Aged Wine

 "Relish love in our old age! Aged love is like aged wine; it becomes more satisfying, more refreshing, more valuable, more appreciated and more intoxicating!" --Leo Buscaglia


A couple of weekends ago, Xing Fu's dad & stepmother came for a visit from Texas.  They are both is their 80's & are in great shape--I hope I'm that well off when I'm that age.  But I digress--what struck me the most was how touchy-feely, romantic they were.  Maybe it was over-the-top a bit (he knelt to help her put on her shoes at one point), but I was smitten myself at how devoted they seemed to one another. I remarked to Xing Fu about how they were after they left & he agreed.  He said that his dad wasn't like that when he was growing up, & wondered if it was the woman who made him a different man or just the time in his life.  I guess the romantic in me hopes that it had something to do with the woman--probably because it's his father's second marriage, and it has lasted for quite some time.  Of course it is my desire that we might be the same way & that we both have brought out the best in one another.  Either way, it was wonderful to see such devotion & visual examples of commitment. And I hope that both my son & Xing Fu's daughters saw what I saw as well--that love can last into older age & be just as romantic as when one is in one's youth.  To that end, Xing Fu left me a little note one morning this week as I'm on vaycay from work & he drove my son to school for me.  When I sent him an email later that day to thank him he wrote back that he wants "wants to be all lovey-dovey in 30 years like my parents."  And I think he's worked towards that as have I--last night I satisfied my bet from last year's NCAA tournament by taking Xing Fu to Woodberry Kitchen for dinner.  (Every year we bet on our brackets--loser takes the winner out to a really nice restaurant--I've won only once--boo!).  Very romantic of course but nothing too extraordinary except this morning after I'd posted last night on FB the following, "Lovely dinner with Xing Fu at Woodberry Kitchen & the food was pretty awesome too!" His response (very rare as he's hardly ever on FB), "Yes, lovely dinner with a lovely woman. What more could I ask?"   I hope we continue like this in 30 years too.

Bucking the Odds

I've come to find out that many, many people who know both of us didn't think we'd last.  (In fact, my mother still asks if everything's all right with us almost every phone call...)  Yup, the curse of the rebound relationship--we did fret a bit about that at first but we very soon set that aside.  Apparently, people assumed that we'd last about 3 months & then because of the nature of the beast, we'd be done.  Interesting because the framework of our relationship never resembled that old rebound stuff.  And in fact, as I've researched it a bit, there really is no evidence that supposed rebound relationships don't work.  Regardless, I think we've moved beyond the possibility anyway--major relationship events recently have proved this unequivocally. 

From Princeton University:  (On the Rebound: Time to Remarriage and Subsequent Union Stability) This paper has a single straightforward finding: there is no rebound effect.  People quickly entering new relationships after an initial divorce, whether by remarriage or cohabitation followed by remarriage, do not have higher divorce rates. This finding persists after controlling for key demographic differences between respondents. The advice offered by many self-help books ("Don't get into a new relationship too quickly!") therefore has no basis in reality.

There are quite a few websites out there that refute the rebound relationship but overwhelmingly the opposite view takes precedent...I wonder why.