Not to Lose a Guy in Four Decades

Appreciate the best of times; chalk up the rest to being comfortable

I can’t imagine it’s really been that long. Let’s see if I can do the math.

Met him in the fall of 1976. Married him in the spring of 1979. Forty-two years of so-called marital “bliss.” Forty-five — that’s four-and-a-half decades — together.

If I wanted to be cliché, I’d say we had the best of times; we had the worst of times. Or we suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. But Charles Dickens and Hamlet’s well-worn soliloquy aside, we’ve had a time. And a life. Together.

I reckon I realized we were in it for the long haul when the Covid Times shut down the world as we knew it.

Well, it’s not like we’d ever been players, but an occasional night out with friends — a great dinner and an even better bottle of wine — was a part of our routine. So when we found out in March 2020 we’d be spending a lot more time at home — and together — we learned to roll with our new reality. The wine could wait. But our relationship wouldn’t because we subconsciously willed ourselves to stay together.

Together, we helped sweep the shelves of our local grocery store bare of toilet paper and ground hamburger meat. Together, we discovered we liked to “meal plan” — who knew Moker could ever get into discussing what we’d have for dinner every night, ad infinitum? Together, we realized that old habits die hard, but they’re sometimes the best kind to have.

I made my peace with all of the Green Bay Packers games — from the ’60s, the ’70s, the ’80s, and even recent seasons— he’d fortuitously saved on the DVR. Finally, he reconciled himself to the fact that if I weren’t going anywhere, I’d ride out this storm in my PJs. After showering and washing my hair, of course.

Back in the day, all those decades ago, he was the guy who liked to rock a new button-down and a sweet pair of Sperrys and maybe watch a few frames of football with the guys. Poker optional. I was the gal who loved my jammies and my “alone time” to the point of obsession.

Yeah, I’m still OK with wearing iconic sleepwear out in public. I just did, in fact, the other day.

But as the recent months together wore on — some would call it “forced socialization,” but I just always refer to it as “finding” my other half — we each adapted and adopted the habits of the other. I started obsessively watching the NBA play in that crazy bubble down in Orlando.

He discovered that wearing what he slept in around the house the whole next day really was his jam.

Who knew that the comfort of all those years together — which wrapped us, I believe, in the protective embrace of Mother Time — would help us get through what could have been the hardest test of our relationship together?

Well, we had a small inkling. Because we’d steered into many an almost perfect storm before and always found ourselves in calm seas after the behemoth blew through.

Over the decades, he’s missed my birthday. But he has also made up for that faux pas, big-time, by taking me to NYC for a birthday bash. A Broadway show and an exquisite dinner on the East River with a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline were on the menu that weekend. I should add here that I adore New York and all the Big Apple entails.

Moker, not so much.

But whether it’s Shirley MacLaine and her one-person show or the bum who’s muttering at my Hubs on the eternally redundant—and to me, life-affirming — Staten Island Ferry, with a prime view of Lady Liberty, I’m all in.

The city — in my humble opinion — never gets old, and that’s what’s so great about NYC. Moker knows this, and that’s why I love him. The Big Apple as another kind of metaphor.

Because we’ve spent so much time together, I could rattle off dozens, if not hundreds, of situations just like that. Forgiving him his trespasses. He, in turn, understanding that I don’t always want to go to the “club” and socialize. OK, it’s not that fancy — just a place where Moker golfed for a score of years. Also, BTW, they serve the best tuna tacos on the planet. And many of you know how I treasure Taco Tuesday.

We got married during a flurry of nuptials in our social circle at the end of the ’70s — the so-called “Me Decade.” Of the couple dozen close friends who tied the knot at around the same time, we and one other couple close to us are still together, with the same folks we originally joined in marriage back in the day.

There’s no enchanting potion that helped us stay hitched. But if you put our relationship under a microscope, you’d probably find a tiny bit of patience and a tremendous willingness to forgive larger transgressions that really never should have ballooned so big.

He’s silly but practical. I’m opinionated and sometimes kind. As we grow older, we have started to agree more than we disagree.

And I’m sure it helps that his hearing isn’t all that great anymore and my cooking — yes, we still meal-plan 16 months later — is good enough to keep us alive.

I don’t know if there’s a one-size-fits-all solution to staying together. But I do know that Moker and I found the Magic Beans that helped our relationship to grow.