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| Patti and Mia try to remember where they left the Ben-Gay. |
But you can tell we're older because the show, The Roommate, was a Saturday matinee, runs only 90 minutes and stars 79 year-old Mia Farrow and 75 year-old Patti LuPone, while we had a 4:00 late lunch reservation, allowing us more than enough time to go to bed at a reasonable hour.
In other words, we've adjusted to the norms of being older than we were 32 years ago, or even last week. Maybe it helps that at ages 36 and 37, we married later in life than many other couples we had known. And now culture tells us there's some wisdom in waiting.
There was a piece in today's New York Post regarding Kelly Ripa, morning television's favorite anorexic. (I've seen her post-jog in Central Park, so I know what I'm talking about when I say that her idea of a three-course meal seems to be a walnut, pecan, and a Tic-Tac.) While on the program she hosts with her mucho-macho actor husband Mark Consuelos, yesterday Ripa casually mentioned wanting to learn more about something called "gray divorce."
According to an image provided by a divorce lawyer, there are just a few reasons for this phenomenon, all of which negate those silly little so-called "vows" the same couples took decades earlier. An analysis in order.
Repeat divorces: Well, duh. You think guys like Johnny Carson would have learned a lesson after their second go-round at the altar. Instead, at the time of his death (alone, in a hospital, in the middle of the night), he was separated from his fourth wife. If there's no stigma in divorce, there should definitely be no stigma in not getting married when you aren't cut out for it. At least Mickey Rooney was honest when asked about his eight marriages, he replied (in words to this effect), There's no way I could stay married to one woman for my whole life! And that included Ava Gardner.
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| This Halloween, they're going out as a ghost and the Michelin Man. |
Initially, I thought this meant breaking up because your spouse wore too much gray around the house or, in their case, in front of millions of viewers. Reading on, I learned that gray divorce actually referred to rising number of older married couples ditching the idea of moving to Florida, and instead careening straight to Splitsville, USA.
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| It doesn't help, either, when you marry someone who lacks eyes and a mouth. |
Reduced divorce stigma: There was a time when the word "divorce", like "cancer", was not spoken or even acknowledged in polite society. Today, couples get married knowing full well that if it doesn't work out, they won't be ostracized. My wife and I put more thought into buying a new refrigerator than these couples do a marriage, and would probably be more embarrassed if our choice was wrong.
Longer life expectancy: Back when "so long as you both shall live" meant maybe 25 to 30 years of wedded "bliss", that seemed like enough. Just enough time to have kids, see a grandchild or two, and have a reasonable amount of sex, with still a good chance of one of you dying suddenly in your sleep for no expected reason. Now that golden and diamond anniversaries are becoming more common, you have the joy of witnessing each other fall apart before each other's eyes. Or, worse, one crumbling while the other has to care for the other. "This is not what I signed up for when I said 'for better or worse!'" What did you think that meant, the price of cable TV going up?
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| C'mon, Mick, you're a hippie! Seventh marriages are for squares! |
Postponed divorces: Well, double duh. I once had a physical when, at the end, the doctor asked how I was feeling. When I told him I had a cold coming on, he tossed me a packet of meds that a pharma salesman had dropped off and said, Try these, let me know how it goes. And you know what? They worked! Until I ran out of them. Then I got socked even harder than I would have otherwise because they postponed rather than cured the cold, giving it a chance to grow like a hurricane stuck off the coast of Florida before hitting land and destroying everything in its path. Postponing pain always makes it worse.
If you count our pre-marriage dating, my wife and I have been together half our lives. Averaging the ages my parents died, I figure we've got roughly 16 years left before I exit stage left. Couples going through gray divorce, on the other hand, are starting at age 50. Kids these days, amirite?
Kelly and Mark, however, don't have anything to be worried about. As long as they keep paying good money to color their hair, there'll be no gray divorce in their future.
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