What is love?

Baby don't hurt me. Just sacrifice for me!

We’re all getting older. That’s one of life’s inevitabilities.

We can fight it a bit. We can eat healthy, exercise, try to live lower-stress lives, take on skin care and other regimens to slow or conceal the aging process, dress younger, act younger.

But you can’t actually defeat time. Eventually, the physical limitations associated with age come for us all. We’re each a little different regarding exactly which characteristics of us age and on what timetable. Some of us last a little longer than others in some ways, some in others, some not at all. But time only moves in one direction. We are all eventually going to be old. We’re even going to die one day.

Take me for example. I’m older than a lot of you internet kids. 45.

As time continues to pass, my hairline is going to recede. There are some cosmetic and medical options I could pursue to hide that, but they’re imperfect. I could even shave my head and pretend I’m a youthful manly bald guy. The hair I have left is going to become more gray and less brown. There are things I can do to hide that as well, though the wife thinks salt-and-pepper hair on her distinguished husband looks kind of hot.

Gray-white hairs are starting to creep into my beard, too. If it gets more white than brown and kids start calling me Santa Claus, maybe it’s time to shave it.

Age leads to thinner hair overall, wrinkles and a dryer appearance to the skin, receding gums and less healthy teeth, the list goes on. Some older people develop digestive issues and food sensitivities and can no longer enjoy as many foods as they used to.

Over time, as our bodies age, it gets harder to maintain muscle and to keep fat off. We can eat right and exercise and slow this process quite a bit, but time can’t be defeated. Eventually, the physical limitations of age reach us all. And eventually, the muscles, joints, and organs have been worn out enough that they don’t function optimally, and there are simply physical things you can’t safely do any more.

As time passes, the hormone balance in the body changes. Your libido decreases, as does your sexual performance. Your ability to get and maintain erections, your physical endurance and the length of time you’re able to participate in sexual activities - this goes down with time, too. We can slow this with diet and exercise, same as everything else, and even pursue medical options, but it’s coming all the same.

And while male fertility doesn’t suffer quite as heavily as an aging woman’s, older men have lower sperm counts, and worse sperm morphology and motility. You can still make healthy babies when you’re old, but the math is a decent bit worse than when you were younger.

The changes associated with age aren’t just physical. For many, the mind gets slower and more forgetful. Others get crotchety and set in their ways and a lot less fun to interact with. But even if your mind stays sharp, society moves on and what was normal and cool for you is regarded as outdated and uncool by most of society. Past a certain age, we lose the desire, and sometimes even the ability, to keep pivoting and changing ourselves to match every single social trend and change. We stop being cool. Because we’re old.

Yes, eventually, we’re all getting old, and getting old reduces our ability to work and generate income, the fun things we’re able to do, and how attractive we are to the opposite sex. —Very few women prefer men with gray hair, receding hairlines, pot bellies, and crotchety personalities. As women also age and become less attractive themselves, maybe a man like that is the best they can do, but none of them actually prefer that guy to an actual hottie who’s fun to be around.

Or do they? Not “they” in general, but maybe “her”? That’s the romantic ideal, isn’t it?

The fairytale romance is you get old, lose a little hair, what you have left goes gray, you get some wrinkles in that once-youthful skin, creases around the eyes and lips, a little pot belly and love handles, a little stoop in your back as you walk slower, and you can’t do everything you used to be able to do — but your loving wife is there by your side the entire time also growing old with you. And that history, that shared life, means something, right?

Even though you’re old and no longer attractive, you’re attractive to her. Not for how you look or what you can do. Not even for how you used to look or what you used to be able to do. But just for who you are. You’re her husband, and that means the world to her. So while you’re old and unattractive, she stays with you until whichever one of you dies first.

And you do the same, right? Because she’s gotten older, fatter, more wrinkles, less of that healthy sheen to her hair, skin, and teeth, and she definitely can’t do all of the things she used to. But even though she’s old and unattractive, she’s your wife, right?

But maybe all of this is a fantasy. Because we’re looking at a fairytale story about two old unattractive people. It’s not like either one of them actually has a chance to leave their spouse and move on to a new one — who’s equally kind and loving, but also young and attractive.

Obviously, the math isn’t quite that simple. That history and who and what a couple is to each other does have value. And there are large social and financial consequences to ending one relationship and starting another, especially after such a great length of time. And a big emotional toll swapping out what is known and comfortable for something new and unknown. Human relationships are complex. It’s not just a matter lining up all of your options at any given time and picking whoever’s hotter.

But if we had a hypothetical situation where one spouse stayed attractive and the other didn’t, and that attractive spouse had a very clear and very definite opportunity for a better life with a better-on-paper person with little to no consequences if they chose to take this opportunity — how sure are we that either of these spouses would stay, just because it’s their husband or wife and they have history?

What do people do when staying with a now-unattractive spouse is a very clear sacrifice?

There are minor sacrifices. When a 22 year old hottie marries an 82 year old billionaire on his deathbed, sure, for a few years, that 22 year old hottie is off the market and misses out on attractive other guys who might have wanted her. (Unless she cheats on her elderly husband.) But I think we all might have some ideas about what’s going on in that example and wouldn’t consider this a very big sacrifice.

There are moderate sacrifices. When a 35 year old faithful wife gets the call that there’s been an accident and her husband is in a coma, she doesn’t divorce him the next day. How would that look?! But by age 45 when the accident is old news, the social consequences are gone, and she wants to “choose herself” and be happy, that’s great! (And what an amazing coincidence that she found a new boyfriend right away that she definitely wasn’t dating while her husband was in that coma!)

There are big sacrifices. When a former fat girl who married a fat husband at age 22 does the work and becomes a 27 year old hottie, and her husband is still dumpy and fat, but otherwise pretty healthy and not likely to die soon? So staying with the man she married means spending the next 50 years from age 27 to 77 only with this dumpy fat husband, until she’s too old herself to do any better? That’s too much! By age 27.5, she’s telling all of her friends how cripplingly unhappy she is, how she married too young, and how mean and abusive her dumpy husband is. And by age 28, she’s divorced and dating a cute guy.

It’s easy to romanticize the idea of love when love requires no sacrifice. When two people who grow old together both have no viable alternative, it’s fun to smile and declare that true love is alive and well.

But the real acts of love we see are when people sacrifice for their loved ones, not out of obligation or duty, but love. When they didn’t have to, could have done better, but sacrificed anyway.

We don’t see much of that nowadays.