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I'm 63 and Married 38 Years. My Wife Said "I Miss Us" at Our Anniversary Dinner. Here's What I Did the Next Morning. I want to share what I did, because a friend asked me about it last month, and I realized I'd never written it down anywhere. I'm 63 years old. Retired math teacher. Married to the same woman for 38 years. Her name is Susan and she still laughs at most of my jokes. I'm going to tell you about something most men don't talk about. Not in the locker room. Not at the doctor's office. Not with their wives. Not even, really, with themselves. For about three years now, I've been quietly fading. I don't know how else to put it. It wasn't a moment. There was no day where I woke up and felt different. It was more like — the volume on my own life got turned down, click by click, over a period of years. I had less energy in the afternoons. I started declining things I would've said yes to before. Golf invitations. The church men's breakfast. The trip up to my brother's place. I stopped wanting to take walks with the dog. Then I stopped wanting to walk to the mailbox. And the part nobody wants to talk about. The part of being married that, for 35 years, had been one of the easiest and best things in our life — That part went quiet too. Not because we'd stopped loving each other. Not because anything had gone wrong between us. It just — faded. The way light fades. You don't notice until it's mostly dark. I want to be clear about something before I go further. I'm not a doctor. I'm not in healthcare. I taught math. Nothing I'm about to say is medical advice. I'm one person who tried one thing and is sharing what happened. The way I'd tell a friend about a book that helped me think. If you take something away from this, take it as one man's experience. Nothing more. The thing that made me do something about it was a sentence Susan said at our anniversary dinner. We were at the steakhouse where we always go for our anniversary. It's not fancy. Dark green carpet. Vinyl booths. Prime rib with two sides. It's our place. We've been going for thirty-something years. Susan ordered the same thing she always orders. I ordered the same thing I always order. The waiter brought our drinks. She raised her glass and we did the toast we always do. "To another year." And then she said, very quietly: "I miss us." That was all. Three words. She wasn't crying. She wasn't accusing me of anything. She wasn't asking me to fix anything. She just looked at me across the table and said the truest thing she could say at that moment. Then she took a sip of her wine and asked me how the new neighbor's roof project was going. I answered her. We finished dinner. We drove home. We watched a show on TV. We went to bed. But I heard those three words for a week. The next morning was a Sunday. Susan goes to her sister's on Sunday mornings. I made a pot of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop. And for the first time in maybe twenty years, I typed something I had never typed before. I typed: what to do when you start to fade. That's the closest I could come to a search term. I felt stupid typing it. But it was the only thing in my head. I got a lot of garbage. Articles trying to sell me things. Forums full of arguments. Ads. I scrolled past most of it. But somewhere in the second hour, I started reading about circulatory wellness. I'd never thought about it before. I think most men my age haven't. You think about cholesterol because the doctor mentions it. You think about blood pressure because there's a cuff on your arm twice a year. But you don't think about the rest of it. About the way circulation, energy, and that general sense of feeling-like-yourself are all tied together at a level you can't see. I read for a long time. I read about how a lot of what men think of as "just aging" is actually something quieter. A slow, gradual shift in how well things move and reach where they need to reach. I read about how lifestyle matters. Diet matters. Walking matters. Sleep matters. I was already doing most of that. I'd been doing most of that for years. And then I read about beetroot. Specifically, I read about a compound family called betalains. The deep red pigments that give beets their color. I'd vaguely heard of them. I think most people have, if only from a "superfoods" list. But I learned something I hadn't known. Betalains are sensitive to heat. The way most beetroot supplements are processed — high heat, spray-drying, fast and cheap — damages the betalains before the powder ever reaches the bottle. Which is why, the article said, a lot of people try beetroot and feel nothing. They're getting heat-damaged powder. This is where I came across Rosabella. It's a small company. They cold-press the beets at low temperatures, which preserves the betalains intact. The whole pitch on their site is about that processing choice. Preserving what beets are actually known for in the body. Supporting natural antioxidant balance. Supporting cellular energy. Supporting general circulatory wellness. No miracle claims. No before-and-after photos. No promises about your sex life. That last part is what got me, honestly. If they'd promised me anything specific about that part of my marriage, I would've closed the tab. But they didn't. They talked about the body the way a body should be talked about — as a whole system that works better when its underlying processes are supported. That felt honest to me. I read for