To be fair to me, she occasionally needles me on the point.
We did talk about in the context of my niece's graduation, how young she was when we fell in love and got married. She joked or half joked about being a "child bride," as she has from time to time over the years.
She often however muses about what she might have done differently when she was younger. She has regrets. As I love her, they, wound me.
Her childhood was not a happy one; she was the "Cinderella" among her sisters, little or no emotional support, limited and very uneven and very limited financial support, little guidance, so little that on several occasions she entered into situations that might have been very dangerous. Hell, I could have been dangerous.
I remind her selfishly that if her life had been different it would have been bad for me, which elicits a somewhat amused dismissal.
However if I mention our sons, how in another life they wouldn't have existed, she feels better about the life she chose.
We all muse about the paths we took, whether another choice would have led to a better life. I tell her in her case that if she had chosen some other path, she may have found herself wistfully wishing she'd chosen that in which she lives now.
She could have been someone's trophy wife; that's pretty clear. Those women who agree to be trophy wives often are exchanged for younger women as they age, since the criteria on which the relationship was built are on transitory states of being.
With me she's aged into a deeper beauty, like a precious wine that one actually doesn't consume because doing so would end the joy of the anticipation of actually drinking it.
The one flaw in her as over all these years she has never understood the ways in which she is or has been beautiful, not when it was merely looks, not when she was a lover, a mother, a friend, a partner, a sister, in any of the many aspects of who she's been over the years to each and all of us who love her.
She's hard on herself. Sometimes she acts as if she's been a failure, while in fact her life has been a spectacular success, at least as I aee it.. (My professional "success" such as it is, or was, was only possible because of her.)
I gave a talk at her mother's funeral and in it, in trying to mention only the good things her mother did while allowing for the cremation of the bad, I stated that her mother raised a daughter of whom I've spent my life trying to be worthy.
She was annoyed by that.
However she feels about herself, she has made my life worth living, and yes, somehow I think she knows and respects that.
Still my niece has left us wondering about and trying to remember where we were when my wife was my niece's age.
As for my doubts as to my worthiness, well you're right, I should respect her decision.
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