Age Gap Relationships- where there is a large Age Gap between Partners

If you have met an older man and the relationship is deepening, you may be wondering whether to take the relationship deeper or whether to run away. When the man in a relationship is much older than the woman, some people cast aspersions on the psychological basis of the relationship. Others say love is blind and to carry on regardless. People reserve their greatest bile and disapproval for relationships, where the woman is much older than the man is, they think that he is just after her money, that she is paying him, or that he is looking for a mother figure and she is looking to hold onto her youth. However, relationships are more complex than the simplistic motives that others ascribe to the people involved in them would have you believe.

If you are involved in such a relationship, and are thinking that the relationship is deepening to a point where it may result in marriage, you may be thinking about the whole situation. Such relationships can and do work, and they are very successful, but like any relationship, they need work, communication, and thought. However, in a relationship with a big age gap between the partners, there is a lot more to think about. Much depends on your current ages.

When people in a relationship are fifteen and twenty, the age gap is huge, because the two people are at very different stages in their development, the fifteen year old is just moving into adolescence and the other is moving nearer to adulthood. However, in a relationship between the same two people aged twenty and twenty-five, the gap is not so huge, one is moving nearer to adulthood and one is already an adult. Taking the same two people at twenty-five and thirty, the age gap is negligible because both are at a similar stage in life. This shows how even a small age gap can make a great difference or no difference at all, depending on the stage of life that you have reached.

A larger age gap between a couple’s ages may show itself more in later life. A gap of twelve years between a couple, does not show itself very much when one partner is 28 and the other 40, but it may be a different matter when the same people are sixty and seventy-two. A larger age gap, say twenty years or more can make the differences between the two even more apparent. The younger partner may end up, whilst still feeling relatively young in outlook and life, caring for the older partner and unable perhaps to do the things that he, or she, still wants to do.

There are also other things to consider, the question of having children is very pertinent, when there is a large age gap between a couple. The older partner, may already have children and not want any more, or have decided that they do not want children. The younger partner may not be at the stage in life to make such a final and forever decision.

Perhaps a very grim thought to consider is that the younger partner in the relationship may outlive their partner by many years. It is a sobering thought that you could end up being a widow, or widower, for much longer than you were a wife or husband.

Just thinking that love is blind and that you should just blindly follow the emotion of the moment is foolhardy. Love alone cannot outweigh the bitterness, which could come later, if you do not honestly think through the implications of your actions. All relationships need more than just infatuation to sustain them. Mutual respect, friendship, and interests in common between the two partners are important in any relationship, but in a relationship, or marriage, where there is a big age gap between the partners, they are crucial to the relationship’s success. You also need rhinoceros’ hides to withstand the disapproval that others will heap on your collective heads. That said, there are many successful marriages, where there is a large age gap between husband and wife, or wife and husband. Entering such a marriage, fully aware of the implications and difficulties, caused by a big age gap between you, will save heartbreak in the end.