…you’re shallow, you’re not that clever and you’re going bald. Couples who have been together from five to 60 years talk honestly about their relationships
Brad and Nicole
When I first met my wife, Nicole, we’d just been hired by a nonprofit organisation. My first thought was, “She’s really pretty” but I also thought she seemed shallow and a little immature.
I was wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt and corduroy trousers, and she thought, “What a nerd.” Yet, through working with her, something clicked and we started feeling differently.
By now, I knew enough to realise the unsustainability of just feeling attraction. There are practical concerns when you join your life to another person, like money, children, job responsibilities. With Nicole, my very first feeling for her was physical attraction. I felt that I needed to try to be objective about my feelings.
For about six months, I watched her. I saw the best and worst of her. And I began to see her as actually a lot more mature in many areas than I was. She was a leader. She was very capable. I had been watching her, asking myself, “Can I live with these traits or can’t I?” and at a certain point it had suddenly become, “I can’t live without her.”
From then on, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. But the problem was I was more into her than she was into me.
Now, it’s not my belief that love is either there or it isn’t. Love is something that can be developed and cultivated. So I went out and got a book called Get Anyone To Do Anything. And I figured out how to do it. It was systematic. It was strategic.
One of the things I learned was that I needed to hold back. Because to tell the other person how you feel too early on is dangerous. Most people just do what feels right, but I’ve always been very interested in what makes love sustainable. Nicole and I had a very up-and-down relationship – we broke up and got back together about six times.
We celebrated our sixth anniversary last June. Nicole got pregnant with Ethan on our honeymoon and we have three children now.
Are we going to make it? I do ask myself that question sometimes. And yes, we’re going to make it. We both have the same vision of marriage. It’s something that is not perfect but it is permanent. I’ve realised how fragile love is. You’ve got to protect it and think about it. Because it’s more than a feeling. It’s also a choice.
Samantha and Adam
I saw Adam briefly before we met. He was doing his PhD at Cambridge and I said hello to somebody who was sitting with him. Adam was wearing these jean culottes, like jean shorts, and this thought flashed through my head: I could not have sex with a guy who wore jean culottes.
I was working at the time for a company in London. I was the executive director. It was a lot of responsibility – a lonely job. I never got asked out. But I did get invited to a drinks reception, and Adam was circling me like a shark. We were having this conversation and he wouldn’t let anyone get to me. We all went to the pub and as we were walking home, Adam and I coupled off and then we purposefully fell behind. We ducked into this alleyway and Adam said, “Do you want to get another drink?” It felt very straightforward and sexy.
We slept together on the third date. He literally walked to my bedroom, took off his clothes and said, “Let’s do this thing. Get your clothes off and get in bed.” It was all part and parcel of this very straightforward caveman thing.
I was way more experienced than him. It’s just something you can feel. I was doing handstands and somersaults, and he was just laying there in awe. But he was very loving and appreciative, very into me.
I got married and divorced young, to a man who was very sexually adventurous. And then I had some terrible misses, where I dated guys and the sex was great, but nothing else was going on. I think I was just really ready for Adam. A lot of people fixate on the physical. Physically, Adam’s not anyone’s description of good-looking. Stocky, like a barrel with legs. He’s one of those guys you look at and think, “He will be fat when he’s older. And have thinning hair.” But as a person he just fit me so well. Even from the first date or second date, it was very much, “This is a guy I could marry. This is a guy I could build a long life with.”
He’s an academic. He’s very proud of his brain and very proud of what he’s accomplished, but he has a lot of humility about it. And I think that’s a really lovable quality. And yet he’s not the least bit insecure, which is interesting.
But his lack of athleticism – he never exercises – it shows in bed. He thinks he’s the greatest thing ever. But, for me, it just doesn’t work. Part of it is me. I’ve had a lot of adventures that no one could match up to. And in marriage and in life, you just can’t have swinging-from-the-chandelier sex every day.
So what keeps us together is this overwhelming feeling of “I will never find anyone like this”: I feel that no matter what happens in our relationship, physically or whatever the challenges are. It’s just so hard to find that person.
Kristian and Justin
When I was young, everyone assumed my best friend Lance was my boyfriend. He was the singer in my band, and a sexual expert – at least, compared with me. We were never lovers, but he was my first love. We were obsessed with each other. When I moved on, it was like a horrendous divorce.
I had lots of flings, then a long-term relationship – 10 years. He was The One. I was hopeless. I thought he was the most handsome, most wonderful, most charming, the sexiest. The sex was insanely great, and we actually continued to have sex after we broke up. Then I was a bachelor for two years. And, when I was ready to be alone, I met Justin.
