The Aging Wife And The End Of Youth
[I]t sounds absurd to suggest that a man's wife would kick one to the curb because his physical peak has passed, so how does it make any sense to imagine that a husband would be inclined to get rid of his wife simply because she isn't 22 anymore? Because there are more attractive women out there? There always were. There may be a few more than there were before, but he always had other options. Is a woman going to eventually be eclipsed by twenty-somethings? Of course, it is the way of the world, although to be honest, so many younger women are fat these days that perhaps it takes longer than it used to.
What I think the reader in the Hell of the Formerly Cute is missing is that men tend to possess what can be described as an attractional inertia with regards to the women of their youth. It is hard for us to clearly distinguish between the woman that we are with now and the woman that she was twenty years ago, so long as the changes are not too dramatic and thereby create a cognitive dissonance. Not only that, but the history of a couple's time together plays a big role, to say nothing of the natural chemistry, which doesn't necessarily change with age. An objective observer might claim she is not as beautiful as she was when we met, and yet I find her every bit as attractive as I did then, if not more so. It's not that I can't see the little changes that age has wrought, but I have to make a conscious effort to notice them. For the most part, I see her simply as who she is, the same slender, pretty blonde that she always has been.
This is why it is so tragic when women, particularly women over thirty, cast aside their husbands in search of something better. Because no matter whom they meet, no one will ever look at them again through love goggles, which like beer goggles, tend to make a man see a woman through a soft and flattering lens as her mythical and eternally youthful self rather than the harsh, objective light of reality.
Aging is not fun. For a man, hitting the wall is just as dramatic; the experience of a sudden loss in speed, stamina, and strength is as unenjoyable for men as a loss of beauty is for women. Now, it is true that it's not as readily noticeable for a man as it is for women, but the effects are still there: a man is no longer in his prime, and he must act accordingly from here on out. A woman that has hit the wall and is married worries that she still has to compete with younger, hotter women, but that is, as Vox points out, ridiculous: those women have always been there, they've always been hot, but what they don't have is twenty or thirty years of history, love, and romance attached to them like a man has with his wife. Will the young 22-year old co-ed be good for anything more than a fling? What women don't understand about men is that we don't notice them aging if we're in love with them. If she hasn't changed too dramatically (they shave their heads, put on 200 pounds, get orange skin), she'll still look just as beautiful to him as she did when they first got married. Sure, she won't be in her prime, but the rose-tinted glasses of love tend to blind us to our beloved's imperfections. Call it a blessing from God, if you will, but the worry that so many have after passing their prime is worrying over nothing; as long as she takes care of herself, is sweet and affectionate, and retains an active sex life with her husband, she will be to him much like how she was in the early years of marriage.
We notice our own faults more than those who love us do. It's not that they can't, it's that, for love's sake, they are pushed off to the side so we can see them as we did when we first loved them. It's not that men are unaware of women aging, it's that we don't really notice it with our wives. There's a difference between the aging of a woman you don't love and the aging of a woman you do love: you notice the former and not the latter. Love's rose-tinted glasses are a good thing and should not be underestimated, but neither does it mean that one can simply let oneself go. Keeping yourself in shape is always good for maximizing one's attractiveness, no matter what the age.
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