Today: Married to this beach walker for 43 years today!

[BlueMTexpat]

43. LOL - you may be right

about absence working wonders! My husband I will celebrate 36 years of married life in June. For each of us, it is a second marriage and we already had 28 years cumulative (15 for him; 13 for me) of married life with those spouses. We didn't even meet until those marriages were over and have also remained on good terms with the exes with whom we share children.

We are both very independent. We each had been single parents for a couple years before meeting. But even when we are apart, we are devoted to each other. He is also literally my best friend. Right now, he prefers to live in the US and I prefer to live in Switzerland although we spent the first 22 years of our marriage together, mostly on a daily basis. He just feels more comfortable in an anglophone environment in his silver years. I flourish in linguistic diversity.

We each travel to and spend several months in each other's residence so are able to experience the benefits of both countries and we enjoy traveling to new countries together. We each have many interests and friends on both sides of The Pond, although our children and grandchildren live in various parts of the US. In this way, they are able to visit here and learn about the world outside the US firsthand. In fact, one DIL and our 10-year-old granddaughter will visit this summer, while my husband is also here. With electronic communication like Skype, Google+, Duo, etc., we are all able to remain in touch - on a daily basis, if need be.

Our lifestyle doesn't work for everyone and yes, we are only able to afford it because of good career decisions, hard work, good luck and financial planning on both our parts - even though we are nowhere near the very privileged ones and never even want to be. All grandchildren except for the three youngest have completed or are in the process of completing university educations, in large part with our financial assistance as well as their own hard work. We have set up 529 accounts for the three youngest into which we contribute each month and hope that we will be around to see them as adults.

We have no idea how much longer we will be able to live like this - given our comparatively advanced ages and my real fear that Trump and his ilk could destroy the civilized world as we know it. But we will continue to enjoy life as long and as best as we can.

We wish that ALL could have the same opportunity to live their lives as happily and as fully as possible!