Thread: Is it wrong?
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Old 10-01-13, 01:33 PM   #61
GoldenRivet
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On the one hand you should follow your heart.

My personal experience: I did just that, i dated someone just twelve years my junior and it was the absolute worst experience of my life, and to be bluntly honest... im fortunate to have not blown my brains out. seriously. Im quite literally being serious there...

The age gap meant that our taste in music, our taste in movies, our taste in activities etc were completely different. She had not reached the level of maturity in her life nor had she the life experience that one has in order to become someone in their mid thirties and i had not any ability to go back in time to be someone in their early twenties.

The result is a lack of common experience, ultimately the only thing you end up having in common is sex. or perhaps sex and your love of Italian food or any other insignificant thing upon which to base a relationship. And while the sex might be mind blowing, and while it is a fact that a woman 10-20 years your junior can keep you completely emptied if you know what i mean... there is no substance to the relationship. Ultimately, it devolves to its lowest common denominator of screwing, fighting - quite vehemently about something upon which you differ (there will be these things daily) and then "make up sex". Rinse wash repeat - every day - until one of you walks away from the situation.

When i dated this particular person, I felt out of place around her friends because i didnt know the latest lady gaga gossip or whatever, She hated my friends because she couldn't related to them, i felt ridiculous trying to pull all nighters at bars and clubs with her. Come 1am - like clock work i was ready to go home and call it a night, and sometimes the result was just that... her on the other hand; absent and incommunicado until 4 in the morning.

On the other hand, some of the more cultured things i enjoyed like wine tasting, or enjoying cocktails in a jazzy cigar bar, or watching a classic movie... these grew to be things she was quickly bored with.

Ultimately, instead of embracing our differences as fun and quirky, we grew to hate the very things about one another that made us both who we are, and as a result we quite literally hated one another by the end of it.

We constantly argued - sometimes it was stupid things, other times not. But i was always being told how "Old" or "outdated" my music, my taste in movies, my taste in clothing, my manner of speaking etc was, and the end result of most arguments was generally some young woman locking herself in *my* room blasting some horrible excuse for music out of *my* stereo until she felt relieved enough to stop on her own accord.

I had one friend who was in a similar situation as i, we occasionally double dated. we both felt like babysitters, and the feeling of eyes all around the room looking at he and I was like a weight. It didnt take long for me to become ashamed of the fact that i was a 33 year old man dating a 22 year old woman.

In the end, after a particularly rough week, i simply had to drive her stuff to her moms house where she was visiting for the weekend, I put it all on her front porch and called her on my 2 hour drive home just to say "Your things are out front, Im not coming back." and thus closed the chapter on one entire year of my life. one whole year i would love to have completely erased... but a year that i know that i'm better for having remembered because I learned some important lessons, here are some of the most important

1. Life is too short to spend a single second surrounding yourself with people who are unhealthy for you. This for me includes dating women who are 5 or more years my junior of 5 or more years my senior.

2. Red flags pop up in your mind for a reason... no matter how rose colored the glasses are through which you view the other person, MIND THE RED FLAGS. Its your brains way of saying, look dummy... this aint right.

3. my twenties were a blast of a good time... i am well into my thirties now. I am not now, nor will i ever be that person again, and that is a good thing, i should embrace that, and surround myself with people who have experienced it themselves.

4. Relationships must be built upon trust, reliability, respect, common experience, patience, understanding etc. If you try to make it work with someone with whom you have little or no common experience - it is very likely doomed to fail from the start. For that reason, i have decided not to date women outside my age, race, or from a dissimilar socioeconomic condition.

5. Always be willing to accept the pain of getting the hell out of a situation. I was very upset about having to end the relationship i was in, but i knew that the pain was temporary and would end, and the next thing would be great and i was right.

generally speaking, i think dating someone outside your age group is a pretty rotten idea, and unless you find that 1 woman out of millions of them who - while being 20 years your junior - is still wise beyond her years, such relationships are rarely going to work out well
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