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Article about dating a man 15 years older than me:
Vicki Larson shares how two age-gap affairs changed her life—and the science behind relationships between much older and younger people. Should You Date Across Big Age Differences? Vicki Larson shares how two age-gap affairs changed her life—and the science behind relationships between much older and younger people.
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By Vicki Larson | March 18, 2024. Bookmark. There’s a funny thing that happens when people fall in love: We sometimes end up in relationships that might challenge what society believes a “real” relationship looks like. Actors Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore were married from 2005 to 2013 (David Shankbone / CC BY 2.0 DEED). Take, for example, a relationship in which the two people have a huge age difference. Whether we like it or not, many of us can understand that a middle-aged or older heterosexual man might choose to be with a woman much younger than he is, especially if he has money, power, and status. There are so many celebrity pairings like that, and it’s so frequently perpetuated in movies and TV shows, that while we may disapprove, we still accept their reality. But a young man with a much older woman? Why would a man want to do that? We’ve already seen how it doesn’t work out in the long term, perhaps most famously with Aston Kutcher and Demi Moore, who was 15 years older than Kutcher when they wed—which helped spread the terms “cougar” and “puma” into societal consciousness—and more recently with Hugh Jackman, 55, and his soon-to-be former wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, 67. Advertisement X. Keep Up with the GGSC Happiness Calendar. Make the world a little better this month. Focusing on those examples, however, can make us forget the many times that huge age differences did work out in the long term. There are couples like director Sam Taylor-Johnson and her husband, actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, with 24 years between them, French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Trogneux, who is 25 years older than he is, and the late Tina Turner, who was 16 years older than her husband, Erwin Bach. And, on the opposite end, couples such as actors Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, who is 25 years younger than he is, and actors Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, who is 21 years younger. Having experienced two age-gap relationships myself—once with a much younger man, 26 to my 48, and a much older man, 26 years my senior—I know how transformative they can be, despite societal judgment. They certainly were for me. I discovered those judgments can obscure some nuances that are worth considering, if we’re willing to have a more honest discussion about age gaps. Yes, according to my experience and the research, intergenerational relationships can have drawbacks. But they can also energize us, provide us with new perspectives, and help us to grow. Enter Bugs. “Bugs” rented a room in a house across the street from me. He was just about the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, a young Jude Law-like Adonis with piercing blue eyes, a smile that could melt an iceberg, and a beautiful body that was shaped by years of bicycle racing in his native England. I sometimes felt his eyes on me as I loaded my children or groceries in and out of my minivan, and it made my pulse race. Sometimes, we caught each other’s eyes and smiled at each other, my cheeks a rosy pink from blushing. Eventually, we said hello and I discovered he did landscape work. It just so happened that my husband and I needed some. He came over to look at our yard, and, as I explained my landscape vision, I made a joke about his last name, which begins with “Good.” “There are many ways to be good,” he said with his dazzling smile, as he gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. Was he flirting with me? We hired him—I did not tell my husband about the squeeze—and sometimes we shared a cup of tea in the yard together and chatted. There was something about him that was different. He seemed wise beyond his 26 years. “What is it about you?” I asked. Bugs shared that he had done a weeklong international residential self-growth intensive called the Hoffman Process that delves into family-of-origin issues. The more he told me about how it had helped him, the more I knew I wanted to go. By the time of that conversation, my 14-year marriage had just imploded—I discovered my husband’s infidelity and couples counseling wasn’t really working, even though I was hopeful to salvage our union for our two young children’s sake. While it would have been easy to point the finger at my husband, I knew I had contributed to our marital dysfunction. I was eager to learn in what ways and why. The retreat was transformational for me. And it gave me the strength to decide to leave my marriage despite my fear. I was only working part-time and I had no idea how I was going to support myself and my kids, and I worried how the divorce was going to affect them. All I knew was that I could not stay in the marriage.
dating a man 15 years younger than me
dating a man 15 years older than me