THE PRINCESS AND THE TERMINATOR

摘要

WHEN MARIA SHRIVER married Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1986, it was a real live WTF moment. The Austrian joke and the flower of the Kennedy tree? As the years went by, we doubters had to admit we were wrong; together Shriver and Schwarzenegger were more than the sum of their disparate parts. He went from celluloid bully to bully pulpit as California's governor; she won Emmys and a Peabody, wrote bestselling books, and made powerful documentaries. Now in their 50s and 60s, Shriver, 55, and Schwarzenegger, 63, appear to be asking themselves the same questions the astonished public did 25 years ago. unce upon a time men ana women in tneir i>us ana bos didn't have serious marital problems-this was primarily because they were dead. Even the most irritating behavior is somehow more bearable in blessed memory. With nearly 30 years added to our life expectancy since 1900-it was around 50 and is now over 80-we can make choices and have emotional crises that wouldn't have seemed worth it when there were only a few more years of unhappiness to soldier through. This 30-year bonus has dramatically shifted the marital center of gravity in our lives-at least for the healthy, prosperous citizens of the industrialized world. If 50 is the new 30, 60-ish is in many ways a new kind of 18. We are coming of old age in a way that parallels our first coming of age.