A 31-year-old woman tells: Life with my 60-year-old boyfriend

It’s a common complaint of older women in the dating game – men their age want to date 30-year-olds. Plenty of men, meanwhile, argue that 60-plus women are either too keen on their own independence to want to settle down, or that they’re not as interested in sex as a younger woman. Both sides, needless to say, come with baggage that not all prospective partners relish dealing with. 

But the thoughts of said younger women are rarely heard – until now. An anonymous 31-year-old has revealed in Cosmopolitan what life’s like with her 60-year-old boyfriend. Saying that she’d tired of “bad boys” her own age, she was charmed when she met her older beau at a gig.

“There’s just something I love about hearing an older, intelligent man’s stories,” the unnamed woman says. “Regardless of his age, we have so many common interests which make our conversations deep and interesting. While it’s his brain that I find incredibly attractive, give me a lived-in face and white hair any day … His presence in my life has been a genuinely calming influence on me.”

She says she loves that he compliments her on her appearance and that there’s always a sparkle in his eyes when he sees her looking gorgeous. That’s the upside.

The downside, however, is that not everyone else loves the sight of a young woman with an older man (or vice versa, for that matter). The 31-year-old says that strangers have called them ‘disgusting’ in the street, while some of her friends have either assumed she’s with her boyfriend for his money – despite the fact he’s not wealthy – or reminded her that she may have to care for him in his later years.

“My parents looked like they’d seen a ghost when I first brought him over for Sunday dinner,” she admits. “I can’t blame them, after all they’re about the same age. They’re polite when he’s around, but often ask me if I’m really sure about what I’m doing. I know they desperately want grandchildren and are secretly praying for me to change my mind.”

Then there’s the sex issue. “We do have problems in the bedroom,” she says, because her older man can’t maintain an erection.  “I have a very high sex drive and have tried to discuss the problem with him, but we’ll then argue about it, which just makes everything worse,” she says. “We’ve had full sex so few times that I can remember them all.”

Oh, and there are those “awful shoes that every old man seems to wear,” she adds.

Despite these hurdles, they’re in love, the woman says, and they intend to marry. “All I can say is that it’s true love – and I’m willing to take the rough with the smooth,” she concludes.

This couple is hardly alone in dealing with these issues. A study by the influential US Pew Research Centre in 2014 found that 18 per cent of men who remarried chose partners between six and nine years younger than themselves, while 20 per cent chose partners who were younger by 10 years or more. In contrast, just 11 per cent of women reported marrying a younger spouse the second time around.

Writing in Psychology Today, Theresa DiDonato explained that the success of age-gap relationships was usually dependent on a few key factors, including a whether the couple share a similarity in interests and beliefs, have a shared relationship timetable (is one partner looking to marry while the other isn’t?), have a a supportive circle of friends and family and a good level of financial preparation (is the couple aware of and planning for the likelihood that one partner will, for example, retire far earlier than the other?).

Despite all that, DiDonato also notes that all couples, no matter their age difference, have challenges, and that an age gap is unlikely to be the reason a relationship succeeds or fails.

“Couples negotiate all sorts of differences as they figure out if they can form a sustainable, happy relationship,” she says. “An age gap may be one dimension of your relationship, but it’s unlikely to define it.”

Do you think a big age gap is a big problem in a relationship, or is it the individual personalities and circumstances that matter more? Do you believe that older men typically want to date younger women rather than women their own age?