The Second Chance Evangelist

Middle-aged love is a damn beautiful thing.

If you are a member of that shrinking society of 21st-century humans who married their very first love, I truly hope you beat the odds, stayed together, and still get all tingly in your bits when they reach across the table to hold your hand in a restaurant.

If your first love, first marriage, first cohabitating domestic partnership didn’t work out, which statistically puts you in excellent company, you probably think about second chances.

A second chance at love is such a great expression. Rolls right off the tongue. But bit of a misnomer, isn’t it?

I mean, only two?

Photo : Eduardo Goody via Unsplash

If you were anything like me, enjoying the heck out of your teens and 20s and 30s, then love (or something dressed up an awful lot like it) might have rolled around a few times.

Who do I even count as the first love? The first guy I said I love you to? The first guy I said I love you to and really truly felt it? The first guy I thought I could marry? The first guy I thought I would marry before he utterly smashed my heart and left it for dead?

The father of my kids was my longest love, but not my first love.

I didn’t know that he’d be the last either.

It’s just how things were.

We didn’t get married, in part — and we discussed this far too often — because I didn’t believe that we could stand up in front of all our friends and family, and make a credible commitment to each other using a word like “forever.” I knew he wasn’t a person who could look at me through happy tears and say “I do” without rolling his eyes and making that guttural gagging noise for laughs; or saying something so mortifyingly sarcastic, that when I caught a glance at my parents, I’d see them looking at me with something less than elation.

After all, he was the guy who gave me Valentine’s Day flowers every year with cards that read, “Well, here’s these.”

Which is kind of funny. Or at least it was. At first. Until it wasn’t.

In a lot of ways, I think I’m still making peace with that. The people who know me best see the scars, however faded they are to the rest of the world.

But this year, I hit a new milestone.

A new longest love.

Eleven years.

OMG eleven years?

Who even loves someone every day for eleven years? And feels loved back every day for eleven years? Well — me! Surprise! And Jon too - presumably.

(Okay, for honesty sake, I just yelled into the other room, “Jon, do you feel loved every day?” He was like, what are you even talking about? So I asked him again whether he felt loved every day and he yelled back, “I do!” So there you go. Verbatim.)

As it turns out, if you’re not right for someone, you may be perfectly 100% extremely right for someone else. And that person was probably not right for someone else either, somewhere along the way, which means they’re out there thinking about you too. They just don’t know it’s you yet.

I thought of this when I read Mike’s latest post on

Hoarse Whisperer

. I raised a glass to him and his new +1, because nothing makes me happier than someone finding love a second time around — and that includes someone finding it the first time.

Is that weird?

There is something inarguably special about first loves. But I have never been able to resist stories of a hot middle-aged romance, a giggly 60-something couple I spot on a date, or those wedding pictures of glowing, 80-something brides with their grandchildren by their side. These are the people who are not in it for the wedding china. These are the people who are not in it for the ring. These are people who have lived long enough to know that love comes with shitty odds, and they have the scars to show for it — but they’re willing to sit at the table anyway.

I think we call that hope.

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Gratitude Note:

To Monday’s eclipse, which brought millions of people together, bonding over…science.

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Dave Pell

‘s Next Draft for years. Best headline writer anywhere, and he’ll keep you abreast of important and interesting stories, so you can skip the doom scrolling. (Speaking of which, I know I owe you Part II of the Great Anti-Doomscrolling Therapy Guide but I’m worried I have too many binge-watch recos to ever get it finished.)

Obsessed With:

Shameless. Wow. Wow. I’m up to S7 so no spoilers. But I don’t think I’ve loved a dysfunctional TV family this much since Schitt’s Creek. And I’m getting the catharsis I need right now from the highs, the lows, the painful tragedies, and ridiculously dark comedic moments. Also, sex. There is a whole lot of sex. Whatever amount of sex you think there is — multiply that by like a million.

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