the tiara is off.....

ok, so yesterday the best overheard conversation-of-the-day involved a co-worker who started work at the agency in question right out of high school, and who will be retiring with full benefits at age 58.....she is dreading going home to spend her waking hours with her spouse.......because....as she so succinctly puts it.....the tiara is off, and what's the point?........yes, what is her point?....i had to ask, and this what she said, or something close to it.....for the first couple of decades of my marriage everything was just fine, but when i started through menopause, and i put on a little weight and a lot of grey hair, all the sudden he started to dispair that i was no longer the sweet young thing he married.....and he started in finding fault with everything i did, as if to confirm this realization.......it happened when he was 51......and it hasn't let up.......and it will likely last until he gets a good look in his mirror, and realizes to his own horror all the sudden that he is not the sweet young thing i married.........i just love the idiom..allthesudden......it so speaks to a palpable rush of awareness........and i could feel this woman's pain....allthesudden...because much as i envy her early retirement, i also could understand her concern for 24/7 with someone who has yet to figure out that he, too, has lost some of his origin assets......