Who here got married, for the first time, latest in life?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

… and how long did it take you to adjust to the new situation?

I got married on April 22 of this year, about three weeks before my 50th birthday (May 17). First marriage for me, third for her.

Things I’m adjusting to:

• Simply having somebody always in my “space”

This has probably been the most difficult thing for me, so far. Mrs. Rik moved in with me a little more than a month before we got married (she had to get out of her apartment for financial reasons). In the previous 20 years, I spent 8+ years (May 1996 - July 2004) living in the local men’s homeless shelter, which was run by my stepfather. Lots of other people around all the time, but I had a private room where I spent most of my time. That was followed by 7-1/2 years of sharing a house with a couple other men (July 2004 - January 2012). There, again, I spent most of my time in my own room, and my housemates and I respected each other’s privacy. We all moved out of there in February 2012, after our rental house got foreclosed out from under us. I moved into my own apartment, by myself. One of my housemates suggested that we find a place together, but at that point I had decided that I really wanted to have my own space without other people around, so I signed a lease on a 1-bedroom apartment. I had my own completely private space for a little over 4 years before my wife-to-be moved in.

• Toilet paper

Before she moved in, I’d go to Costco and buy a 30-pack of Kirkland TP, and I wouldn’t have to buy any more for maybe six months. We go through it surprisingly quickly now.

• Laundry

My laundry procedure for the last 20+ years was to take the basket containing the last week’s clothing to the washing machine, dump everything in, and start the machine. Then throw it all in the dryer and fold it when I had time. My “wardrobe” is mostly jeans and T-shirts, all of which are “darks”. My only “whites” are my socks, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to put quarters in the machine to do my socks separately. Basically, doing my laundry was a maybe 3-hour process.

Mrs. Rik has way more clothes than I have, and she wants to separate everything … she’s ben working on the laundry for three days and I don’t have clean socks because she hasn’t gotten to the whites yet …

• Sex

Dear god this is embarrassing, but we haven’t “consummated”.

Fuck you, porn! (And, likewise, fuck me.)

Here I am, 50 years old, and thanks to the Internet, I’ve spent the last 20 years watching porn that features 18 - 25-year-old women. Skinny little young things. And now I have a 49-year-old wife … who looks like a 49-year-old woman. And holy crap, I love her so very very much, but my damned dick just wont get hard for her because I’ve spent 20 years looking at 20-year-olds with tiny tits and skinny waists and perky little asses, and now I can’t get it up for my appropriately-aged wife who looks like she should look at her age. Fuck me.

I resigned myself years ago to dying single. I had decided to fuck my asshole dad and not carry on the family name, and I never planned to get married. Yet here I am, unexpectedly meeting and marrying a woman I just hit it off with.

Please tell me I’m not alone!

2

I got married about the same age as you, my wife (also first marriage) about the same age as you wife. There have been plenty of adjustments but we’ve both adapted and modified our lives. We have a healthy sex life, so I can’t help you there. The fact that you’re not physically attracted to your new bride seems like a pretty big red flag; not an insurmountable problem (heh) but one you should work on, perhaps with a couples therapist.

Toilet paper and laundry don’t rise to the level of things that occupy my time. She takes care of all the laundry and I’m glad to have that off my plate. I do the bulk of the shopping but since I do the bulk of the cooking that works out fine. The bigger things we deal with are the quality of time we spend together (getting off computers and actually interacting), making sure we have time with our families, and planning our travel together, which we both love to do.

It’s a big adjustment, but one I’d never take back.

3

We got married last October, on my 70th birthday (and my husband’s 50th). No major adjustments necessary, since we’d been together since 1987. The only minor adjustments were that a silver band on our right hands became a gold band on our left; and it took a while to stop referring to each other as “my partner.”

4

Did you know while you were courting that you weren’t sexually attracted to her? Did she? There are certainly perfectly good reasons to get married that don’t involve sex, and if that’s the kind of marriage you both want, it’s not an issue.

If it’s not, then you should have known all along that it was going to be a problem. I mean, this epiphany you’ve had about porn should have been apparent all along. (And it’s not the porn, it’s you. Many, if not most men find it possible to beat off to pictures of young women and still find their same age spouse sexually desirable.)

P.S. If you need clean white socks, you can always wash them yourself.

5

That shit works both ways: do you have cheese-grater abs and a sink-plunger dick? If not, then quit complaining.

6

My wife and I were 32 when we were married, so you have us beat by a fair piece.

Takes some getting used to, I admit. I just submitted, right away. Dropped all the boundaries. Now, it’s weird when she’s not around.

On the plus side here, you’re both at the age where feminine hygiene products aren’t going to be around much longer, if they’re not out of the picture already. I have no issues with them, mind you, but when they’re not around the house you don’t have to think about issues like, “We need a lidded trash can for the bathroom so the dog doesn’t get into anything.”

