Knowing your place

Well, we have managed to ship the kids off to the grandparents for the night. Last time this happened was on a Thursday which happens to be the night my wife does Body Pump and Body Combat. So faced with choosing between a few fours or torturous exercise or a romantic night out of course I lost out.

Tonight is a Wednesday so I do not have that to contend with. I therefore suggested doing something special like a trip into Windsor or London or maybe a drive down to the coast for fish and chips on the beach whilst watching the sunset. However, the sun is shining and my wife wants to sit in the sun not a car or train. Her alternative suggestion was to eat in the beer garden of the local Beefeater.

Of course, I tried to counter this with the offer of some other quality local restaurants but each was met with "Can we eat outside?". The answer in most cases being no. So I'm guessing the priorities so far must be something along the lines of:

1. Kids
2. Body Combat/Body Pump
3. Sunshine
4. Quality romantic time with me.

Onward Christian soldiers

My wife, like many others, has fallen for the "mommy porn" 50 Shades of Grey trilogy and like many husbands and boyfriends there have been positive side effects. For example, on her first night of reading I had been down the pub with friends. Now under normal circumstances when I creep in from the pub late, with all of the subtleness of a hippopotamus ninja,s he would always be asleep, or at least pretending to be asleep, but no not that night ;o)

But here we are once again with a sense of frustration. One friend was moaning on Facebook how despite his wife reading 50 shades he was yet to reap him any rewards. One female friend responded to the thread that "if you want your wife to act a bit more like Ana, try acting a bit more like Mr Grey". 

Now, despite already benefiting from positive side effects, this sounded like good advice coming straight from the horses mouth. So with this idea in mind I send my wife a text, nothing brash (Mr Grey is too sophisticated for that). Far from a hot lustful reply the response I get was along the lines of  "Lol, so anyway ...".

There you go, dismissed in an instant. It's all very well you ladies rattling on about what you want from us men but first you're going to have to learn to recognise it when your presented with it!

Time bomb

I've never given much thought to the age difference between my wife and I other than the fact that her being 8.5 year younger is a bonus. However, yesterday I decided to do a rare bit of retirement planning and some shocking realities dawned on me.

My life expectancy is supposedly 87 whereas hers is 90. This means she will outlive me by almost 12 years. My state retirement age is 67, hers is 68. This means that I will supposedly retire almost 10 years before her. The chance of me retiring early at 55 (a similar age to when my parents retired) is unlikely as both my children would still be in university at that time. In fact, my youngest would not leave university until I am almost 60.

Of course, this doesn't mean I'm about to go trade my wife for an older model but it leads me to draw a number of conclusions:

• If I wish to spend my retirement with my wife, we must have sufficient funds for her to retire at least 10 years early. 
• If I wish to retire early then this just magnifies the issue.
• If I do not have sufficient funds for both of us to retire early ( me by 7 - 12 years, her by 17 - 22 years !!) then I am unlikely to ever retire early.
• If I am unlikely to retire early, then a lot of things we planned to do in retirement we may not achieve due to my age at that time.
• The only way to mitigate these issues is to;
• a) Put aside a hell of a lot more money
• b) Try and maintain physical and mental health for as long as possible.

Of course even then it's not that straight-forward. To put aside more money we must either work more or spend less. This will have negative effects on our lives now. Maintaining health will not be an easy option either. Both my Dad and Grandad suffered heart problems and on top of this, when I broke my back the doctor warned me I am likely to suffer arthritis of the spine in later life.

#depressed

Want, Need, Would like

One of my annoyances in life is hearing what people want. Not because I have a problem with what they want. I have a problem with their use of the word want. All too commonly, what they mean is 'would like' and there in lies the problem. If you 'need' something then it is a necessity. If you 'want' something then it is desired. If you 'would like' something then all you are doing is expressing a desire in a non-committal manner. 

It reminds of a story, I cannot remember the exact details but as with all good urban legends I remember the punchline. The story is of a young man who 'wants', he seeks the advice of a mentor who 'has' and the young man repeatedly keeps asking 'how'. Finally, the mentor leads him into the sea and holds the young mans head underwater. At first the young man is confused, then after a few seconds he tries to lift his head out of the water. The mentor resists and continues to hold the young mans head underwater. Getting more desperate the young tries to force his head up but to no avail. Eventually as he is running out of breath he starts to flail and lash out wildly at the mentor until eventually the mentor yields and the young man is able to come up for air. Confused and angry he asks the mentor why he was trying to drown him. The mentor replies along the lines of "only when you want something as much as you wanted to breathe just then, will you find a way and do what needs to done to achieve it'. Or something like that ...

When people tell me that they 'want' something in life I always want to ask them what they are doing about it. What is there plan? What steps are they taking towards achieving it? There is the crux of my frustration. The answer most commonly eludes to 'nothing'. What they mean is 'would like' or put another way, they'd take it if someone handed it to them on a plate. When someone 'would like' something it leans more towards desire but without the compulsion to get off one's arse and do something about it. 

Being honest about what one needs, wants and would like leads to contentment. I know that if I really needed or wanted something then I'd be doing something about it. If it's just something I would like then it's probably not all that important to me.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

If you're not familiar with this then do Google it. I won't go into detail or any arguments about its validity other than I think he had something there. The basic premise is that there is a hierarchy to humans needs both physically and emotionally, and that there is an order to the need we feel to fulfil them. At the bottom of the pyramid is the most basic human physiological needs like food, drink, sleep etc then safety needs, the need to belong, the need for self-esteem and at the top self-actualisation.

So as I approach mid-life I've managed to get a lot of the basic needs covered and having fulfilled these given myself a swift pat on the back. So what next?  Perhaps like others at this stage I start to feel a void as the need to fulfil the next 'level' becomes apparent. Think of it as not feeling the need for dessert until you've had your main course. It's only through the fulfilment of lower needs that I start to sense the lack of fulfilment of those higher up the chain.

So is this also part of the middle life crisis? Have I had my head down for so long at the grindstone that I am only just beginning to raise my eyes up and look to the horizon? Only now that I've started putting the 'needs' to bed that I start looking the to the 'likes' or the 'wants'? Is it only now that I start questioning  whether my glass is half full?