In reality, there’s more to it than just legality!

(Posted by Ron)

I remember a time when I was about 15 years old and was with a few of my friends at a little league baseball game.  We weren’t there to play of course.  We were there to watch girls.  After all, I lived in a small town and there wasn’t a whole lot to do.  As we sat there a new girl walked past us.  None of us had seen her before and when we did our hormones started doing back flips.

She was what we would call today “a hottie.”  She was about 5′ 3″, very cute, and really built!  She obviously knew the effect she had on boys and was working it.  She was one of the cutest girls we had ever seen.  As we drooled and said all of the things we would like to do to her a guy behind us got our attention.  “Her family just moved into town,’ he said.  ‘She’s cute, but she’s only eleven years old.”

Oh, my God!  Eleven and looking like that?  What a waste!  There was no way any boy our age would even consider dating an eleven year old, regardless of how hot she was.

A few months later a baby was born in Chicago.  Her name was Billie Gayle Luster and she would someday be my wife.  At a time in my life when I wouldn’t consider dating an eleven year old girl I certainly couldn’t have imagined a newly born child as a future love interest.

I married when I was 18.  That’s young but not uncommon in West Virginia.  On the day of my wedding Gayle was probably barely out of diapers.  If I had known her then it would still have been unthinkable that I would someday marry her.

When I graduated from college I was 26 years old.  Gayle would have been eleven – and we know what I think about eleven year old girls.  By that time I already had three children, the oldest of which was fewer than five years younger than Gayle.

When I was 30 I moved into my first professional position in the oil industry.  By then Gayle was about fifteen.  I’ve heard of 30 year old men and women dating children that young but that’s certainly not an accepted practice.  I still consider the ages of 15 to about 19 to be somewhere between childhood and adulthood.  It is my personal and professional belief that few people at those ages are capable of making and maintaining relationship decisions.

When I joined the company at which she worked Gayle was in her early 20′s – I was in my very late 30′s.   I didn’t know her age but she was obviously an attractive adult woman and age was no longer an issue.  When we finally got together neither of us seemed to notice our age difference.  It only became a consideration years later when we were discussing marriage and all of its implications.

I find our societal perceptions of age-gap relationships to be interesting.  There is often a strong tendency to look for ulterior motives in such relationships.  A case in point is that of Celine Dion and Rene Angelil.  He became her manager when she was about 13 and he was 39.  When they became a couple many years later there was a lot of suspicion that he had been much more than her manager for many years.  In fact they were a couple for a while before they made it public but every bit of evidence indicates she was an adult before anything other than a professional relationship existed between them.

When both partners are adults, significant age differences no longer seem significant.  In the case of Celine and Rene, he was 26 years old when she was born.  They have been successfully married now for some time.  By the time Gayle was an adult our age differences were no longer an issue.  I found her interesting on many levels and didn’t hesitate in letting her know.  Obviously she didn’t find my interest objectionable since we’ve now been married for 22 years.

We often get questions about whether or not someone should pursue a relationship with someone significantly older or younger than them.  (Read our answer to one such question here.)  This is never a simple yes or no answer.  I generally respond like this:

  • Do you like each other?  I think this is at least as important as love.
  • Do you love each other?
  • Do you truly enjoy each other’s company?
  • Do you have fun together?
  • Have you openly discussed the implications of entering into an age-gap relationship?
  • If there were no age difference would you still want to be with this person?

Depending on your answers to these questions you can make your own decision.  Except in rare circumstances the age gap should be the least of your considerations.  Yes, there are decisions to be made about the specifics of the age differences but, if there were no age gap and you would still want to be with the person, you will probably be successful regardless of age.

I have to admit I sometimes still find it interesting that I am married to a woman who was born when I was 15.   It is said the soul knows no age.  And so it is with soul mates – our love is ageless.

Other articles of interest:

Are May December Relationships Really That Different?

Recognizing all the Flags

OMG – What have I gotten myself into?

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