Ep 47. A Lucky Marriage

I am Kym Showers, and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 47: A Lucky Marriage.

Hey, friends. Welcome to Reinvented After 40, a podcast for all you women in the second half of life who are ready to take responsibility for your own wellbeing and create a life you love living.

I’m your host, Kym Showers, and after spending the first 40 years of my life people-pleasing and following all the rules, I was exhausted and ready for a change. I reinvented myself. I stopped outsourcing my happiness. And I’ve been brave enough to live a different kind of life.

I’ll be here each week to help you do the same thing. It’s gonna be fun. Let’s go.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the show and happy August 4th, 2022. You know what today is? Today is my wedding anniversary. Jeff Showers and I have been married for 38 years today, August 4th. We were married on a Saturday, August 4th, 1984. That sounds so long ago. And it kind of is, it was a long time ago. And here we are and I’m so proud of us. I didn’t even think I could get through this episode without getting choked up.

So, I’m just warning you, I might get a little choked up because of all the feelings I have about us as a married couple, as two people who were simply babies, we were just babies when we got married. He was 21. He was 21, you guys. I was 23, I’m a little bit older than he is, thank God. But I’m calling this a lucky marriage because I believe we are the luckiest, we are so lucky in love, and we’re so lucky because we’re so happy. We’re very, very deeply happy.

And it’s been a journey of course, 38 years, are you kidding? We have been together for 42 years and that almost seems impossible but it’s true. And so, I am obviously a believer in happily ever after. I have always been a believer in happily ever after. And here I am as an example of that. So, I wanted to call this episode, happily ever after, so I actually looked up the meaning and you know what it is? And I love the meaning of this. Happily ever after means from then onward and forever happiness pervades. I love that.

That’s something like Jane Austen would say, something out of Pride and Prejudice. And sometimes I feel like we are. I feel like Jeff and I are a love story of old. And I just want you to know that happily ever after does exist. And that’s why I’m recording this podcast today, not only to celebrate our marriage but to celebrate every marriage and even the marriages that were complete, maybe you’re not married anymore. Maybe that you have the idea of something for yourself in the future, some great happily ever after. And I promise you it’s available to you.

So, I believe I’m so happily married after 38 years of marriage because I kept working at it, because I was so committed and so was he. We just have never given up, we keep trying, we keep showing up. And we keep reinventing ourselves when we need to. I believe that’s what it takes. I still believe marriages is a crapshoot and that’s why I called this A Lucky Marriage because I think we’re super lucky. I think we’re lucky on every level. And of course, I love the word ‘lucky.’ But I also believe that it’s the same as blessed.

We are blessed and lucky, Jeff and I are. But we work at it, and we work at being lucky. And the harder you work the luckier you get. The more disciplined you are the luckier you get. The more you keep showing up the luckier you get. The harder you try the luckier you get. That’s what I believe. And you just keep trying. You take a nap when you need to, you eat a sandwich when you need to.

You take a break when you need to but then you get right back up and you keep trying. That’s what it is. That’s what makes a lucky marriage, and you marry the right person. And you become the right person. You be the right person. I have become the right person not only for me but for him. We’re the right persons for each other. And what I want to tell you this morning is we have changed so much and from the day we got married.

We have just grown, and evolved, and matured, and changed our minds about everything, about life, and relationships, what we thought we knew. In 1984 we didn’t know anything. We thought we knew so much, and we didn’t know anything. But what I can tell you about my husband is that I am such a fan of his. I admire him so much. I trust him. I love being with him. I miss him when I’m not with him. He has become my dearest, closest, best friend. And that has been a journey to be here, and I just love it here.

I love that we have the relationship that we do, it means so much to me. It is by far my biggest gift in my life. When I met him he was 17 years old. It was my first year at Bakersfield College. It was our community college, and it was his first year at Bakersfield College. And I’m a year and a half older than him. I didn’t go to college right out of high school.