The solution for this is staring you in the face: now you know why so many old guys wear dark socks.

It’s slowed down for us a bunch as well, in large part due to the kids being around, but also because, even when they’re away for the evening, we’d rather take the opportunity to rest and enjoy the peace and quiet rather than hump like bunnies. It’s just part of getting older.

HOWEVER, you need to keep the intimacy up in other ways if you’re going to let sex become a non-priority. Let her know you love her in lots of little ways. Your marriage needs that.

7

We are not legally married, but are in a long-term committed relationship. I sold my home and moved in with her 12 or so years ago.

I do my laundry like the OP and she does hers like women tend to do. Works for us.

I go to Sam’s Club every so often and buy a crap-load of toilet paper (and paper towels, etc) for each of us. We have separate bathrooms which is nice.

As far as sex goes, we are both 58 years old. I have the body of a 58 year old, she is into exercise and has the body of a 25 year old. It works for both of us.

8

Laundrywise, can you just throw your own in once a week like you’d been doing and she can do hers seperately?

9

Is a “sink-plunger dick” really desirable? The one I have is six inches long, about the diameter of a cigar, and has a rubber cup on the end… hey, you know what? It does look like a sink plunger!

10

Just wait till the OP begins getting monthly bills from rotorooter.

11

I might win the earliest. Married at 17, divorced at 18.

12

I don’t have the abs, but I weigh maybe 20 pounds more than I did when I was 18. But you’re missing my point. It’s something I recognized years and years ago: being single for so long, what I find physically attractive hasn’t aged along with me. I don’t have any excuse for that beyond “Hey, I’ve been single my whole life, and I was voluntarily celibate for the last 20 years.” My last “serious” girlfriend was a 19-year-old cheerleader, when I was 23 and in college, more than half my lifetime ago. The next “girlfriend” I had was a mentally ill 20-year-old when I was 36 (with whom I never had sex; I figured out early that she was ill, and remembered the “don’t stick your dick in the crazy” rule). The last time I had sex before I got married was in December 1995, when I was 29, and the girl was 18, and that was fucked up (and a long story behind it).

Not sure what a “sink-plunger dick” is, but I’m happy with what I have.

Had I married young, and had a wife or girlfriends who aged along with me, my physical taste would have probably matured along with me. Circumstances in my life led to my not having a wife/girlfriends to age with me (spending most of my 30s in a men’s homeless shelter didn’t help), so my tastes kinda got stuck. I didn’t help my own case by resorting to porn.

Thankfully, my new wife understands that I have my “routine”, and for the most part she leaves me to it. We’ve only been married for less than a month, and only lived together for a month or so before the wedding, so she’s being patient with my “routine”. For my part, I’m consciously trying to not get completely absorbed in my “routine”, and am making time for her.

LOL! Sadly, I’m kinda hooked on wearing white athletic ankle socks.

Yeah, I’m actually gonna suggest separate laundry baskets, at least for the time being. I’m used to, and don’t mind, doing my own laundry. It would also solve the problem of her not knowing which of my T-shirts are my “everyday” shirts and which are my “work shirts” (the ones I wear under my chef jacket). I keep them separate, but she stacks them all together.

13

Anyway, off to work. Back in 8 hours.

14

I got married one month short of my 55th birthday.

No real adjustments, as we had already lived together for quite a few years, and had been together for decades.

15

Take a laundry marker and put a mark on the inside of the neck (where the label is) of your work shirts. Works for me.

16

This cracked me up! I don’t know what that last part means, but it’s funny as hell!!
To the OP, how does your wife feel about the lack of sex? My beloved has a very low sex drive which was problematic when we were young, but we’re both post menopausal now and mine has slowed to match hers. Things are much better as we’ve aged, very loving and happy with much less concern over sex.

17

Yes, I think Penfeather has done his part to spread a little sunshine today.

18

Rik you sound like the David Wooderson character from Dazed and Confused.

19

Who woulda seen that comin’?

20

It just clicked with me that you started a few threads about this relationship previously. The toilet paper and laundry things are just noise. Personal space is a real issue and one you should work on.

The sex thing was probably pretty clear from the beginning and you ignored it. The lack of consummation indicates a pretty messed up relationship from day 1, IMO. People were trying to point out lots of red flags with this relationship and you ignored them. What you are experiencing now isn’t normal but it was highly predictable.

And this thread that you started indicates a lot of sexual angst and 20+ years of self-imposed celibacy based on bad or at least misinterpreted information about an STD.

What are you hoping to get from this thread? People may have opinions on your first three points, they’re interesting with respect to a normal relationship. The last point isn’t normal and is mostly unrelated to age or marriage.