It isn’t this shrill, white-noise high pitch of the other relationships. He has his own existence, from before I met him. We didn’t come to each other as empty vessels that needed to be filled. We’ve been together 12 years now and we’re really close friends. We love to argue, but we also love to spend time together and travel together.
I don’t think I knew, or know, what love is. But I’m more loving than I used to be. My definition of love has shifted from obsession and control toward an emphasis on companionship. I can grasp that love is about neediness. It’s about lust, desire. It’s also about empathy and wanting the best for the other person. You have to find a balance. I found that kind of love. I think he’s very lucky – because I don’t think he’s The One.
Jordan and Rebecca
I was dating a lot of different girls, but I was picking weird, wrong people. Then I spotted Rebecca. There was something identifiably urban and cool about her. She was wearing a yellow raincoat. I felt a sort of inexplicable attraction.
Rebecca was living in the same building as me, with a roommate, Hannah. We became friends, but that wasn’t what I was looking for.
There was something that was compatible, that was similar. She had a jokey forthcomingness that matched mine. She told me private details about her family life, dirty jokes, stuff like that. And she was so funny.
She had many people pursuing her. She had a boyfriend in Paris. She had the one she really loved, who also lived in our building. There was an actor, and a very sweet guy, who I ended up having coffee and commiserating with. And she had a guy from school who was still obsessed with her. That’s five. And I was clearly sixth. At best.
Meanwhile, I was trying to date all these girls. Then, on 27 October 1992, we kissed. For me it was, “Wow, it’s happening!” Rebecca immediately said, “It was awful, I regret it. It was so bad. We’re not doing that again.”
It was a really rough time, months and months of it. Finally I said, “I can’t just be your friend.” It was like quitting an addiction. For about two months we didn’t see each other. Then Hannah, her former roommate, came back into the picture. This was not a strategy of mine; they’d had a big falling out and weren’t friends any more. I wasn’t looking for anything, but I started spending a lot of time with Hannah. She was filling the role of Rebecca – the big gap. It was just someone, the kind of friend you also want to sleep with – and we were, within a month.
We ended up going to one of these formal balls. We drank a lot and we were dancing, and I looked across the room. And there’s Rebecca. She is staring at us and tears are streaming down her face. There was no other way to interpret it, this reaction: she was having a moment, a realisation.
I called her the next day, and once it took hold, we were together all of the time. We would forget to eat. We were in bed all the time.
If I had been a cool character, we might have had a torrid affair right when we met each other, and it would have ended. It’s hard for me to remember this now, 12 years into marriage, but the fact that it took so long may be the reason we ended up together. It’s really been the key to our long-term happiness. With all that talking, and all those twists and turns, we spent a lot of time together practising for our domestic future. We just didn’t know we were practising for it.
Rebecca and Hector
About 10 years ago, I was working in a restaurant. The man I was with at the time wanted children. I knew I wanted children, but I thought, if I have a child with him, he’s going to be the child.
And then I met Hector at work. He was Brazilian and didn’t speak a word of English. He was kind and hard-working. He’d write me little notes in broken English. We arranged to go on a date, and he was all dressed up. He brought flowers.
When I said I wanted to have children, he gave me this little lecture about money and drinking and responsibility. I ended up getting pregnant the next month. We wouldn’t have bothered to get married, but we needed to, for him to get his papers.
We fight a lot. Sometimes it’s money, because I spend more. Sometimes we argue about me going out with other guys. I have a lot of male friends. He doesn’t speak English properly. I don’t speak Portuguese. So sometimes he says something and I say, “I don’t understand you!” It drives me to distraction.
A friend says you have to have three things in common: intellectual, emotional and sexual compatibility. We don’t have intellectual, but that’s the choice I made.
I have a lot of friends who, when they’re talking about sex with their partner, say, “Oh, I can’t bear it.” They pretend to be asleep. They say that they have sex maybe every month or two. And I’m thinking, “Why have I ended up different from my friends?”
When kids come along, the relationship isn’t, “Oh my God, I love your mind.” It’s all about the kids and about work and the division of work. It becomes incredibly unsensuous. But we’ve managed to keep things sensual. To a fault. It’s better, even. He wants sex every night, so it just feels natural: have sex and then sleep. It connects you to something.
I’m one of those people to whom things always happened. I never chose a career. And with this relationship, I wanted it. I created it. It doesn’t matter if it was a good idea or a stupid idea. I wanted to live with this person, have a baby with this person. I’d never dreamed it would last this long. But I hope I grow old with him.
