How old is too young?

It is something we always discuss as a child you want to get older, especially becoming a teenager but then as time passes and the birthdays come round more quickly there can be an increasing reluctance to embrace them. When it comes to dating age is also quite a sticking point.

I have been fascinated by the French President, Emmanuel Macron and the 24 years age gap with his older wife. That gives me great hope and even something to aspire to! However, recently I found myself in a situation with a similarly significant age gap and it just didn’t seem right….

As tends to be the case with most new connections these days, I received a message online from someone I hadn’t met in person. I decided to converse with the guy. It was all the usual ‘getting to know you’ kind of stuff.  We covered the key preliminary details…”what do you do? Where are you from? Where do you live?” Blah blah blah and “how old are you?!”

I told him my age. He replied with his age – he was 15 years younger than me. I instantly concluded that the conversation would be over and he will be off into the black hole of cyber space to find a chic younger than me. I can live with that. However, he replied to my messaging saying, “I am probably too young for you?”

I laughed out loud! I was convinced he would want a younger woman and he was concerned he wasn’t old enough! The world is a bizarre place.

However, fifteen years is a pretty significant age gap – at least given the ages we both are, it was worlds apart. I could almost have been his mother. I felt equally repulsed at the idea of dating a guy so much younger and equally a sense of pride. Perhaps I should include this on my resume?

Fifteen years!

Would I feel the same about someone 15 years older than me? I don’t know. I replied to the young man in question, that yes, he probably was too young for me and added, that I am also probably too old for him. He totally disagreed with me!

Wow.

It turns out, as you can imagine, that we were looking for entirely different things from each other and that was the end of the conversation. It did get me thinking, how old is too young? Equally, how old is too old?

What is the sweet spot? Does it even exist?

So often, when dating, an age range is applied to help ‘filter’ your prospects but in doing so the very act could filter out your true love. Is age that important when love is concerned? What does age mean anyway?

In the world of online dating I appear to be popular with men 30 years my senior. For me, that is too old as is fifteen years my junior too young. I suppose my sweet spot is somewhere between those decades! How unhelpful. Surely the age of your spouse is less relevant than being in the same season, wanting the same things, having the same goals and generally looking for the same things as each other in life.

I had another encounter recently with another younger man, who was only my junior by about five years. On the surface we seemed to have quite a bit in common and got on okay, well as much as you can on the phone when they live interstate! Anyway, he was set on having a large family. Yes, he wanted at least 3 children, possibly more. This dude wanted so many kids that I would have been a baby machine for almost a decade and we hadn’t even met! 

No thanks. 

I tapped out of that one quickly because I simply didn’t want that kind of life. Perhaps a decade ago I would have been up for it but not now, there are other things that I am looking for in my life.  In that scenario, where you simply want different things, age can be an issue but wanting different things in a relationship can happen regardless of age.

Age. Does it matter? Perhaps sometimes it does. Often I would say it doesn’t matter at all. A few weeks back I had a senile moment where I totally forgot my age altogether. I really couldn’t recall which of the three ages floating around in my head was correct and had to calculate it from my year of birth! You see, age can be so peripheral that even your own age can become elusive.

When dating age can be a limiting factor in many ways yet I have been encouraged by the younger, single men out there who are prepared to date an older woman, especially when they can remind her that she isn’t that old after all. 

The happiest day of THEIR lives

I can almost hear the church bells ringing in glorious harmony as another blissfully happy couple ties the knot.

Weddings.

Yes weddings! The peak of happiness for some and equally they can be the pinnacle of utter despair for others. Don’t get me wrong, I am pro-marriage. I am definitely pro-marriage but the process of getting married is what I am talking about, not for the bride and groom, but the experience of their single guests.

It should be noted, I am genuinely delighted when people fall in love and are prepared to stick together in sickness, in health, for richer and for poorer. That is admirable.

Congratulations.

My concern with weddings is that they are a bit like funerals. Stay with me….. Yes, weddings are like funerals because they force you to stand still and reflect on yourself. Weddings make you look at your life and wonder… “What will my destiny be?”

While the happy couple are gloriously celebrating their undying love with their nuptials, it can be easy to wonder where your elusive darling is lurking as it highlights your singleness.

To make matters worse for the single person weddings are entrenched with the traditions and rituals that rub serious amounts of salt into the breaking heart of a single person.

SOB.

As a single woman the absolute worst part of the wedding is when all the single ladies are forced together, as if on display in a zoo, to see who will catch the bride’s bouquet. Will it be your turn next? No thank you. I don’t particularly like flowers and the superstition that if you catch it you will be next to marry, simply doesn’t work. I know this is a fact because otherwise I would have been married by now – about 15 times over!

One friend of mine had suffered so many humiliating years if being forced to stand in front of the wedding party ‘hoping’ to catch the bride’s bouquet, that at her own wedding she refused to even toss her bouquet! The distress she had experienced as a single person by standing there among other single women, mostly young girls under the age of 15, was so significant that she didn’t want to make the single women attending her wedding feel the same way. It was such a beautiful gesture that really touched me and actually enabled me to enjoy her wedding much more, being safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to run and hide in the bathrooms when the painful moment rolled round. Phew.

Weddings remind single people that they are indeed single. Weddings dangle the carrot in front of you – it is so close and so, so, very far away as well. There can be great joy and hope as you celebrate the love of your nearest and dearest but also sorrow and grief in reflection of what may be left unfulfilled in your life. As a single person it can be a tricky mine-field to navigate but as people getting married there are also lovely touches to a wedding that can bless single guests. We are all in different seasons in life and I love the idea of being sensitive to the people around us that we care for – till death do we part.