by lilymay george

Created on: October 13, 2010

When people talk about an age gap in relationships, they always seem to focus on the younger end of the spectrum; an eighteen year old and a thirty year old. OK. So it’s twelve year’s difference. However, by the time you get to forty and fifty-two, or even twenty-eight and forty, who cares?

When I was younger, I hardly ever dated boys my own age. I found them childish, too laddish and not really aware of how I wanted to be treated. I didn’t want to be taken to the pub and dumped at the end of the bar with the other girls while he went off to watch the footie with his mates.

When I was 18, I was dating a thirty-one year old. He would take me to the theatre, shopping in flea markets and antique fairs and all kinds of places that the boys I knew of my own age wouldn’t have had the slightest interest in. We shared common interests.

The age difference didn’t bother me at all. However, it bothered him and eventually he left me for someone closer to his own age and married her. He had taken a lot of flack from his friends about our relationship, By the way, his female friends seemed to be far more bothered than his male friends. I wonder why? I can still only assume that they felt threatened by a younger female in the group.

My friends also thought it was their place to raise eyebrows. I was strong-willed enough to shrug their comments off and carry on regardless. My parents, thankfully, adored him. He treated me well and that was all they cared about.

Sadly, he died at only thirty-eight years old. After he passed away, his best friend told me that he was in the process of getting a divorce so that he could ask me to give it another chance.  His mother asked to see me so that she could get to know the woman he had really loved.

He had told me that I was the only woman he knew that he felt he could talk to on equal ground. Despite the chronological age difference, in maturity, we were the same. What a waste.

I have never dated a man much younger than myself, but I have no doubt that the same parallels would apply. It is mental maturity, points of view and deep levels of compatibility that really count in a relationship. Age is nothing. Do you think that fate cares if your soul-mate is the same age as you are?

It is entirely unfair for others outside a relationship to comment or try to influence their friends or family in matters of the heart. Only the two people in a relationship really know what is going on.

If people are happy together then leave them alone. Even if you think they are headed for disaster, then still leave them alone. People have to see things through, to the sometimes bitter end, all by themselves.

Who knows what would have happened if I had stayed with this man? I will never know. I do know, however, that I resent the fact that his so-called friends felt it was their place to pass cruel comment and I know also that I resent the fact that he was weak enough to take notice.

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