I really wasn’t encouraged to go to college. I know my dad went to college for a little while but then no one in my family had ever graduated college so it just wasn’t a thing that was just an automatic assumption that’s what we would do after high school. And I had always worked for my money, so I thought it was going to be super fun to be able to have a full-time job out of high school, so that’s what I did. And all my friends went to college, went to Bakersfield College and I didn’t go that first year.

And after working in a boutique eight hours a day five days a week and not being in college with all my friends, I decided I am for sure going to Bakersfield College. And I’m so glad I did. I’m so glad it had all worked out perfectly because I met Jeff Showers my first year in college and he met me. And I was a cheerleader. I had ran for cheerleader. You have to run in the spring and then you practice all summer and I made it.

And back then Bakersfield College cheerleaders were just the bee’s knee’s, that was the thing to be a Bakersfield College cheerleader and I made it and I was so excited about it. And he was a Bakersfield College football player. And Jeff’s literally my dream boy. He checked all my boxes. A mutual friend had introduced us to each other. And it was just game on from the minute that we met. I mean it really was just love at first sight I think for both of us. But he was my dream boy, he had everything and the most piercing blue eyes that he still has.

And we just had a blast together and four years later we got married. The day we got back from our honeymoon we went to Maui. And let me tell you this, I had a $1,000 budget for our wedding which doesn’t that sound ridiculous now, but so good. My wedding dress cost $99. I got it in Delano, California. And we just had a lovely wedding, it was perfect. We had cake and punch and then Jeff had saved money by working in the grape sheds during the summer. He had just graduated college.

And we took his savings, and we went to Maui, we got to go on a Hawaiian vacation for our honeymoon and we had a blast. It was the very first time I had ever been to Hawaii. He had been with his family on vacations before then. But that was the start of a very successful lovely magical, very lucky marriage. And seven years later we had our first baby and then two and a half years after that we had our second baby. And he has just been the best dad, it’s been so fun to partner with him in raising our kids. And then now we’re grandparents, he’s pappy and I’m pippy to Goldie and Dolly.

And he’s the best pappy, those two girls, I mean they bypass me when we’re together, they go straight to pappy. And that just makes me so happy. I mean, see, I’m going to get choked up. He just is so connected to his family, and he loves us so well. He loves all of us so well. And that just makes me so in love with him. I’m just deeply in love with him. And I know how lucky I am to have these feelings for him. And also, I want you to know you guys that I work at it because I want to feel this way in my marriage.

I told him the other day. I go, “Man, I think the odds are good for us now. I think we’re going to make it.” I mean after 38 years I can see us being that old couple with the grey hair. I mean we’re not that far away from it, walking down the street holding hands. And even I have kind of teased him a little bit since I don’t know, it’s been a good 20 years since the movie, The Notebook came out. And in the later years when she develops Alzheimer’s and he’s reading the notebook to her every day.

I’m like, “Yeah, that’s going to be us.” You’re going to be reading something to me every day because I’m not going to remember anything.” But I said the odds are good, I’m so happy about that, we’re going to make it. We’re in it and happily ever after does exist. When the kids were little we started a date night every Friday night. And you know, we still do it, every Friday night it’s our date night, it’s a special thing for us, it’s a sacred time for us in our marriage, in our relationship.

And especially in the last three years I have changed so much, and he says it too. He says it all the time, “You’ve become so much more like me.” Which at first I was like, “Really?” And then I’m like, “Yeah, that’s such a huge compliment to me that I’ve become so much more like him.” A lot more calm, quiet, spacious, steady, a lot less drama, so trustworthy, so dependable. I mean if you know my husband he is the most dependable person you will ever know.

Every day since we have been married he has got up in the morning at 5:55, I’m not kidding, no joke. And then when he used to go into the office which was many, many, many years, and so if it’s 38 now, so he started at Merrill Lynch, we got home from Maui, we got home from our honeymoon on a Sunday and he started his career as a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch on that Monday morning, the very next morning that we got home from our honeymoon. So, his anniversary at Merrill Lynch is the exact same, I mean a week later than his wedding anniversary is.

