My new bloke-friend is a bit older than me, and it has proven to be challenging in many ways…some expected, some not.
He sings Michael Row the Boat Ashore, while I bellow along to We Don’t Need No Education.
He irons his shirts and trousers to a razor-sharp crease, whereas I have no idea where my iron is.
He’s horribly conscientous about diet and stuff, while I’m still young enough to deny the reality of heart disease and cancer. It makes for interesting discussions in the supermarket, especially when I go for the camemberts and the potato chips when he was trying to find some organic beans and carrots. He didn’t object when I bunged a Sarah Lee Chocolate Pudding in the trolley though I noticed.
The hardest thing though was being introduced to his kids.
I dated a woman who was 22 years older than me for almost a year.
I was 22 at the time and she was 44. She lived in Canada so I moved in with her and helped pay for bills, food, etc. By the way, I lived in AZ at the time.
So I lived there for about 9 months…Came back to try to get a longer visa, and then got a letter from her calling it off. Seems she got to be feeling too guilty over the age difference. Ah well. I eventually got over it.
And her two daughters were my age as well. It was a bit weird at first but you and they grow used to it. All the luck.
Thanks Idle for your best wishes. I’m old enough too now so that being with someone even older doesn’t really matter to me in strictly chronological terms.
But what about some of the mundane issues that you came across where age really DID make a difference? One thing that makes me laugh is that he talks to everyone on the street when walking the dog. I’m a chatty person to an extent, but that seems to be an Old Fart specialty.
Another issue is being obsessive about having his car serviced. Maybe that is just my slackness coming to the fore, but I have NEVER counted or worried about the kilometres between services…unless the car was making strange clunking noises or puffing smoke from under the bonnet. It seems to me that Old Farts seem to be more pedantic about things like that.
I think the thing that bothers me most though is that he plays the piano accordian. Should I run away fast now??
I was 28 and my girlfriend was 30 when we ended it. We just came from too different of generations. Her from Early Gen-X, and me from Near-early Gen-X.
After the hot MILF sex was over, we just had nothing to talk about.
My SO is 18 years older than I am, we’ve been together almost two years and are doing very well.
I think sometimes I act more mature than she does, and most days we meet in the middle. I’m the one who keeps track of how many miles between oil changes, but then it’s my car. Don’t sweat it, its what keeps cars running without having to buy a new one every three years.
We realized we were right for each other one day early on when we were running bits of red plastic through our teeth, getting the extra little bits of bolgona off the rind.
I’m 18 years older than my husband. No one seems to notice, including us. He’s older than his years and I forgot to grow-up! (If someone says “Shut-up”, they mean stop talking. So if one says “Grow-up” does it mean stop growing?)
I am 16 years older than **RickQ[/]. Aside from musical tastes (and I am winning him to my side, apparently, as he puts on the Simon and Garfunkel CD as often as I do) the biggest difference is when we watch Jeopardy. I cream him on categories like 70s TV.
I was really worried at first about our age difference, but it has turned out to be a non-issue so far (married 2 years).
One thing I thought about the OP was that it is hard to tell what is an age difference and what is a personality difference. Talking to strangers and being meticulous about the car might be either.
My first serious relationship was with a man 16 years my senior. I turned out to be the more mature one, though, which ended it. Still, it was great for awhile, and maturity isn’t dependent on age alone anyway so I don’t blame the breakup on our age difference.
My current SO is one and a half years younger than I am. I was surprised; I’d thought he was a couple of years older when I met him. Anyway, we’re both old enough that it doesn’t make the slightest difference except on paper.
Cowboy is 12 years older than I am. I just realized recently that in a few years, he will be in his fifties, while I will still be in my thirties. The difference won’t be any greater, but it seems odd somehow.
But we’re very good for each other, and have many more things in common than I do with most men my age. The age gap doesn’t bother either of us, but we do make fun of ourselves for it. He rolls his eyes at me if I point out that I was too young to remember something first hand, while I like to needle him about it.
Two things are a little sticky to us: kids and aging. My kids are enough younger than his that he feels like he’s already done with fathering. They have a father and he can just enjoy them, but the thought of formally taking on the added responsibility all over again gives him pause.
And I worry about what’s going to happen when we get older. I don’t want to watch him go downhill physically or mentally while I’m still fine. I guess I could run across that with an SO of any age; it’s just a little more likely with our age difference.
My first serious (i.e. someone I dated for reasons other than just to have someone) relationship was with a man ten years my senior. Age was never an issue with us. Most of the time I didn’t even think about it and neither did he.
Hmm, maybe I’ve been wasting my time trying to find someone with compatible religious beliefs and that sort of thing, and I should have been looking for another bologna-rind scraper.
(If someone says “Shut-up”, they mean stop talking. So if one says “Grow-up” does it mean stop growing?)