The Age Difference Factor

Our guest blogger Seth is back with yet another great entry! It's funny how it happened this time. He emailed me the other day asking if he can write a post about age differences in relationships. It just so happens that I was planning on writing a post about that very subject this week!

As you will see below, Seth has a cool perspective on the whole thing, so he wrote about it for today, and I will be writing the girl's perspective tomorrow.

Just to give some background... Seth is 26 years old and often dates girls older than him. I am 28 and often date guys younger than me. This is what makes the guy-girl perspective on the same problem so cool. Read on...
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A year ago, I was engaged to a woman who was four years older than me. We didn’t break up over the age difference, but the age gap would have caused some SIGNIFICANT things to work through in marriage. My current policy is that I don’t date anyone older than me. Period. (My friend Steph always says “but what if you meet someone who JUST turned 27 two weeks before you met,” so I suppose there are exceptions).

The younger guy/older woman combo is a hot thing in our culture right now, due to the Ashton/Demi thing, the divorce rate, and umm… Sarah Palin, who’s proof that women are staying active, beautiful (some women actually look better in their 30’s and 40’s than they did in their 20’s), energetic, and fun right through their 40’s.

Here are five problems I see arising in the majority of younger guy/older woman relationships.

1. Parenting. I don’t know many guys who are looking forward to this role in life more than me. I recently started collecting vinyl records, in part because I want my kids to know the feeling of dropping the needle on classic albums like Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run. I think about that stuff. A lot. But right now, I’m not at the point where I can dedicate as much energy and focus to parenting as a kid deserves. I will love any child that comes into my life (the only thing that makes me sad about the thought of step-kids is missing a part of their lives), but now is just not the time. If I was dating a woman older than me (let’s say, 30), now would DEFINITELY be the time for her. Either way, one party is giving up their dreams. Compromising is one thing, but letting go of your deepest desires in life—that only leads to resentment, and eventually hatred, in a relationship.

2. Financial. I would actually consider myself a “mild feminist,” but I still believe that a guy needs to be getting out there and providing the financial means for a good life for his spouse, and eventually, children. (Fortunately, women make closer to what they’re worth now, and I just may wind up with someone who makes more than me. In that case, great. I’ll buy myself those $3,000 racing bike wheels I want.) I just finished up grad school a year ago, and I have not secured myself financially enough to be able to provide for a woman older than me (again, let’s say 30), who has been on her own and deserves a husband who can improve her financial security in life.

3. Nesting. I have yet to pay more than $50 for a piece of furniture. I will soon own two bicycles that cost $x,xxx (it’s probably better that I don’t fill in the x’s). Women tend to develop a strong “nesting instinct,” meaning that they think it’s quite important to live in a way that’s less thrift-store and less nomadic than my current existence. This is a very good thing, as I would eventually like to sleep on a bed and put my clothes in a dresser that didn’t come from a dead relative. But again, I’m not ready for this, nor can I provide it financially. (Give me another two years, and I’ll probably be ready for something different.)

4. Danger. People die doing my hobbies. Not many, but each year we lose a few ironman competitors and mountain bikers to broken necks, broken backs, collisions with cars, and dehydration. I don’t know what the “adventure phase” of life looks like in women (it’s obviously there, because there are women who kick my butt in races), but most guys need a time to “sow their wild oats.” (Sadly, many guys think that this means getting really drunk and sleeping with girls they don’t care about, when what would really quench their desires is a good old-fashioned adventure). My friend John used to race snowmobiles. After he got married, he wrecked, punctured a lung, and almost died. His wife asked him to stop. He did (which was the right decision). I won’t always be a daredevil. But a woman older than me will probably want a guy who’s home more than I want to be right now, and for sure deserves a guy who has a better chance of not leaving her a widow than I can currently offer.

5. Maturity. By almost all accounts, I'm a pretty mature 26. But even I see that women tend to develop emotionally and psychologically at a different rate than men. (I'm not sure if this is cultural or programmed into our DNA.) At this stage in my life, this is the one area where it would actually be fine for me to date a woman older than me. However, from personal observation and experience, I've seen that the "maturity issues" don't usually pop up in an older woman/younger guy relationship until a few months in (keep in mind that new daters tend to be "on their game" and give the other person what they want to see) so my advice is to be cautious even if the maturity levels seem to match up in the beginning.

Awesome input, Seth! I'd like to hear from the male readership on this one. Are you dating or married to an older woman right now? How's that workin' out for ya? Let us know!! -Juliet