by Kenzy England

Created on: September 24, 2008

I have to admit, I never thought it was a good idea for a woman to marry a man more than five years older than she is. What could they possibly have in common? I figured that at some point, you enter a generation gap and the chance of commonalities started to dwindle.

I was wrong.

My husband is fifteen years older than I am. When we married, I was a month short of my 30th birthday and he was 45. In the beginning, I had fought off the notion of dating him because he was so much older than me. Perhaps there was a fleeting thought go through my head that people would think me odd. Granted, he was sweet, kind, thoughtful, and he made me laugh. But seriously, a 15-year age difference was pretty significant in my eyes.

After our first date we would sit and talk about everything under the moon. I realized that, regardless of whatever preconceived ideas were floating around in my head, we did in fact have a lot in common. We both love to fish, camp, and though eating out is nice, sitting outside in the evening and watching the night sky is better. The both of us had the same thoughts about family and raising children, which was important to me because at the time my children were still young.

I was able to get past all of the things that I had believed for so long in order to forge into a really wonderful marriage to this man. I'm not saying that everyday has been rosy, sometimes we run into the proverbial generation gap, but we overcome those little obstacles and move on. There are some things he won't budge on, but there are also things that I won't give in on, either. If you think about it, these situations present themselves in most, if not all, marriages. Most people don't think exactly alike in a relationship. It's not exactly an age-related issue when you think about it. We all have differences in our opinions, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Sometimes, having an older man as a spouse has a very positive impact on us. Using my relationship as an example, my husband seems to have settled me down quite a bit. I needed that. It wasn't that I was a wild child, but having been subjected to abuse all of my life and having been in a relationship in which my ex-husband cheated, I desperately needed a man to show me that they aren't all that way. He has shown me the stability that I've never had. Believe me, it hasn't been an easy road to travel on his part. There are days that I feel like the whole world is going to come crashing down on me and everything we've worked so hard to achieve will be lost, but I realize that's my old life coming back to bite me. He talks me through it, reassuring me that everything is fine, and we go on.

I would tell any woman who may think that a man is too old for them, even though everything in them says, "This is the man for you", to just go for it, follow your heart. If he treats you the way a woman should be treated, you shouldn't fight your feelings or worry about what others will say or think about it.

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