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Walled Up In A Nunnery
What’s The 21st Century Equivalent For Women Of A Certain Age?
When I was young I loved historic tales of Kings and Queens. But there was one thing I could never understand. Why, so often, many of the older Queens (widowed and still very much married) would disappear off to a nunnery.
Well now I’ve reached my fifties, I’m somewhat the wiser.
The Spell Is Broken
I don’t want to gender the romance, so when I talk about Kings and Queens, please note that it could be Queens and Queens or Kings and Kings or anything you like. That said, there’s something about reaching a certain age that means the spell of being ‘in love’ is truly broken.
The power that a romantic partner has over you can fizzle away. I’m not saying that love wilts and dies, although that can happen too obviously, but the urgent, all-encompassing distraction of hormone-driven infatuation does fade.
The English language is somewhat unhelpful here since it uses one word to cover many different types of love. Other languages are a little more discerning when it comes to this concept. So the person who might have previously made up your whole reason for being, becomes a smaller percentage over time. This can be accelerated if there are children for example, or work…
