Stella Grey: Shacking up in mid-life makes me feel 28 again | Life...

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/17/stella-grey...

Stella Grey: Shacking up in mid-life makes

me feel 28 again
Stella Greys Midlife Ex-wife column about her online dating exploits ran in the
Guardian Family section for 18 months. Then she met Edward. She shares what shes
learned about cohabiting the second time round. Plus, an extract from her brilliant new
book, The Heartfix
Stella Grey
Saturday 17 September 2016 06.00BST

or almost 18 months, up until April, I wrote a column in Family about my midlife

online dating disasters, an experience that ended in triumph when I found
Edward on a website as I was deleting myself from it. Now we live together, Ive
been thinking about how dierent cohabiting is the second time round. Edward
and I had been in long marriages before living alone, and shacking up has presented
unforeseen hazards and lessons. Here are 13 things I have learned.
1 Shopping, cooking, entertainments and housework are subjects full of unexpected
traps. Ordinary things youve done with someone else for 20 years (and then in a
self-determining way for another two) are abruptly sources of controversy. Suddenly
theres a man on the next sofa cushion who is, in a word, alien. He cant miss an episode
of Robot Wars, doesnt like Almodvar and nds televised motor racing relaxing. These
arent bad things in themselves taste is taste but they have to be acclimatised to. This
alien in your bed, this Mork: hes the man who buys the cheap pizzas, not really seeing
the dierence; hes revealed as a natural Frugal, while youre a natural Lavish. When
youre away he buys a pouch of lled pasta, eats half and keeps the rest for the following
day. He suggests that the cooked soggy broccoli he put in the fridge in a bowl be used
up in the mac cheese.
2 Unexpectedly, kitchens can be ashpoints. You come into a midlife shack-up with
ingrained domestic habits. I overstock the dry goods cupboard, perhaps subconsciously
convinced that Armageddon will come without warning. Having nine kinds of pasta and
every spice known to botany makes me feel safe. Edward limits himself to heavy sighs
when he opens the doors and theres a cous-cous avalanche. He doesnt get that the
shelves in the fridge are hierarchical. Cream goes on the top shelf with the cheese, right?
It never goes on the bottom shelf with the meat, ever. I have declared there is no cream
and hes gone and produced it from behind some pork loins and I have been bulgy eyed
with critique. He doesnt rinse and squeeze the sponge when hes mopped the worktop
and this insignicant thing has brought us the closest weve come to a blazing row. The
thing they never tell you about living with someone is that the worst arguments youll
ever have (barring bankruptcy, adultery, pranged cars and other such trivia) will start
with a kitchen sponge.

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3 Learn how the other operates when you disagree. Were starting to take account of
that, which is a skill it has taken me all my life to learn. I used to rush in, during my
marriage, and escalate and make generalised accusations and self-sabotage. Im getting
better at taking a breath and listening. A recent incident ended with me saying calmly,
Youre getting on my nerves, and him saying, Sometimes you get on mine, and me
saying, Sometimes Im bloody annoying when Im right, and him saying, Sometimes,
yes, you are, but not often. Hardly ever.
We kissed and that was that. This talk-down technique has worked in both directions.
4 Resist the urge to be Veruca (or Vernon) Salt about getting things your own way, but be
prepared for some saltiness: when two busy trac streams converge, theres always an
adjustment period. Sometimes the other person will secretly be grateful that youre a
control freak because they dont want the job of rummaging through every antique pair
of curtains on eBay looking for The One. Theyve had enough of looking for The One. Its
vital for both of you to sharpen your awareness of when taking the initiative is necessary
and wanted. And when it isnt.
5 Tolerance is hugely important. Ive become almost cool about Edwards need to watch
golf on TV. He is tolerant of my need to research everything to the nth, including holiday
locations (he favours a lucky dip approach). While investigating the possibility of buying
a teeny European bolthole for our old age, I announced that Id found a great village by a
Spanish lake, but then discounted it because the lake was a reservoir and I once had a
dream in which big sucky pipes under the surface of one sucked me right in and away,
and Edward sat nodding sagely before saying, No reservoirs, then. Noted.
Mutual resilience about the others quirks is a key signier of contentment, and
contentment is the state to aim for. Contentments relaxed and everyday and
sustainable. Happiness is often too uppy a state to last and the inevitable downy can
easily be misinterpreted as a catastrophe, whereas contentment ambles along in the
inter-zonal.
6 Sex-wise, you need to nd your real pattern, which might not tally with the one you
had when you were dating. For us, there are a) periods of intense activity OK, not
usually that intense interspersed with b), sibling snuggling-up like the babes in the
wood. Occasionally one of us is in A mode while the other is denitely in B. This
happened the other night. Why are you jiggling? I asked. Whats that dgetiness
mean? Im frisky. It means Im frisky. Oh God, no. Go to sleep. Im so tired. He
started rubbing the small of my back. Hey, I said. You there. You try to whisk my PJ
trousers o and Ill thump you in the Adams apple.
Its lucky for me that he thinks Im funny, and that he can make me howl with laughter.
Nothing is as underrated by the young as the necessity of that.
7 Incompatible circadian rhythms might unexpectedly be a thing. Edward is a lark and I
used to be a night owl but, like nuns in a convent whose menstrual cycles get into sync,
Im gravitating into lark mode and have started to see a midnight bedtime as daringly
late. Were often ensconced with books and the teapot by 10pm, like picture book
pre-digital-age midlifers, like Raymond Briggs Jim and Hilda. Im glad I have you, I say
sometimes, when weve kissed our goodnights. I mean it most fervently.

