This piece was written by one of our dear readers—a woman with something real to say. Each month, we handpick the best submissions for Dear Reader because we’re after that PROVOKED bite: truth, intelligence, and heart. These stories come from women our age—women who’ve lived enough to know better and still care enough to tell it anyway. Because being seen and heard matters. Because storytelling is how we stitch ourselves to one another. And because when one woman speaks her truth, another finally recognizes her own. — Susan Dabbar, Editor-in-Chief
I wanted someone to blame for the young woman flirting with my husband. The wrong place to look, it turned out, was at her.
She leaned in close and lightly placed her hand on his forearm. Her head (with no stray gray hairs!) tilted back, her throaty laugh floating over to me. This 20-something woman was openly flirting with my husband of more than 20 years, a man old enough to be her father.
Was my face flushing with rage or an unwelcome hot flash? Definitely rage. I rushed over, grabbed his hand, and exited the concert venue. The look on her face read, “You’re with him?”
“How dare she!” I initially thought.
What had started as a fun night out with friends enjoying live music ended on a sour note. On the drive home, I confronted my husband.
“Why weren’t you wearing your ring?” I demanded. “Your naked finger was asking to be flirted with!”
The ring had been an object of dissension for years. During the summer months, the decades-old gold band grew tight. But the ring wasn’t the problem. I trusted him with or without it. I wanted to blame the younger woman, but I had once been her, unabashed and flirtatious with any handsome stranger who stole my attention.
For the next several weeks, I went through a range of emotions: jealousy, anger, pride (after all, this hot guy was my husband), and sadness. That’s where I stayed. I can’t remember the last time someone other than my husband flirted with me.
Where the Blame Really Belongs
The truth is, he’s aging better than I am.
More importantly, he’s allowed to age.
His gray hairs are distinguished; mine are dowdy. His crow’s feet are mature; mine are menacing. He’s given permission to march into middle age while I’m supposed to cling desperately to my younger years.
Even our lifestyles get labeled differently. My middle-age hobbies—leaning into my gardening era and perfecting my sourdough technique—are considered “geriatric,” prematurely pushing me into my grandma era. He gets into car detailing and grill tools and it’s considered a curated craft. He wears the same solid-colored T-shirts and gray pants: capsule wardrobe. I wear the same T-shirts and jeans: boring.
None of this is his fault. Society has set an unattainable bar for women, and even on my tiptoes, I can’t reach it. The bar for aging men is so low they can grasp it from their knees.
One glance at Hollywood illustrates these disparities. Women either embrace their age with gray pixies like Jamie Lee Curtis or rage against the aging machine with cosmetic procedures like Meg Ryan. The public openly critiques both options while men like Richard Gere and George Clooney are praised for their performances and politics with little discussion of their aging process.
I’m not in Hollywood, making my risk of becoming invisible even greater.
I no longer turn heads like I did in my 20s and 30s, but it seems like my husband turns more.
The unfairness of it all blindsides me. My husband can go months between hair appointments and still receive compliments. Meanwhile, I’m crunching numbers to balance appointments before big events, trying to time things just right so I don’t have an inch of gray clamoring for attention.
I can exercise more than he does with less significant results. Varicose veins and cellulite have taken up permanent residence on my legs, and his calves are more sculpted than they were five years ago.
I work through impossible math in my mind, with imaginary unbalanced variables. How could I be 25 yesterday and experiencing unrelenting night sweats today? I was in the prime of my life last week and now I’m stuck in a rut deeper than the “11s” burrowed into my forehead.
Somewhere along the line, I decided if the reflection in the mirror resembled my mother more than my teenage self, I might as well stop caring. I drudge off to the market in paint-stained sweatpants and old Crocs. If I have time, I run a brush through my hair and rub the sleep from my eyes.
The system encouraged my husband to crescendo into his 40s and 50s while witnessing my slow wither. It was a relentless machine whirring long before I was born, a machine so effective I’d started to do its work myself.
The Scorecards We Keep
I mark tallies on an invisible ledger for other women. Coloring your hair? Acceptable. Botox? Unacceptable. A bikini at the beach in your 50s? You do you! Extra-short cut-offs at the grocery store? Dress your age! I wonder how I score on the scorecards other women are keeping.
My imaginary system gives me some semblance of illusory control. If I’d truly stopped caring, though, the solution is easy: care again. Buy new lipstick. Try on a pair of sensible heels. Build the budget to account for more frequent trips to the salon. Watch makeup tutorials so I can finally learn how to contour my cheekbones.
But that puts too much onus on me, a little too much victim-blaming for my comfort. Wearing more makeup and changing my wardrobe feels like the perm I had in third grade or the shirts with shoulder pads in the late 1980s: stiff, uncomfortable, not me.
While I might not start caring more, I’m also not ready to care less. Not yet. I’m still going to mask those grays and attempt to apply brightener in a way that minimizes the ever-growing dark circles under my eyes. I’ll play by the rules of a game I didn’t sign up for. But I also recognize I’ve fallen into complacency, and I’m not sure I have the upper-body strength to pull myself back out.
I want to age on my own terms, perfect my sourdough technique, and not pay thousands of dollars each year coloring my hair. I also wouldn’t mind fewer wrinkles, a bumper tomato crop, and an occasional look of appreciation from a handsome stranger. But everything around me tells me this is too much to ask.
