When I listen to comments from elderly people who have been married fifty, sixty, or more years answering the inevitable question about “the secret to a successful marriage,” it seems to me that a high tolerance for boredom often heads the list. Such bromides as “We never went to bed angry” or “Moderation in all things” convey a philosophy more geared to survival than to pleasure. Where, one wonders, is the idea of endless, renewable love?