another hour. Then I closed my laptop and went and got the mail. I want to tell you what I did next, because I think this is the most important part of the whole story. I didn't order anything that day. I called my doctor's office on Monday morning. I told the nurse who answered exactly what I was thinking about. A beetroot supplement. Cold-pressed. For general circulatory and antioxidant support. I asked if there was any reason, given my age and my general health and the one blood pressure pill I take, that I shouldn't add it. She put me on hold for a few minutes. Then she came back and said the doctor had no concerns. She said the doctor had actually mentioned beetroot to other patients before as a sensible addition. She said to keep taking everything I was already on and to come in for my regular check-up in the spring. That phone call was three minutes. It is, in my opinion, the most important three minutes anyone reading this should spend before they try anything. I ordered a bottle that afternoon. I'm not going to tell you what happened in the first week. I don't think these things work like a switch. I don't think anything in the body works like a switch. What I can tell you is what happened over the first two months. In the first three or four weeks, what I noticed — and I might be wrong about this; I'm one person; bodies are mysterious — was that my afternoons got a little longer. I'd been hitting a wall around two or three p.m. for a couple of years. Just running out of fuel. That wall got pushed back. Not gone. Pushed back. I started saying yes to things again, in small ways. I went to the men's breakfast at the church for the first time in a year. I drove up to my brother's place over Labor Day weekend. I started walking the dog before dinner instead of after, because I had it in me to do it before. Susan didn't say anything for a while. She watched. Then somewhere in the second month, on a Tuesday evening — I remember it was a Tuesday because we were watching the news — she reached over and put her hand on my arm and just left it there. She didn't look at me. She just kept her hand on my arm and watched the news. We sat like that for the rest of the broadcast. That was the first night, in a long time, when something that had gone quiet started to be not-quiet again. I'm not going to say more about that part. Out of respect for Susan, and out of respect for how private these things are. What I'll say is this. We're not 25. We're not even 50. We're 63 and 61 and we've been married 38 years. But there's a version of us that I thought was over, that's not over. There's a closeness — a being-with-each-other — that I thought had quietly aged out of our marriage. And it hasn't. It just needed something I didn't know it needed. I want to be careful here, because I know what these stories can sound like. I'm not telling you a beetroot supplement saved my marriage. My marriage was never in trouble. My marriage was, and is, the best thing in my life. I'm telling you that something had gone quiet in me. A kind of quietness that I think a lot of men my age know about, even if they've never said it out loud. And one small addition to what I was already doing seems to have shifted something. I don't know exactly what shifted. I'm not pretending to know. Could be the betalains. Could be the antioxidant support. Could be that I started paying attention to my own body again after twenty years of ignoring it. Probably some combination of all of it. What I know is what I notice. And what I notice is that I'm here, in my own life, in a way I wasn't here two years ago. P.S. If anything I've said sounds like your life, the first thing I'd tell you to do is talk to your doctor. Not about the supplement — about you. Tell them what you've been noticing. The energy. The fade. The parts you don't usually bring up at appointments. A good doctor will take that seriously. Don't let yourself or anyone else wave it off as "just getting older." Some of it might be. Some of it might not be. You won't know until somebody who knows your bloodwork takes a real look. P.P.S. If you decide to try Rosabella, call your doctor's office before you start. Like I did. Just to confirm there's no reason not to add it given whatever else you're taking. It's one phone call. Most nurses will get you an answer in a few minutes. Then take two capsules with water in the morning. Don't change anything else. Just add this one thing. Give it sixty days before you decide anything. Some men notice something within the first few weeks. Others take longer. Bodies are different. Be patient with yours. P.P.P.S. Rosabella has a 90-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied for any reason, every penny back. No questions asked. That's a sensible policy. It gives you long enough to actually see whether it helps before you decide. P.P.P.P.S. Rosabella is a small operation. They harvest and bottle on their own schedule, so I keep an extra bottle in the cupboard. They currently offer a multi-bottle option that I went with myself. Worth a look. P.P.P.P.P.S. Susan and I are going on a trip in the spring. The kind of trip we used to take in our forties and stopped taking in our fifties. A long drive. A cabin. No itinerary. Just us. I haven't told her this is the first thing I've looked forward to in three years. But it is. https://track.tryrosabella.com/cdc16426-3e48-40a7-9fad-21098084f6cf DISCLAIMER Individual experiences vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.