So that just right there shows that he is monogamous, he’s committed, he is in it for the long haul and because he doesn’t like change. He just likes to just do the best he can where he is, and I appreciate that about him so much. So, he is extremely loyal, extremely dependable, and that makes me so in love with him. I love that about him. So 5:55 in the morning and then he would come home right when the market closed, right when the New York Stock Exchange had closed which was one o’clock our time.

So, he would come home for lunch every single day and I would make him a sandwich and some chips. And we have lots of jokes about that. But he just needed an hour to be home in his quiet little cave watching something on TV in his recliner eating his turkey sandwich. He’s just so reliable. And once I kind of have learned and appreciated his little ways and his simplicity, and also how much he accomplishes in a day, how productive he is, how focused he is, it has made me want to be more like him.

I see that, it’s a good attribute to have. And I have just become more like that. And now that we’ve moved to the beach and he doesn’t go into an office anymore at one o’clock when the market closes, he goes on a two mile walk down to the beach. And he does the same thing every day and I know that’s what he does and it’s good for me. He doesn’t listen to anything. It’s a quiet walk. I don’t know what he’s thinking about.

And that’s another funny thing because I always say, or I used to ask him a lot and I don’t ask anymore. I used to ask him, “What are you thinking?” And he would just be like, “Nothing. Literally I’m not thinking about anything.” Because as women we’re always thinking about something, so we think our men are thinking about something. And they’re literally never thinking about anything that we think they’re thinking about. That’s what I learned about him. But he still has those wise beautiful sexy blue eyes.

I shave his head now every Saturday morning because he is somewhat going bald which I appreciate, and I love. I find it extremely attractive and sexy. And when he puts on a blue shirt that matches his eyes I just think he’s the most gorgeous human on the planet. And I just needed to tell you guys this, because long lasting love is possible, it does happen, it is a real thing. Happily, ever after from then onward and forever where happiness pervades is a real thing.

You know how I am, I love to reevaluate. I’m always reevaluating and checking in with myself and what I’m liking, and what I’m maybe not liking. And then I just make adjustments but with Jeff I can tell you for sure since I’ve been thinking about us for a week now. I’m preparing to talk to you about this marriage that I call very lucky.

If I wasn’t married and if I was me being me at 61, and Jeff was him being him and someone introduced us to each other I would want to meet him, I would want to get to know him. I would find him very attractive. I would want to date him, and I would want to marry him. And to be able to say that at 38 years together of marriage, of raising kids together, of lots of changes together is pretty exceptional. And I appreciate it. I don’t take that for granted. I think it’s extremely important.

And again, I know how lucky I am. So, he takes very good care of me. I think I’m pretty easy to take care of because I first and foremost take very good care of myself. I am very easy to make happy because I make myself so happy. I make sure I get every single thing that I want. He said to me a few years ago, he was a little nervous and a little afraid. And he goes, “I just don’t know if I can make you happy.”

And I said, “You don’t have to. I’m going to make me happy, don’t you worry about it. You make yourself happy. Let’s do that. And then let’s just enjoy each other, and let’s love each other, that’s our only job.” I think we’ve gotten really good at that. So, on this August 4th, 2022, I wish my beautiful, gorgeous, funny, loyal, smart, very smart, trustworthy, wise husband, happy anniversary. And I’m so glad we made it and I look so forward to another 38 together. I can’t wait to see what we create together. I love you so much.

And I love you all so much for following along with this podcast and for showing up today on our anniversary. Have a toast for us, celebrate happily ever after and lucky in love. And just the beauty and the gift of a long steady deeply happy marriage, celebrate all of that today with you, with you all. Okay, have an amazing week and I will see you next Thursday.

Thanks for listening to Reinvented After 40. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, please visit KymShowersLifeCoach.com.