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 The Dating Doctor
The Dating Doctor, Serena Mackesy, brings her hard-won dating wisdom to bear on your problems. You can drop Serena a line about your own dating conundrums and catch up with her words of wisdom here every week. Read her latest advice here.
Age Gap Blues
January 30, 2007
GH writes:
I've been dating a guy sixteen years older than me - he's in his late forties, I'm in my early thirties - for over a year. He had been separated from his wife for two years when we met, and their divorce became final six months ago. Despite the age gap, we get on unbelievably well, have a huge amount in common, and the sex is fantastic. There's just one thing. Whenever we go to social things related to his friends or work, I get the cold shoulder from the women. They snub me quite ruthlessly, and if I start talking to a man (which is the only option left open to me), his wife will immediately appear and steer him away from me. I feel as though they blame me for his divorce or something - certainly they make me feel like a combination of bimbo, gold-digger and femme fatale. If they only took the time to get to know me, they'd find out that I have, as it goes, a reasonably successful career and certainly don't need this man to get on in life, give me status or even survive. Why do they treat me like this? He just says they'll "come round in time," but I feel that this is really unfair. Am I going to have to put up with this forever?
Yes, it's funny how much age-gap relationships seem to unsettle people - women in particular. If it's any comfort, younger male spouses tend to have to put up with quite a lot of patronizing - from both sexes. It's one of the reasons that younger spouses so often end up adopting the camouflage of middle-aged dress and haircuts over the course of time.
The thing is, you have to remember it's not you, specifically, who is causing this angst: it's what you represent, and for women, that's a whole load of resentment about the way males conduct themselves. Of course, to a degree it's not their fault, because in their very basic animal selves, even if they have no intention of starting a second family, men are going to be more attracted to women who are more likely to be fertile.
This is one of those things that enrages women, not just because they see their own value - their learned wisdom, their sexual experience, their ability to love and be loved, the fact that they've finally learned how to dress well - suddenly dismissed as they near menopause, but also because it highlights the fact that men still, in the modern world, have a sense of entitlement that seems hugely overblown (and often, frankly, fantasist) in comparison with that of their female counterparts.
You just have to look at any dating website to get a huge, ugly dose of 49-year-old men who look like frogs specifying not only the body shape of their prospective partner, but that she be under 35. And it doesn't help, of course, that there still are a fair number of women who indeed do latch on to men who are older than them for cynical mercenary reasons. Your presence among them is unsettling, and, yes, they probably are suspicious. This isn't any reflection on your relationship, of course: people can be very happy in mixed generation relationships with sufficient will and adaptability.
You partner is right. Lots of social groups are nervous of intruders, and this is no exception. They also, possibly, don't feel particularly disposed to making efforts with someone they - rightly or wrongly - have cast in the role of temporary fixture. It'll probably be a long haul, but in the end they will thaw, simply because there's nothing like familiarity for allaying fears. You may even, in time, get an apology from the nicer ones among them. And if you're tempted to write them off as a bunch of old hags, just remember that you're not going to be in your thirties forever, and nor are your friends. And are you really going to be cool, calm and collected when your best friend's ex-husband starts turning up to parties with someone who has just entered college?
Read Serena's latest advice here.
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