My niece graduated last weekend. We went up to Mass for it. The weird thing...

[NNadir]

...is that well, she's 21 years old and...

...that's how old my wife was when I moved in with her. I married my wife when she turned 22.

My niece, she's a nice kid, a little unsure of her direction, but well, that's just it, she's a kid. I just for some reason don"t think of her as an independent woman with a profound sense of herself in a fully adult world.

I hope I'm not being unkind in thinking that.

I was older than my wife when we married, but I always contend that she was the real grown up, but none the less I had to put up with a few "robbing the cradle" hostile jokes, which I politely shrugged off. To be clear I wasn't by any stretch the only older guy interested in her, and there were lots of men her age also after her.

I've been living with my wife for 42 years, married almost 41, and I love her more than I could ever have imagined I could love anyone. Our lives together have been magical, and my memory of our first years together fill me with a kind of awe as to how it happened at all.

Still, I wonder. My niece strikes me as an advanced adolescent.

People are different I guess. I hope. Everyone who met my wife when we were "just" lovers thought I should marry her and I took their advice, but still...

If she were older when she married she might have done better than me I think.

It's bothering me a bit.

[pfitz59]

1. My wife was 23 when we married.

I was 27. My folks were both 23 when they married. As was my daughter. My sons are 36 with no marriage in sight.

[NNadir]

2. My wife's mother was 22 when she married and that's how I came to marry my wife.

My mother-in-law married my father-in-law, a doctor, when he was 29.

They never divorced but the marriage was not a good one. They had children right away. My mother-in-law made it clear she was miserable.

I was living with my future wife and knew I was very much in love with her but I always felt tentative in our relationship, that I was there until something or someone else happened. I thought I couldn't possibly keep her in my life.

One day I was talking with her about how my father gave me my late mother's wedding ring, he said, "for safe keeping" and I told my future wife I would never marry her because I wouldn't want her to feel trapped like her mother by marrying her when she was so young. She was 21 at the time.

She got really mad at me.

I guess I was being defensive. I really did love her, but I couldn't imagine keeping her forever. It just didn't seem possible, particularly with so many guys hitting on her all the time. She could easily have walked away.

I reminded her when she got mad at me for saying I wouldn't marry her that she had always refused to ever tell me she loved me.

She said, "It's hard for me to say that."

I said, "I love you. It's easy for me to say because it's true. I love you."

Later that night in bed she told me she loved me too. Before that whenever I told her I loved her she'd say, "I know you do." It set in motion a kind of negotiation which ended with her making me take her to a Spanish restaurant, get down on my knees before the appetizers came and propose by offering her my mother's ring.

She said, "I'll think about it."

She could be a stinker.

By desert we were engaged, which did not make her parents happy, but sure as hell made me happy.

Part of the deal was that I promised her that if she ever wanted a divorce I wouldn't contest it, but the condition I wanted was a commitment to fidelity while we remained married.

I was pretty tired of "free love," girlfriends.

Eventually her parents accepted me after we eloped and it seemed like it was going to last, which it has. I never wanted anyone else and she never ran off with anyone else although she easily could have. It's been a far better marriage than the one her parents had, that's for sure.

I now love her in ways I could never have imagined loving anyone. It's been remarkable, not without struggle, but struggle that ultimately deepened our love for one another. She might have done better than me, but I could have never done better than her.