50 questions

Can we still love each other when we are ninety?

Marcel : We are 89 and 90 years old respectively and we were married in 1925. And we have always loved each other! How is this possible? I will tell you, it is simpler than we think: everything depends on our conception of love. To love is to be happy in making the other happy. This is almost selfish! At that moment, our own desires that might interfere with the happiness of the other become secondary. And if you do everything for the happiness of the other, there is no reason why this relationship shouldn’t last.

Georgette : Certainly, this demands a certain forgetting of self that is not always easy. Certain questions may be also sources of conflict. For our part, we know in our marriage that we agree on essential matters: religion, our concept of family, education of children, friends, etc. This being the case, a great number of difficulties are automatically avoided. There remain the little difficulties of daily life that we can always work out if we want to.

In this area, frankness is essential: we must be able to say everything, to declare without delay anything that we might not have in common, to want to look together for the answer that would satisfy both of us. Silence is never a solution.

Marcel : But you may ask me, how, practically, can I make the other happy? This also is very simple. You have to take care of them. Take every occasion to pay attention to the other. And to respect them profoundly, because politeness is a fundamental rule. And if you add a good dose of humour, you have an infallible recipe!

We have known hardships, like everyone else. Not only in our relationship but in the course of life: a separation for professional reasons, during which we wrote to each other every day - a health problem that immobilized my wife for four months after the birth of our third child, the war which separated us twice in succession - and during this time correspondance wasn’t possible, except for two unhappy postcards a month - the bankrupcy of my business, etc. But in our case, the hardships never threatened our unity. On the contrary, they bound us together even more.

Georgette : For us, one of the greatest sources of our unity have been our children. And now our grandchildren and great grandchildren. They also are the objects of our preoccupation and love.

Marcel : After 67 years, our love has evolved, most certainly. What we feel for each other now is different from the enchantment of our first meeting, or the passionate love at the time of our marriage. But even so, it has not diminished. On the contrary, I can say that it has been enriched day after day by all that we have lived, by all the memories we share and by the very profound knowledge that we have of each other.

Georgette : Were we made for one another? I don’t know if this expression is very accurate. I believe that we were made one and the other. We evolved together one with the other.

Both of us have the good fortune of still being alive and of not suffering from very serious infirmities. I don’t see well, my husband doesn’t hear very well, but as a friend told us recently: You are so united that, together, you do not need more than two eyes and two ears!