Steven and Leslie
We were renovating our house and Leslie, my wife, fell about 10 feet. She injured herself pretty badly. Nothing broken, but it ended up kicking off this back pain and then migraine headaches. The doctors were looking at the x-rays and MRIs and saying, “We can’t really see anything. You shouldn’t have this much pain.”
She was starting law school at the time. She graduated and opened up a practice. But her condition got worse and worse. She had periods when she went six or seven days without sleeping. There were times when she would just roll up in a catatonic state. She sank into deep depression. It went on for years. She ended up in mental hospital.
The worst day was sitting with my son and my wife and the psychiatrist in a room, and her telling me straight up, as calm as you could be, “I do not want to live any more. I have had all of this I can stand.” Listening to my wife and my best friend telling me that she did not want to exist any more – and actually understanding what she meant. She tried to kill herself about four or five times. It was the most awful feeling. I felt it was my job to stop her, but at the same time I felt I was prolonging her suffering.
When I first met my wife, in 1985, she was the most vibrant, intelligent, fun-loving person I’d ever known. We were colleagues. She was going through a divorce. I’d been divorced about two years. She was intelligent and well-educated, but after she fell, because of the pain, I just saw her take a slow dive. I missed the woman I fell in love with. That woman no longer existed. There was no spark left in her eyes. We had sex once every two weeks, three weeks, maybe every six weeks. It just depended, because she was in a lot of pain. It’s difficult to be in the mood.
But, for the most part, we had a great marriage. Our definition of love is that you stick with somebody through thick and thin, no matter how hard it gets.
In September 2006, a doctor discovered that she had a birth defect called an Arnold-Chiari malformation. It’s this common malformation at the base of your brain in the back. And that jolt of falling off the staircase caused it to move just enough to kick off all this pain. They did what’s called a decompression surgery. After seven days she went home. Her migraines stopped. Her back pain went away. She’s not on any pain medication. My wife was healed. After 18 years.
Last August, we took a trip to Paris, Germany, Budapest and Greece. In September, when we got back, I gave up a full-time, good-paying job to go out on my own. I don’t really know what might be in store for us. We’re 20 years older, so we both have a lot more wrinkles and we both weigh a little bit more, but I now have that woman with the spirit and the love of life back. And that’s what I missed most.
Ethelle and Burt
My mother told me, “Never wear red shoes. If you wear red shoes, you’re fast.” So the first thing I did when I got to college was go out and buy a pair of red heels. This was 1951. Burt was in architecture school, I was in social work school. He came to live in the same building as me. The first thing he saw was the back of me, and what he thought was, “Boy, you have a great ass” – which he insists I still have. So that’s the way we met.
We appreciated each other’s humour and then we just appreciated each other. Then Burt got drafted. The idea of being apart for two years seemed so long. So we just said, “Well, I guess we have to get married when you get back.” That was how romantic it was. It just seemed logical.
He was in Germany. And so, whenever he could, he would meet me somewhere in Europe. It was quite an experience trying to find each other and doing things we can’t believe we ever did, because we are such conventional people now. That really was the most exciting time of my life. And it’s a total memory bank for both of us.
We get along very well. Our temperaments are different. Our approach to solving things is different. But we always had the comfort of feeling that, yes, you can present your worst side and not have to worry. I think that utter naturalness with Burt is what allows me to feel free.
As we got out of our 30s, our 40s, our 50s, life became so much more relaxed. There’s a recognition now that what we share is so much more important, and the other things are superfluous to the relationship. I’m grateful for each day and grateful to have him. The thought that one of us might at any time have to live without the other is just paralysing.
I once complimented a friend on how she took care of her dying husband and she said, “It wasn’t very hard to do. I realised my husband would do the same for me.” And I went home and said to Burt, “So, would you do the same for me?” And he looked at me so helplessly and said, “I want to, but I don’t do those things well.” And I said, “You know, you’re right.” So that’s why I got long-term insurance for me and not him – because I knew I could take care of him, but he couldn’t take care of me that way. And I was OK with it. That’s the way it goes.
At this point, you’re not the same people you used to be. You’re not climbing mountains. You’ve lost a lot of friends. The children are adults. But we do a lot of reminiscing and end up having fits of giggles.
I think we’re the only married couple we know who still have the same bed we’ve always had. We cuddle before bed. And we hug and kiss each other good morning. We’ve always been that way.
We hold hands a lot. We smooch a lot. The grandchildren get a little embarrassed. Maybe they think that grandparents hugging and kissing is funny. Frankly, Burt and I don’t give a damn.
Some names have been changed.
• Extracted from Us: Americans Talk About Love, edited by John Bowe, published in January by Faber & Faber, Inc, an affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2010 by John Bowe. All rights reserved
