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She’s 11 years older than him, they live 20 minutes apart, sleep at each other’s houses when they feel like it and have absolutely no intention of moving in together.
They call themselves married in their hearts.
Actual marriage?
No thanks.
Zoe is over 70 and lives in a small town in Connecticut. She has been married twice. So has her partner.
Both have children from those marriages. Hers are now in their 40s. His are in their early 20s because he had children later in life.
And after all of that marriage, divorce, children and whatever else gets accumulated over several decades of adult life, the two of them seem to have arrived at a rather nice arrangement.
His house.
Her house.
Twenty minutes in between.
Sleepovers.
Then sometimes they go home.
I have to admit, this has appeal.
Especially once you’re past the stage of needing another human being around to help locate the permission slip that absolutely had to be signed yesterday.
Zoe had already decided she was done living with men before she met him.
After one serious relationship ended, she’d lived with that boyfriend for nine months and concluded she never wanted to live with anyone again. She didn’t want another marriage either.
Her current partner had been divorced for about ten years and hadn’t lived with anyone since.
Same conclusion.
Different houses.
Perfect.
She calls herself a “Total cougar 🥰.”
I like Zoe.
On nights they’re together at his house, he cooks dinner.
While he cooks, they talk.
And not just the administrative briefing that can pass for conversation after a few decades with somebody.
They talk about work, home, their kids, projects, hobbies, how they’re feeling mentally and physically, sleep, the dog, friends, places they want to go, books, movies and anything one of them is upset about.
“He teases me a lot so we laugh a lot usually.”
After dinner, she cleans the kitchen.
He walks the dog.
He might play his guitar while she reads.
Then they play dominoes or backgammon for about an hour, watch television for another hour and go to bed.
They talk.
They snuggle.
At her house, the evening is basically the same except she usually has dinner ready. If she doesn’t, he helps cook.
He offers to clean.
She does it anyway because she likes cleaning.
This is the kind of detail I love because nobody includes it when describing a relationship.
Nobody says, “We have something special. Also I prefer to clean the kitchen myself.”
Yet there it is.
His nightstand currently has a lamp, breathing mask, book, Echo and phone.
Again, ordinary.
Useful.
Slightly more revealing than a couples portrait taken at sunset.
They rarely argue.
When they do, apparently home decorating can get them there.
Zoe loves decorating and says she’s good at it. She also seems quite willing to extend this service to his house whether requested or not.
“He’s a guy so he’s not too bad but I get upset when he doesn’t take my advice and he gets upset because after all it is his house.”
Fair.
“I’m relentless but have an open mind where he could be stubborn and likes to say he’s done xyz for 40 years!”
Also fair.
There are probably entire long-term relationships contained in the sentence, “I’ve done it this way for 40 years.”
His basement bothers her too.
It’s dirty. She would replace the tiles and paint if it were hers.
It isn’t hers.
Which, come to think of it, might be one of the hidden benefits of separate houses.
Eventually you can just go home and look at your own basement.
Money doesn’t appear to be much of an issue. Their household income, as Zoe described it, falls roughly between $100,000 and $150,000. She says they both know each other’s phone passcodes. She has a little money he doesn’t know about.
Nothing dramatic seems to be hiding underneath the arrangement.
She says there has been no cheating.
She has never seriously considered leaving.
She says she has no secret from him that matters.
That last little qualifier always gets my attention.
Nothing that matters.
I’m trying to snoop around in your relationship here, Zoe.
Work with me.
But the answer she does give when I ask what she has never told him is much more interesting anyway.
“I wish he was more sexual.”
There it is.
Sex happens a few times a year now, less than it did five years ago.
She initiates most of the time.
She rates her own satisfaction with their sex life a 4 out of 10.
She thinks his satisfaction is a 9.
Those are very different numbers.
They’ve talked about it.
What she wants isn’t particularly complicated either.
She wants him to want her.
“Sex. He doesn’t initiate and even ho my libido is way more than his I like the chase and first time ever I am the initiator more times than not”
Later she explains it more.
“Less often. Obviously more often and spontaneous. I’ve kinda give up on games … making it fun. He gives me multiple orgasms. Feelings are great. I love him very much. I just need to feel wanted. That’s what’s missing”
That answer changes the story a little.
The sex itself isn’t bad.
Apparently quite the opposite.
The problem is the invitation.
The chase.
Being pursued.
She wants him to flirt with her and come after her sexually.
That’s the one thing she says she’d change about him if she could change anything with no consequences.
Which is interesting because nearly everything else Zoe says about this man sounds like somebody who can’t quite believe her luck.
She says he’s always doing nice things for her.
Not one big grand gesture. Just lots of things.
“He really cares and is very in tune to my feelings.”
He knows she likes dancing, so recently they went dancing.
He’s in a band. At an event, he dedicated a song to her and told the audience he loves her.
That would do it for me.
Not the band necessarily.
Public declarations make me nervous.
But I see the appeal.
Asked what happens immediately after sex, Zoe says:
“We snuggle. We talk. We laugh.”
Asked how close she has come to cheating, she says never.
“Not even in my mind.”
Asked whether she’d stay if she discovered he was having an affair and he wanted the relationship to continue, she can’t even get herself into the hypothetical.
“Can’t even imagine. I would be devastated”
And if she could do anything knowing she’d never get caught?
Nothing.
“Wouldn’t be worth it. It would live in my mind and hat would probably be worse than getting caught.”
So I believe her when she says this relationship is important to her.
Actually, “important” probably doesn’t cover it.
She says the worst thing he’d say about being with her is that she overthinks everything.
The best?
He tells her she’s good and sweet and that nobody can make him laugh as much as she does.
She thinks other people can see how happy they make each other.
They annoy each other sometimes.
She doesn’t seem terribly concerned about that.
Nor should she be, judging by the basement situation.
She had two marriages before this relationship.
She describes the husbands as horrible.
“Good thing about having ex.s. If I didn’t have those two horrible marriages I don’t think I would have realized how incredibly lucky I am.”
There were good men she dated afterward too.
They just weren’t it.
What she seems to have now is something she didn’t necessarily expect to find after all those years and all those relationships.
A partner without a shared mortgage.
A boyfriend without any apparent desire to become a husband.
Two houses.
Adult children.
Six young grandchildren on her side.
Dinner together when they choose.
The dog.
Dominoes.
Backgammon.
Dancing.
A man with a guitar who dedicates songs to her.
And enough time apart that neither has to worry about getting in each other’s way.
She says they’re each other’s rock.
She likes knowing somebody loves her and that she’s special.
She likes planning vacations together, helping each other with the yard, painting things, watching television, sharing whatever is good or bad that week.
And she likes going home.
“I like not living together because I like my own space sometimes and doing something or nothing and not have to think about the other person.”
That may be one of the least Hallmark sentences in the entire survey.
Which makes what she says next even better.
“We always say we are married in our hearts ❤️❤️❤️❤️”
She worries elsewhere that she may sound “too hallmark-y.”
Maybe.
Then again, after two bad marriages, she’s over 70, living in her own house, dating a man 11 years younger who cooks dinner, plays guitar, takes her dancing and makes her laugh every day.
I’d probably use a few hearts too.
As for why they’re still together, Zoe didn’t struggle with that question.
“We are together because I could never imagine being with anyone else but him. We make each laugh every single day and every day he put the stars in my eyes”
And then, in case I somehow still hadn’t gotten the message:
“I fudgin ADORE him 🥰”
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