I Now Pronounce You Maiden & Codger, Crone & BoyToy

If after three weeks of searching for a source and not being able to locate it, I always say it's time to wing it and write about it anyway. If for no other reason than to get the thought out of my crowded head so I can think about other stuff. So. I like scifi. Good and bad. Reading and watching it on either the large or the small screen. Robert Heinlein is a scifi author I enjoy, and it is a concept from his writing, at least I'm pretty sure it's his, if it isn't that may explain why I have not been able to locate it. Neither on the internets nor in my own tiny library. This is what I remember. Speaking through one of his characters, perhaps Lazarus Long, Heinlein proposed an idea for human pairing off that I thought made a great deal of sense. The main thrust of this postulation is that men and women of a similar age should not engage in coupling. That older men should join with younger women to form families that produce children. The advantage being that a more mature man makes a much better father and can provide for a more stable home than a younger man is able to do. When the younger wife is inevitably widowed, at middle age she in turn would take on a considerably younger man as a husband. By virtue of her life experience and knowledge, she would then be able to impart to him her acquired wisdom, so that when she passes, he would then be ready to take on the role of the elder half of the couple. Sort of a self-perpetuating cycle to help ensure that somebody has their head on straight, thereby creating a more stable family unit that theoretically has greater benefits for any children involved. Certainly it addresses the issue of men and women having mismatched windows of opportunity as far as fertility goes. I must admit that in theory this makes great sense as a social model. And not just because I would now be in the market for a much younger man. Though I do find that aspect appealing. It also challenges the growing older together model that assumes you will marry young and remain married to one person your entire adult life. The over fifty percent divorce rate already makes this concept seem highly unlikely. Maybe the idea that you would eventually have more than one life mate could make staying in a partnership more tolerable. The only flaw I can find is the across-the-board generalization that greater age equals greater wisdom. We are, after all, individuals with different learning curves to mastering any particular facet of a coupled relationship. That might be very different if we were socialized from birth to the early marriage/later marriage concept rather than the random marry-for-love/finding your soulmate model that has a fifty percent failure rate. Lately I've come to believe that there is more than one person who speaks to your soul, and that person who appeals to you is likely very different at the age of twenty-five compared to you at fifty. I remain firm in the belief that my first husband was the right one to choose as the father of my children. And I hope that I will eventually find an old soul in a younger man's body to be with in this second half of my life. And not just because it would be great for me. I truly believe it would be pretty darn terrific for him, too.