Seven things you can only get away with after 20 years of marriage

Greg Wise, Dame Emma Thompson and Gaia Wise in London on October 5, 2022. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION:

So, Emma Thompson has described romantic love as a myth, and possibly you agree with her – but it’s not the observation that’s interesting so much as the timing of it.

Thompson has been married to the actor Greg Wise for 20 years. That’s 20 years into her second marriage; and 20 years in is the point at which you can get away with saying the unsayable. You’re sufficiently confident in yourself and your relationship.

You’ve experienced love and loss and disappointment (before Wise she was married to Kenneth Branagh, who cheated on her). And you are older, and older – Thompson is 63 – may not always mean wiser, but it does mean you don’t care as much about things you once thought were important and you’re happy to admit it.

There is a list, you will not be surprised to hear, of the top seven things that hit you 20 years in:

The ‘20 Years In’ List (the things you know now about marriage that matter and the things that don’t)

Being ridiculously good-looking means absolutely nothing after 20 years

Greg Wise was ridiculously good-looking. He’s not bad-looking now. But what do you bet that Emma Thompson has sometimes looked at him and thought, “Yes, OK. But what about losing your passport, Greg? Could you have possibly remembered to take the chicken out of the freezer as requested? Why is my washing on the floor next to the dryer and yours no longer in the dryer?”

Or, to put it another way, she might look at him and think, “I’d fancy you more if you’d cleaned up the house before my parents arrived; I don’t really care about your lovely, lush hair. I’m 20 years in, and things look very different.”

Greg Wise and Emma Thompson in 1995's Sense and Sensibility. Photo / Supplied

Being the life and soul of the party is not all that

Twenty years in, this may have turned into being the last one standing at the party, or the one who goes missing for a few hours at the party and then doesn’t make it home until 8am. Those sparkly blue Peter O’Toole eyes might have just been the booze.

Being manly is overrated

There is definitely a dangerous period in a woman’s life when they can easily have their head turned by a man who is an excellent skier, good at sports in general, an enthusiastic motorbike rider (phwoar) and a car restorer (impressive). Cut to 20 years in and this same man is out tinkering with his boat when you are doing the Tesco shop. Twenty years in and the manly man is still incapable of putting on a duvet cover or remembering his children’s birthdays, and what you really want is the reasonably manly man who is not that great with a drill but can be relied on to cook Sunday lunch from scratch, take the youngest one shopping for their big trip, buy you some moisturiser (the right one, not the one with SPF) and so on.

Having a fabulously romantic time is not love

Dinner on sandbars in the Maldives seems like something people in love do when you’re young. Twenty years in, when you’re happiest at home together on the sofa muttering, “No, no, take the Doritos away from me, please,” you recognise that these experiences are for honeymooners or professional marriage-memory-makers like Brooklyn and Nicola Peltz Beckham.

Take it from Joan Collins (21 years in and counting) who said, “Percy loves me best when we are at home together – me without make-up and with scraggly hair, and him unshaven and in his tracksuit bottoms because we love each other for who we are and not what we look like.” Do we think JLo and Ben (seven months in) feel a bit this way?

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck at the Grammys on February 5. Photo / Getty Images

Men will do almost anything for a quiet life

They want their wives to be happy and, crucially, 20 years in, their wives have worked out what makes them happy, the clearest path to achieving it and the part that husbands need to play in that. Twenty years in, wives have shed all the guilt for not making cakes, being an exercise refusenik, a gardening disaster, a bit overweight and so on; and likewise we have forgiven our husbands for not being Ryan Gosling, Barack Obama and Giorgio Locatelli with a bit of Paul McCartney. Everyone’s removed their what-I-want-from-marriage goggles and accepted that they’re a good fit and very lucky to have each other.

No one actually gives a stuff about sex, really

We definitely care about it but not in the way we thought we would back in the “I’m too sexy” days. This is why we would say to anyone considering marrying, say, Pete Davidson, try thinking 20 years on. And don’t say, “But he makes me laugh,” because it’s not really that is it?

Donald and Melania have only been married for 18 years, but she’s got the 20-years-in face. Photo / AP

Being successful is overrated

Successful is lovely, no doubt. But what if – as it might turn out – success means never seeing your partner again and him/her being on a conference call poolside every day of your holiday and then having to fly back early to sort out some Important Thing? What if success is Donald Trump and you’re Melania and then he decides to run for president and then decides he might again. Donald and Melania have only been married for 18 years but she’s got the 20-years-in face.