Coleen Nolan advises a 30-year-old reader who has fallen in love with a much older partner but feels that they are being pushed away over imaginary concerns about the age gap
Dear Coleen
I’m a guy aged 30 and I’ve been seeing an older woman, who’s 50, for a couple of months.
We met just before Christmas at a party thrown by one of my colleagues. She’s divorced and has one son, who is 20 and doesn’t live at home any more.
She’s sexy and cool, and I’m already in love with her, but we can’t ignore the age gap, which crops up a lot in conversation.
For one, her son isn’t keen on me. I get it, as I probably don’t seem that much older than him. When he’s home and I’m there, he doesn’t engage with me at all and I don’t know how I’m supposed to relate to him. “Hello, mate” is usually as far as I get.
It’s also obvious that my girlfriend isn’t as serious as I am about our relationship. She often says things like, “When you fall in love and get married” and “When you have your own kids”. It appears like I’m just a temporary part of her life and whenever I try to initiate a conversation about the future, she shuts it down.
It doesn’t make me feel great. Do you think she’ll ever take our relationship seriously?
Coleen says
You’re obviously both having fun and getting a lot from the relationship, but I think your partner is probably just trying to be realistic given the age gap.
Making those comments also sounds like a bit of a defence mechanism to protect herself from getting hurt and to stop others thinking she has been “taken in” by a younger guy.
I think all you can do is be very direct about how you feel, but just keep in mind that at this moment you are in the thrilling, passionate stage of the relationship.
Six months or a year down the line, when excitement has died down a bit, you might feel differently about the future.
You might think, “Oh, I do want kids” or “I want to be with someone closer to my own age”.
So I think you have to be aware of the realities of being with a partner who is at a very different stage of life.
Maybe if you took a more pragmatic approach to discussing your relationship, your girlfriend would be more willing to listen.
I understand her son not being thrilled that she’s dating a much younger guy – I remember my eldest son asking me not to date anyone closer to his age than mine!
Maybe he’s not getting too invested because he’s expecting it not to last, but at least he’s not being difficult or unpleasant.