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8 If you are ready to embrace the cardigan, be sure not to move in with a snowboarder.
Our holidays are growing steadily more middle aged; were probably only a biscuits
width from coach trips to Germany so as to cruise along the Rhine. With only ourselves
to please, we can hit the Neolithic trail and dawdle round magnicent gardens, where
Latin plant names have been noted on phones.
9 Little ways of showing your love are a big deal. Edward was hugely supportive of my
writing the book, even though its about the lead-up to him and then him specically. He
doesnt want to read it but says he hopes others nd it useful; it hasnt much to do with
who we are now. He smiles and shrugs, when he says so, and the love and trust really
move me.
Hell say You look nice, if I make an eort, but he doesnt care if theres makeup or not,
or what I weigh; he has no ghoulish notions about a woman being an asset on his arm.
Hes getting wrinkly and greyer and his jawline isnt what it was when we met and nor is
mine and he doesnt give a shit. Hes unselfconsciously self-accepting and that is
inspiring.
10 You should be able to relax completely and be yourself. We socialise a little bit, keep a
sketchy track of culture, but essentially were home bodies. We hole up with hot
chocolate and books and blankets and music and box sets and big socks. He falls asleep
with a Robert Harris clutched to his chest and I feel a surge of fondness. Weve been
known to draw down the blinds on a Sunday morning and watch a thriller and eat ginger
sponge pudding, though thats about as transgressive as it gets.
11 At some point while shacked up, the M word may arise. Marriage. Is it worth doing
again, when really theres no need? Were good as we are. I have occasional hankerings, I
admit, for I do (and how it would make my mother less anxious) and an incredible
dress and rose petals thrown at my head. And for our coming old age. I never want to be
in a situation in which hes in hospital with a stroke and I am not next of kin, for some
outmoded reason. Or vice versa.
12 There ought to be a mutual plan for the next chapter. Thats part of the second chance
romance: using the newness and freshness to have new and fresh ideas. We have an
optimistic view of our 60s. Sixty is still some way o but its on the horizon, and if the
span of life is marked o into quarters, 60-80 is probably going to be the nal segment.
As Je Bridges said recently, he thinks of retirement as re-tyrement, having new tyres
tted to life and going o in a new direction. Its a weak pun but I know what he means.
How you see your nal quarter unfolding is a key point of compatibility, one you
mightnt have thought about when you were gaily (or not so gaily) wading through
available matches on CloseToDespair.com.
13 Its important to trust enough to be saved from aspects of yourself. I have obsessive
and perfectionist tendencies, so three trips to paint stockists and 11 matchpots daubed
on to squares of lining paper were needed to decide on the sitting room walls. A trip to a
garden centre to get two pots to ank our door turned into four visits and nine pots, and
six clematis plants and four geraniums and three rose bushes, and if Edward hadnt
pleaded for a cease-re the war on the garden would never have ended. I was happy to
admit to this. We confess our failings to one another and nd them amusing. An inability
to admit to them is even funnier, and thats pretty key. Once the wall colours were

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agreed upon we spent a happy week with paint rollers, singing along to the radio, and it
was a bit like being 28 again. The idea that were at the beginning, that things are fresh,
unspoiled, rich with possibility what better feeling could there be in your 50s than
that?

Read our extract from Stella Greys book, The Heartfix

When I told my mum I was abandoning online dating and going out to nd men in the
city, she clapped her hands in rejoicing. She thought there was a qualitative dierence,
as if nding a man online would be like nding one on sale at Aldi. Real-world men were
bound to be better quality, she thought. Generally, I spared her the sad litany of failures
to instigate chat in bookshops and delicatessens and with men in parks, letting my dog
meet their dog. I didnt even know if I wanted to go back to that kind of happenstance.
Online dating at its best sends you to meet-ups fully informed. Id grown accustomed to
the data sets. Id grown used to self-descriptions, the likes and dislikes, the bucket lists
and the all-round self-revealing that goes on in a properly lled-out prole page. Little is
known about a stranger who asks you out while your terriers say hello to one another
beside a shrubbery after ve minutes of dog chat. You cant really subject them to the
standard questions. You cant go barging in to their private lives, gung ho. So, are you
married? Oh single, really, thats interesting, and what are you hoping for, from a
relationship, something long term? When youre used to the online way of doing things,
accidental rst meetings oer so little of people upfront, as facts. When you meet online
it isnt usually going to take until the third date to discover that someone is a
Scientologist or a conspiracy theorist, or that he has nine children.
Id already tried singles-oriented real-world socialising, and I could only attempt it a
second time if I pretended the rst time hadnt happened. Id done the joining-societies
thing; Id become a gallery friend and had been to public lectures. Nothing doing. How
can a conversation start in those circumstances that isnt embarrassing or obvious?
Id already humiliated myself in wine shops, rushing in, sidling up to nice-looking men
and talking to them about vins de pays. Theyd bought their wine and gone home.
Id tried to initiate chat with men who stopped o in the railway station food hall at six
oclock, as they stood in front of the Meals for One section. Id done this in an early
phase, post-separation, when my mental health wasnt the best. In my head I was
someone else. I was 28 again. I could see her, the slender, striking, dark-haired girl, in
the falsely reecting mirror behind my eyes. At 28, I was irted with on an ongoing basis,
by men older and younger.
At 28 you dont see yourself at 50, thickened in the waist and loosening around the
throat. It doesnt occur to you that those same men who ogled you at the oce, back
then, would run a mile if they met you now, even though theyre all older than you.
The Heartfix by Stella Grey is published by Harper Collins, 12.99. To order a copy for
10.65, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846
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