My days of wine and roses

Some of the things I write in this post are excerped from things I have previously written here. But with Valentine's day looming over us, I felt inclined to do a summary. Below is the famous poem behind my heading:

"They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.


They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream"

In other words, one is expected to have some happy years in one's youth which soon vanish never to return.

I have been much luckier than that. My days have been good most of the time. I have drunk much wine and given many roses. I count my good days as the ones I have been in happy relationships. And in my last 60 years that has been most of the time.

In April, 2021, when I was 76, however, I came out of a long relationship. The older one gets, the harder it becomes to form new partnerships so my prospects of more wine and roses seemed bleak. Many old people die alone.

But my luck held. At the very end of that year, I met Z, a lady of Serbian origin, also in her '70s.

It was not love at first sight but we did like one-another from the beginning and that soon deepened into a very loving relationship. The biggest surprise is that she and I are about as incompatible as it gets. I fail to understand her strong European accent a lot of the time and I am as unfit as she is super-fit. She jogs for miles every day and I walk only short distances. She is still pretty good-looking for her age while my looks break cameras these days. And that's just the start of our differences.

So compatibility is not all it's cracked up to be! You CAN fall in love without it!

So how do I analyse what worked between us? Hard to say definitively but I think it begins with us liking one-another. And we are both around top of the IQ range. She once said: "I used to go for handsome men but they are all stupid!"

I think the main influence that keeps us together is a principle I have always followed: If you find two good things in another person all the rest can be negotiated or adapted to. And the two things I particularly look for in women are a high IQ and a liking for classical music.

And Z has both of those two rare qualities. She is even strongly moved by the music of J.S. Bach. That latter would mean nothing to most people but it is huge to me as I feel the same way about Bach. Mine are minority tastes but as an academic I am stuck with them.

We are also both high-functioning autistics so understand one-another's autistic behaviours when they emerge. The fellowship of the autistics is an unlikely concept but something like that does seem to work for Z and me at times. And aging does mellow one. At my age I have nothing to prove and no need to achieve. So I can just sit back and just enjoy a relationship for what it is.

On Christmas day, 2022 we just lay in bed talking for most of the time together -- with her doing most of the talking, as usual. She spent some time talking about Trajan, which is a pretty intellectual topic. I am myself interested in Roman history so I knew what she was talking about. She has a lot of intellectual interests -- principally in ancient history, European literature and clinical psychology. We have shared high culture interests and that pleases both of us. On one occasion, when Z wanted to mock me as being idle (I am) she quite appositely referred to me as being an Oblomov, which is an allusion to a classic 19th century Russian novel.

On another occasion, Z gave me an extended lecture in moral philosophy. She likes Erich Fromm's rejection of relativism. I said nothing in response but I was familiar with her topic. I have had a few academic articles on the topic published.

Z also has a good sense of humor and a liking for kisses and cuddles. She often has fallen asleep in my arms and I like that. So there was a lot of affection between us. It was a real relationship. It lasted for two years and I have many good memories of it. It still seems amazing to me that I had so many days of wine and roses so late in life.