A Matter of Age - Part Four
When I first came to Australia, a man my husband works with and is friends with was suspicious of me. He treated me nicely, but there is no doubt in my mind that he thought there was a possibility that I was after my husband for reasons other than love.
As a friend to my husband, he would have had suspicions anyway, but I think he had even more doubts because of how much younger I am than my husband.
That is well and truly behind us now and he has no doubts about me now that he has gotten to know me. All the other people who have gotten to know me also don’t have any problems with my relationship with my husband. Sometimes newer people stop and blink for a moment, but they are always polite and the moment is forgotten later.
However, my husband and I – and Alex and Jenny – can’t get to know and become friends with everyone. Some people will simply never accept such relationships and others, well, there just isn’t time to make friends with the rest of the world.
Thus, we continue to face some scrutiny and sometimes even outright disgust. But such is life and such is the price we pay for our love for each other.
Most of us say that ‘as long as you love each other, that’s what matters’, but is it? Would it begin to matter to you if a couple had ten years difference between them? How about twenty? Thirty? More?
When does it start to matter? Does it ever reach the point of being ‘wrong’? Who, if anyone, gets the authority to decide?
September 4th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
You guys must have quite the age gap for it to get that much attention and even as you put it, disgust.
I admit, an age gap would matter to me in certain situations. When it just doesn’t make sense. Like I said before, a 40 year old man with an 18 year old girl. Or a Grandma with a 20 year old boy. Then you got to kind of wonder about the mental make up of the people involved.
I can see at 20 how a girl might be attracted to a 40 year old man (but I can’t see what besides the obvious a man that age would want to date a girl for). But will she really be happy when that man is 60 and she’s in her prime at 40?
Lots of factors go into it. I think sometimes with young girls dating older men like that, often it is all about daddy issues. There are exceptions to the rule.
And sometimes there is just a chemistry there that exists beyond the age.
September 5th, 2008 at 5:36 am
Outright disgust is actually very, very rare and probably an exaggeration, given I am on the receiving end. It’s not as bad as I’m probably making it out to be, but we do get noticed.
You make very good points - things I have had to think about long and hard in my own way. It’s all fine and well to live in the moment… until you turn a certain age and things are even more different between you.
And, even being in an age gap relationship myself, I have my limits. I think it would be extremely hard for a couple to have half a century between them. Talk about different lives!
But as you say, a lot of factors go into it and sometimes chemistry is chemistry, as weird as it may be sometimes.