Therese (Mom)

There are days when I look at my husband and think, Seriously? How is this fair?

I am five years older than my husband, which has never felt like a significant age difference. We have spent so many years building a life together that five years is really nothing. We raised children, worked, paid bills, lost sleep, worried about our family, celebrated milestones and walked through some incredibly difficult seasons together.

But lately, those five years sometimes feel a little bigger.

Maybe it’s because I notice the changes in myself more than I used to. My body is changing. My skin is changing. Menopause certainly didn’t ask permission before changing everything. My hair has become an entirely separate emotional journey, and now osteoporosis is taking a toll on my posture too.

Meanwhile, I look over at my husband and think, Are you planning on participating in this aging thing at some point?

I can laugh about it, and I do, but underneath the humor there is something much more vulnerable. Sometimes it makes me insecure.

When Did I Start Comparing Myself to My Husband?

I don’t think anyone prepares you for how strange it can feel to age alongside the person you love. When you’re younger and imagine growing old together, you picture gray hair, grandchildren, vacations and maybe sitting on the porch together someday. You don’t picture standing next to your husband wondering why you suddenly feel like you’re aging faster than he is.

The funny thing is that when I look at him, I don’t analyze his wrinkles or compare his body to what it looked like twenty years ago. I just see him. But when I look at myself, somehow the rules change. I notice the hair loss, the wrinkles, the weight, my posture and all the little reminders that I’m not the woman I was twenty years ago.

And then I wonder if he notices them too. Does he think I look older? Does he still find me attractive? Does he see all the changes that seem so obvious to me?

After all these years, you might think I would be past those kinds of insecurities, but I don’t think wanting to feel attractive to the person you love has an expiration date.

And Then I Wonder What Other People See

Sometimes when my husband and I are out together, I find myself wondering what other people think when they look at us. Do they immediately notice I’m older? Do they think the difference is greater than five years?

Unfortunately, those thoughts didn’t come completely out of nowhere. There have been a few occasions when someone has mistaken me for his mother.

Yes. His mother.

There are comments you laugh off immediately, and then there are comments that follow you home. I’m sure the people who said it meant absolutely nothing by it. They probably forgot about it five minutes later.

But I didn’t.

When someone accidentally says out loud the very thing you’re already insecure about, it hits differently. Suddenly five years feels like twenty-five, and I start wondering, Is that really what people see when they look at us?

I wish I could say I don’t care. Most of the time, I probably don’t. But confidence isn’t all or nothing. You can be secure in your marriage, grateful for your life and comfortable with who you are and still have moments that hit an insecurity you thought you had under control.

The Wig Makes It More Complicated

My hair adds another layer to all of this because the truth is, I rarely want to wear my wig. Most days I would rather leave it off. I want to embrace the woman I am today, including the hair I have today. I don’t want to feel like I have to put on a younger-looking version of myself before I’m allowed to walk out the door.

The struggle isn’t necessarily accepting myself without my wig. I think I’m getting there. The harder part is feeling like society sees me differently without it. When I wear my wig, I look younger. When I take it off, I feel like people immediately put me into the category of an older woman.

But I don’t feel old. I feel like me.

I still have plans. I want to try new things, travel with my husband, laugh with my daughters, create things, learn things and figure out what I want the next chapter of my life to look like. None of that changes when I take my wig off, yet sometimes I feel as though the world’s perception of me does.

Because I’ve already been mistaken for my husband’s mother, going without my wig makes me even more aware of the difference I see between us. I know I shouldn’t care what strangers think, but knowing something and feeling it are two different things.

I don’t want to wear my wig because I think I need it to be attractive or because I’m afraid someone will think I’m old without it. I want it to be an option. If I wear it, I want it to be because I feel like wearing it that day—not because I feel responsible for making myself look younger for everyone else.

My Body Didn’t Just Get Older — It Lived

Maybe that’s what I need to remember when I start being hard on myself. My body didn’t simply get older. It lived.

This body carried me through motherhood. It carried me through cancer twice, surgeries, treatments, menopause, stress, sleepless nights, fear, grief, celebrations and thousands of ordinary days. It has hugged my daughters, held the people I love and gotten me through days I wasn’t sure I had the strength for.

Now osteoporosis is taking a toll on my posture, and that’s another change that makes me feel older than I actually feel. Sometimes I catch myself slouching or see myself in a picture and immediately want to straighten up. Posture changes your whole appearance, and between my hair, my body and now my posture, there are days when the woman I see on the outside doesn’t quite match the woman I still feel like on the inside.

Maybe that’s really at the heart of all of this.

I don’t feel as old as I sometimes think I look.

Inside, I’m still me. I still have things I want to accomplish, places I want to go and a whole lot of life I want to live. But sometimes a photograph or a glance in the mirror reminds me that my body has been keeping track of the years even when my mind hasn’t.

I also have to remind myself that this body has been through a lot. I can be grateful for it and still wish my hair were thicker. I can appreciate everything I’ve survived and still want to lose weight. I can work on my posture and still be frustrated that osteoporosis is affecting it. I can embrace aging and still have days when I don’t particularly like what I see.

Those things can all be true at the same time.

Maybe He Doesn’t See What I See

Sometimes I wonder if my husband sees me the way I see him.

When I look at old pictures of him, of course I can see that he was younger. But I don’t look at those photographs and wish I could have that version of him back. I love the man standing in front of me now.

When I look at him, I see our history. I see the father of our daughters. I see the person who has been beside me through some of the hardest chapters of my life. I see the person who knows my stories, my moods and all of my quirks. 

Maybe when he looks at me, he isn’t comparing me to the woman I was at 25, 35 or 45 either.

Maybe he just sees his wife.

And maybe that’s one of the beautiful things about being loved for a long time. Eventually, you become so much more than a face, a body, hair or wrinkles. You become part of someone’s story.

They Get Five Seconds. We’ve Had Decades.

I can’t control what someone thinks when they look at my husband and me. I can’t control whether they notice our five-year age difference or think it’s much greater. And apparently, I can’t guarantee that someone won’t mistake me for his mother again.

But I can decide how much power I give those moments.

When I look at us, I don’t see a younger man standing next to an older woman. I see the life we’ve built, the family we’ve raised, the difficult seasons we’ve survived and the thousands of ordinary days that somehow became our story.

A stranger doesn’t see any of that and that is what I have to focus on.

They get five seconds. We’ve had decades.

I don’t want to spend the next ten years looking at myself through the eyes of strangers. I don’t want to be 66 someday looking at pictures of myself at 56 and wondering why I didn’t appreciate the woman I was right now.

I want to take the picture. I want to wear the dress. I want to go on the vacation. I want to leave the wig at home when I don’t feel like wearing it and put it on when I do. I want to work on my health and my posture because I want to feel strong, not because I’m desperately trying to convince the world that I’m younger than I am.

Most of all, I want to stand beside my annoyingly slow-aging husband and smile without wondering what anyone else thinks when they look at us.

Maybe embracing who I am today isn’t about convincing the world that I still look young.

Maybe it’s about looking at the woman I am right now—hair loss, wrinkles, changing body, imperfect posture and all—and believing that she is still enough to be seen.