Róisín Ingle on ... wedded bliss (and inexplicable spousal rage)

On Christmas Eve my Uncle Ron and my Auntie Eva will be celebrating their wedding anniversary in Broadstairs, Kent, where they’ve been living in wedded bliss for several decades. People got married younger back when they got hitched, but I still can’t quite get my head around the fact that the anniversary they are celebrating is their 70th. Coincidentally it took me around 70 goes to get a decent video of my children wishing them a happy anniversary. But when we finally got a decent take in the can, the most reluctant performer was heard to say, which wasn’t in the script, “we love you Ron and Eva” which more than made up for all the grumpy out takes.

Eva used to sing me songs when they came over to visit from London: Daisy Daisy and My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean. Ron, all twinkly eyes and movie-star slacks, used to put his hands in his pockets, rattle his plentiful coins and then throw them up in the air in the sitting room creating the highest quality gushie we'd ever known.

Once, when we visited them in their sprawling thatched house in London, where a baby grand sat on an elevated part of the sitting room he brought me to Hamley’s and said I could buy anything I liked. I bought a Girl’s World. I have barely any regrets.

They lived a life that always seemed glamourous. They are firm believers in cocktail hour. Their garden in Broadstairs has a swimming pool and they had a sauna before I even knew what the word meant. Ron gave me my first Sony Walkman, when the idea of listening to music on a portable device seemed as remote as the moon. He always owned a high quality telescope, which had a special area in the house. They live stylishly and with passion, is what I’ve always thought.

Seventy years. I can’t believe it when my mother, at 75 she’s Ron’s littlest sister, tells me. The youngest girl in the family, she ended up on honeymoon with Ron and Eva. It wasn’t her fault, but Ron never lets her forget it. Seventy years. I email Ron to get some tips on how to make relationships last. He is prone to quoting a wide variety of writers from Kipling to O Henry, so I know it will be good. And I’ve just read a piece by the incomparable English journalist Lucy Mangan about what she terms “inexplicable spousal rage”. And if you have to have me explain it, well you are a better person than Mangan and I and several women I enjoy close friendships with.

I want to feel normal. I want to know that a healthy relationship can also be testing and in places downright spiky. What I don’t want to read in this return email is that Ron and Eva have always had a harmonious coupling. I want to know about the rough patches. I am asking the wrong people.

Here’s Ron’s email back when I ask him for some tips for a happy relationship:

“It is difficult to offer tips on 70 years of marriage. Suffice it to say we are going through the happiest period of our lives so it is worth persevering. Eva joins me in sending our love to you all.

“These are our tips:

“Instead of saying ‘I love you’ say ‘I’m in love with you’.

“Always settle any misunderstandings or quarrels before going to bed although sometimes it’s more delicious to settle them in bed.

“Young love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you.’

“Listen to her.

“The secret of a happy marriage is a secret.

“Whenever you are wrong admit it. Whenever you are right shut up.”

See? The wrong, or yes, yes, maybe the right people. It gets worse when I email my cousin Chris, Ron’s son. He reckons the secret is “tolerance – I have never, ever seen my parents not only argue but even raise their voice to each other.” And Chris goes on to imply it might be genetic because after 16 years of marriage he’s never had a row with his wife, Jenny. When I ask Ron’s daughter Penny she says the secret of the 70 years a-wooing is that “they still adore each other”.

So there you have it. While the outcome of this investigation does make me fear for the longevity of more acrimonious couplings where, and this is just a random example, sometimes just the innocent sound of a certain person whistling an REM tune can turn a certain other person into a raving banshee.

Ron and Eva don’t celebrate this season, for religious reasons, so I won’t wish them Happy Christmas. I’ll just say it once more, with feeling: We love you Ron and Eva. roisin@irishtimes.com