Admiring a man's bunch of flowers yesterday, he said it was his wife's birthday.

I said all that was appropriate, and asked if he was taking her somewhere good for dinner.

He replied that she was having lunch with a couple of friends at a local hotel, and she would rather do that than dine with him.

am I alone in finding that rather sad

I think it is sad but understandable. Better to be happy chatting away with a friend on a special day than sit with a quiet husband who has no conversation. cheers Penny

'Till friends us do part'

Depends on circumstances I suppose, and without knowing that ?--- its hard to give an opinion. As Penny said---its sad but------

Hes wife is probaly having a better time without him

My best friend IS my husband so, yes I find that sad too Laurie.

Thank you, Monika. I thought I was a lone voice!

I suppose it depends on your view of marriage.

I can't imagine why somebody who likes conversation would marry someone who doesn't have any, on the other hand I can think of nothing worse than being married to a non stop chatterbox.

That is why you have courtship and engagement, to find these things out.

Not infallible, of course.

I can remember my dismay on the first morning back from our honeymoon when I discovered I had to spend the rest of my life with someone who liked to sing while she made breakfast (she didn't get to make you breakfast before the honeymoon in those days!)!

on the other hand, herself was just as horrified to discover that she had sworn to love honour and obey someone whose conversation before 10.00 am consisted of monosyllabic grunts!

Come on Laurie, how many men and women act their best when courting, no need to act when wed. you talk about monosyllabic grunts, well lots of us end up with that permanently... cheers Penny

I, too, think it's really sad but I'm also blessed with a husband who's my dearest friend (even if I do spend a worrying amount of time wanting to murder him!). Our birthdays are usually spent together, either just the two of us or going out with mutual good friends.

There was a time, 45 years ago, when I thought we'd never run out of things to talk about. Now, however, we do have many long spells of companionable silence while he's absorbed in whatever he's doing and so am I. When we DO have something to talk about, however, then we can still talk for England.

Penny wrote:Come on Laurie, how many men and women act their best when courting, no need to act when wed. you talk about monosyllabic grunts, well lots of us end up with that permanently... cheers Penny

As I said, Penny, depends a bit on your view of marriage.

I certainly didn't "act" while courting, though obviously on your best behaviour on a first date, and if my wife acted she certainly kept it up fairly well for some fifty odd years!

The only difference in our behaviour in the first years of our relationship and tnose before her second stroke after thirty odd years, which obviously did make us change a bit, was that our caresses were a bit more intimate!

She never heard me break wind or swear (and after 40 years service I could swear in any NATO language and many others!), I always walked on the outside, was below her on steps and stairs and held open doors. She never opened the car door (unless it was a race for the loo, which of course she always won).

If she was spending the evening with me, i.e. when I left work, she was invariably bathed, changed and made up, and if I was spending the evening with her, i.e. when I left work, I would invariably wash, shave (with aftershave!) and change just as we did when we were courting.

She was as likely in 1963, to throw a cushion on the floor and sit with her head in my lap so that I could play with her hair, as she was in 1993.

After thirty years of marriage after coming off the backshift one night I got her out of bed at half past midnight and stove her a couple of miles to the top of a hill to the "moonpath" across the Forth, just as, while courting, we had sat on the Barrowfields in Newquay and watched stretch out into the Atlantic.

When our worktimes coincided, or when I was off, I would invariably meet her from work or from any ladies. function she had been to.

No, there was no acting Penny. We may have matured, but we didn't change.

Good for you Laurie, sounds as though you had a perfect match. Sorry it had to be cut short. You still have lovely memories.Take care. cheers Penny

Not quite perfect.

I never got her out of the habit of wanting to move house once the creases were out of the curtains (15 times in 30 years!), and she never convinced me that anything green, raw and unpeeled, like apples, lettuce and cucumber was fit to be fed only to animals!

It was pretty good though.

15 times. I don't think I would like that many moves. Made three to-date and that is it. You had a good run wedded, we reach 58 this September. How time flies. Take care. cheers Penny

I just wish that we could still spend all our birthdays together; I still miss him so very much even though it is now 34 years since he died.

laurie53 wrote:Admiring a man's bunch of flowers yesterday, he said it was his wife's birthday.

I said all that was appropriate, and asked if he was taking her somewhere good for dinner.

He replied that she was having lunch with a couple of friends at a local hotel, and she would rather do that than dine with him.

am I alone in finding that rather sad

I'm wondering if he said this light heartedly.
Maybe she was having lunch with her friends and dinner with him....