The Marriage Files

Recently, I was in the checkout line at the grocery store, and I saw an issue of some tabloid magazine with Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher on the cover. Evidently, they’re an item. Involuntarily, I said "No way!" and another woman in line looked up to see what I was talking about. She spied the cover, nodded her head knowingly and said, "Yeah, isn’t it incredible? But Demi Moore looks really good for 41."

Funny thing is, that’s not what I meant. I think older women with younger men is just the natural order of things. Partly, it’s my upbringing. You see, when it comes to marriage, my family displays a quirky little pattern. All the women marry younger men, and all the men marry older women. It’s not planned; it just happens that way. I am no exception. My husband K— is a few years younger than me.

The actual age gap—which is small enough to count on the fingers or toes of one extremity—is exacerbated (or enhanced, depending on how you look at it) by the fact that K— has an extremely youthful, boyish face. It’s one of his best features. He’s one of those guys who will always look at least 10 years younger than he actually is. In some scruffy clothes with his hair tousled, he can still pass for a teenager. And that’s the problem. If you sometimes look like a teenager, people sometimes treat you like a teenager, and K— isn’t happy about that.

True story: Several years ago we had to have some work done on our house, so I called several contractors asking them to come give us an estimate. I scheduled an appointment with one of them for a Saturday morning. The contractor had spoken only to me, not K—, and he’d never seen either one of us. Saturday rolled around, and K— and I overslept a bit. We woke up only when we heard the contractor ring the doorbell.

We both jumped out of bed and started pulling on whatever clothes were closest to hand. Needless to say, they weren’t business suits. K— ended up wearing some beat-up workout pants and a tie-died t-shirt that probably had The Allman Brothers Band emblazoned across it. In that kind of get-up and straight out of bed, he looked 17, tops.

He was the first one dressed, so he went to let the contractor in. I was still in the bedroom, pulling on my clothes, when I heard him open the door. Up the stairs wafted the voice of the contractor, saying, "Oh, um...I guess I’m here to see your Mom." This is a bad start, I thought. Instinctively, I cringed and froze, bracing myself for the sickening slap of fist on face.

Instead, in a voice icy enough to have challenged the High Plains Drifter to a gunfight, K— just said, "I think...you mean...my wife!" The way he said it, "wife" reminded one strongly of "knife." I breathed a sigh of relief and made a mental note to thank him for the restraint he showed. And incredibly, that contractor got the job, but he did crappy work, so you figure out the lesson there.

Despite the fact that K— hates being mistaken for a youngster, he also loves to tease me about the fact that I am—and always will be—older than him. I don’t mind, because honestly, this strikes me as one time when I got the better end of the bargain. The way I see it, I’ll always be sleeping with a younger man.

I’m thrilled about K— being younger than me, because it gives me something to look forward to in my golden years. As we get older, I won’t bother lying about my age. Instead, I’ll lie about his age as a form of bragging. He’ll gradually lose years until the gap between us can be measured in generations, not little piggies. Then I’ll feel like Paul McCartney, or any of the other old men who marry much younger women. Sure, they’re still old, but their internal voice is saying to every other man they meet, "You wish you were in my shoes!"

Back at the beginning of this article, I said that my upbringing is only part of the reason I think older women belong with younger men. The other part is pure science. By now we’ve all heard that men reach their sexual prime at 19 or so, while for women it’s somewhere around age 36. We’ve also heard that women are from Venus while men are from Mars. Well, the second one is half true. Women are Earthlings, but men are, in fact, from another planet, and Mars it is. The proof is in a little birthday calculation. You see, a Martian year is longer than an Earth year, so a 19-year-old Martian (i.e., a man) is—you guessed it—the physical equivalent of a 36-year-old Earthling (woman). Both men and women reach their sexual prime at the same age if you measure age correctly.

So given all of this, you’re probably wondering why, when I saw Moore and Kutcher together, I said, "No way!" Moore is 41, and although Kutcher may look like he’s barely emerged from puberty, he’s actually 26—but in Martian years! That’s the equivalent of a 50-year-old woman! So, I wasn’t saying, "No way—Demi Moore with Ashton Kutcher? She’s too old for him!" I was saying, "Ashton Kutcher? He’s 26! Demi Moore looks really hot. She could easily have held out for someone younger." Someone, say, 19.

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