Senior wars

It was over a gray, shaggy bath mat that an old couple was squabbling at the grocery store last Saturday. They were grandpa and grandma types in their 70s: white hair, wrinkles and jowls, slight stoop and hunched shoulders, sensible walking shoes. The minute I turned into the linen aisle, I heard their voices — diminished sense of hearing, surely — audible all the way from the opposite end.

“ ...Both gray; what difference does it make?” was what I first caught from Grandma as she fingered the mat Grandpa was inspecting.

“I didn’t mean the color; I meant the fibers. This gray has very little cotton. Feel it. That’s not going to dry my feet well after shower. The darker one with less polyester is more practical,” Grandpa explained.

“Dry your feet? You always leave puddles around the bathroom after you shower. You’re like John-John.  Several times I almost slipped; good thing I didn’t.”

Grandpa let go of his end of the bath mat and sighed. He looked at Grandma, said nothing and sighed again. And with that, ambled away slowly, as though he had all the time in the world.

I wanted to rush to him and say, “Sir, if you only knew what couples half your age fight about these days you would buy her that hideous gray shag bathmat plus 20 more.”

Senior wars. It’s funny how just the night before, my cousin, Karen, coined the term as we talked about the “cute” lovers’ quarrels of old couples we know: stretches of silence and cold shoulder treatments — dramatic, yes, but mended quick enough just to sprinkle some excitement into their lives. Really, at 70-something and 40-plus years of marriage between spouses, it is fair to conclude that they are in it for keeps, right? What else would they do after a fight if not make up? Walk out? Threaten separation and remarriage? They could, but I doubt they have the time and endurance to start on a new identical journey that’s bound to end up in the very same place in only a few short years.

I carried on with my grocery shopping and happened to stop by the outdoor furniture section by the checkout counters and there was Grandpa! He was slouched on one of the synthetic wicker armchairs; neck resting on top of the seat back, staring at the ceiling. I fought the urge to approach and chat him up so his Saturday didn’t have to be spent like that — alone and staring at nothing, while families chattering away clunked about with heavy shopping carts piled high with goodies.

I know people get grumpy as they age but north of 70 what else is left to fight about? Shouldn’t septuagenarians have fought about everything under the sun by then? Shouldn’t they have sorted out flirting and jealousy; the dilemma over prioritization of career versus spouse; financial sensibilities; thoughtlessness on Valentine’s Day; revealing outfits and s*** like that decades ago? Was that gray bathroom rug really worth a crappy Saturday afternoon? 

I thought all the while that just like Disney and Mother Goose have preached, old married folks live happily ever after. Wrong. Investigative journalist Susan Seliger wrote in the New York Times that there is a syndrome wherein elderly couples “start arguing more bitterly than usual (‘Do you have to make such a mess in the kitchen?’), criticizing each other (‘Why haven’t you dealt with the insurance company yet?’), withdrawing from each other, and generally making each other more miserable, more often than before.” And the causes are, doctors claim, mental or physical.

According to Dr. Linda Waite, director of the Center on Demography and Economics of Aging at University of Chicago, “A key question is whether marital bickering is part of a lifelong marital style or a change.” Is it new behavior? How much of the problem is really just the marriage style? She continued, “Some couples like to fight and argue — it keeps their adrenaline going.” But if the tone or severity of the marital tensions seem new, then it is important to find out why. 

“On the mental front, increased anger and fighting among elderly couples could be one of the first signs of mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to dementia or Alzheimer’s, in one or both of the spouses,” said Dr. Lisa Gwyther, director for the Duke Center for Aging Family Support Program. Withdrawing from activities that used to give them pleasure can be a telltale sign of mild cognitive impairment and can trigger arguments. Dr. Gwyther added that, “In one couple, the husband just didn’t want to participate in the holidays. The wife got angry and said he was being lazy and stubborn. But the truth was that his cognitive decline made all the activity overwhelming and he didn’t want anyone to know that he was anxious about not remembering everyone’s names and embarrassing himself. Suspicion and paranoia can also accompany mild cognitive decline and precipitate distrust and hurtful accusations.”

According to Dr. William Dale, chief of Geriatrics at University of Chicago Geriatrics Medicine, “There is good evidence that the earliest signs of cognitive impairment are often emotional changes: anger, anxiety, depression; rather than cognitive ones: memory abstract thought. But these early signs of cognitive decline can be so subtle that neither the spouses nor their grown children recognize them for what they are. So husband and wife blame each other for the changes and allow feelings of hurt and resentment to grow.”

But as harmful as mental decline can be for a marriage, it is just part of the equation. “Physical ailments, even those that seem completely unrelated to marital relations, can upset the equilibrium of the marriage,” according to a study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Most men get angry at what’s happened to them when they get ill; women get angry and scared when the husband is not what he used to be so they fight.

Dr. Waite said that chronic illnesses like diabetes, arthritis, and heart disease could have a strong negative effect on mood. â€œDiabetes is so often accompanied by depression that one of my colleagues argues that it is even part of the disease. And ailments can have an effect on a couple’s sex life — which can compound the marital problems,” she added.

Aside from these mental and physical causes, other changes in older couples’ circumstances — retirement, shifting domestic roles, loss of autonomy and authority, declining health and abilities — must wreak havoc on their marriage as well. With one thing or other that ails the elderly, I can imagine how losing independence can feel like losing oneself. If one starts losing grasp of his sense of self, how could he relate to a spouse? 

Increasing dependence on a spouse for quotidian activities must be harder on men because of the seemingly enduring notion that they are the “stronger” sex. Retirement from a career, which bestows some form of authority upon a man, plus advancing age and ailments that accompany the ageing process, must be a most confusing period in a person’s life. The fighting and bickering among older couples may come from a misguided notion that one can regain power by asserting it over the spouse. But isn’t that a false sense of power?

 I was having my purchases rung up when I saw Grandma heading to the exit with a grocery bagger pushing her cart. Where was Grandpa? I scanned the place and spotted him walking through the exit doors, way ahead of her. As the doors closed, I turned my gaze back at Grandma and noticed, peeking through one of the slats in her cart, the gray, shaggy bathmat that she wanted. 

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Thank you for your letters. You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.