I know we've been thinking it. Thirty-eight? Forty? Thirty-five? Isn't Jonkeer Professor Erich van der Truus-Lotzing a little on the old side to be contemplating his first marriage?
Betty Neels certainly had her opinions about what constituted a properly aged man. Heroines? They were all over the map--from twenty to thirty (but never, never older than 30), from plain to gorgeous, orphaned to many-siblinged, poor (usually) to well-off. Her heroes follow a stricter model--blond (usually) giants with a penchant for doctoring, expensive cars and the money to afford them.
They are also old. (You heard me.) Occasionally they will be just over thirty but more often they are on the shady side of thirty-five and once or twice over forty itself. Forty!
Possibly Brigham Young once possibly said (possibly), "Any young man who is unmarried at the age of twenty-one is a menace to the community." (which, even if he didn't say, is totally true, btw) Accordingly, Betty Keira wrangled her fella at the over-ripe age of 22 and Betty Debbie wrestled hers into submission around the same time (if memory serves). Granted we were poor starving college students in the first years of our married lives--basement bedsits rather than bow-fronted Regency.
Look, all these Jonkeer Professor Erich van der Truus-Lotzings are lovely gentlemen, having committed no infractions worthy of state justice or moral censure. But this is fiction here. If Serena Arabella Olivia Darling Dawson Fielding is going to get busy with that half-dozen assorted then they need to get cracking or get home help. Home help...um...nevermind.
That Wikipedia chart of average marriage ages was a hoot. My husband was closest in age to a man from Nepal....I was closest to an Iraqi woman. Now that could be an interesting mixed marriage.
ReplyDeleteI would be right at home in Cameroon or Estonia.
ReplyDeleteI'm off the charts. (That's a true statement about me oh, 98% of the time.)
ReplyDeleteAge at first marriage: 42 (same for Brit Hub 1.0 -- his first marriage and we were the same age)
Age at second marriage: 51/52 for me and 47/48 for Brit Hub 2.0 (that two wedding thing).
Oh, and I'd like to take this opportunity to respect your family's wonderful commitment to the institutions of marriage and childrearing. (No sarcasm.)
No one in my immediate family (which historically had women marrying around 25 -- if they were going to raise a family -- or 40 if they weren't) had divorced before Brit Hub 1.0 and I signed off on ours. But the weird thing is, ours was by familial standards one of the happiest marriages I'd seen. (Some marriages -- not naming names -- stayed together out of sheer inertia.)
So I just want you to know (to quote Eliza Doolittle) I'm a good girl, I am. I love Brit Hub 1.0 as much today as I did the day we married, and I always will. He's the family of my heart. He's here for Thanksgiving and Christmas; all three of travel together (he and Brit Hub 2.0 have known each other for 20 years); and I would be devastated if anything were to happen to him.
Why did we divorce? Because both of us had rough childhoods, and in Brit Hub 1.0's case, marrying me and coming to the US was a huge and wonderful step of liberation. Marriage made both of us happier and healthier and eventually we were healthy enough to be not married.
So even though it was a happy marriage, it's also the divorce with a happy ever after: all three of us are happier now than we were before the divorce.
Just wanted you to know I'm not a homewrecker or ebil woman. :-)
Betty Magdalen, you are hilarious! Our mom is on her second marriage and when we hang out with her first husband she whispers, "I can't believe I've seen him naked!"
ReplyDeleteStill, Betty didn't quibble with a 17 year age gap and the heroes wanted six kids! That is surprising.
I'm with your mom; I have very good selective amnesia about certain aspects of my first marriage, as I'm dead certain does Brit Hub 1.0.
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