I had worked all my life growing my own business and been married to the same woman for 40 years. At last, we had made it and the business was going well. I suppose a man reaches a certain stage in life when he questions what he has achieved and what direction he is going in.
Feeling very unsettled we sold up everything in the UK. Lock stock and barrel and moved to an attractive villa with a small garden and pool in sunny Spain.
We settled well into the Costa life and between the Golf club, the Yacht club, and three trips a year back to the UK to see the grand children; we established a very comfortable life with a wide circle of friends.
After a particularly long hot day on the golf course and a long languorous dinner in the yacht club we took a taxi home and we partook of a nightcap on the verandah, watching the sunset and listening to the Cicadas start up their evening song, I took a long slow careful look at my wife of over 40 years and commented:
“40 years ago we had a cold, cheap and cheerful apartment, an old little rusty smelly unreliable car, we slept on a narrow lumpy sofa bed and watched a flickering 10-inch black and white TV. I was very happy then because I got to sleep every night with a hot, firm, fit 25-year-old girl”.
She frowned at me, smiled as only she can and just sat there quietly saying nothing. I continued:
“Now I have a luxury architect designed £1,500,000 home, a £65,000 luxury car, nice big king sized soft bed and 65-inch wide screen TV. We want for nothing. But I'm sleeping with a wrinkly 65-year-old slack woman. It seems to me that you're not holding up your side of things in this marriage”.
Now my wife is a very reasonable and pleasant woman. She smiled at me sardonically and said,
“It’s OK by me if you go out and find a hot, 25-year-old, taut, fit girl to sleep with any time you like. But I will make sure that you will once again be living in a cold, cheap and cheerful apartment, drive an old, little rusty smelly unreliable car, sleep on a narrow lumpy sofa bed and watch a flickering 10-inch black and white TV. Be my guest. Go ahead!
I think wives of 40 years are great. They have a way of concentrating a man’s mind. They really know how to solve a mid-life crisis.
by S. Reid