‘Who’s this? Your mum?’
My boyfriend could tell I was upset. As we brushed past the offender, he reassured me: ‘Ignore him, he’s an idiot, some guy from work.’
It was our first night out in his local and that comment stung. I was 34 and a few months into a relationship with Rob, who at 23 was 11 years my junior.
No one had yet made such an openly rude remark about our age difference. It set my anxieties off. Is that what people really thought?
I felt deflated. I should have been able to brush it off as easily as we brushed past him, but it bothered me.
Yes, the age-gap played on my mind. But up until this point, no one had laid it out quite like this.
Rob and I met through a family connection. He was 18 and I was 29 when I first met him at a family party, but that was just a fleeting moment over a cigarette, nothing more.
We met again by chance about four years later then six months after that he got in touch with me and asked me to go for a drink.
We clicked immediately. We shared similar interests, liked a lot of the same movies and books, matched each other intellectually and had fun. Our age gap seemed irrelevant – and was actually mutually beneficial.
His youthful exuberance rubbed off on me – we did things I hadn’t done in years, like camping, and hill-walking – and I like to think I improved his palate with my love of cooking.
But some family and friends struggled with it. There were comments – cougar and cradle snatcher in particular – usually said in jest, but they were derogatory and demeaning, and, unlike the idiot in the pub, they really hurt, coming from people close to us.
A few openly suggested I was too old for him. Some stayed silent, but I saw their disparaging looks.
The judgement was real – but then so was our relationship.
We did argue over the insensitivities of others. I got wound up by the silly comments; Rob didn’t.
The negativity affected us. But we were strong, despite it, and we grew stronger.
After three years, we moved in together. Even then some of our inner circle still had their doubts. But we felt secure in our relationship – by this point, it was the longest I had ever had.
The average age-gap in a marriage in the UK is a year or two – but I’ve never considered myself an average person.
Still, when celebrity age-gap relationships are vilified and scrutinised, what chance do the rest of us have?
Unsurprisingly, female-led age gaps cause the most outrage. When, at 26, Harry Styles began dating Olivia Wilde, who is 10 years his senior, the outpouring of anger from fans and onlookers was frightening.
The negative reaction to 19-year-old Cruz Beckham dating 28-year-old Brazilian-German musician Jackie Apostel has been similar.
Social media comments from women in particular raised my eyebrows, but according to an Ipsos poll in 2022, while 70% of women agree it’s socially acceptable for an older man to be with a younger woman, only 56% think it’s acceptable when the gap is female-led.
Society, it seems, really doesn’t like the idea of older women and younger men being together. Or maybe people don’t like the idea of women being seen as sexual beings, no matter what age they are? Yet old men are often given a free pass.
The gender-led hypocrisy in issues around relationships, sex, and ageing is incredible.
But age-gaps just don’t matter. Rob and I have learned from each other in our relationship. In those early days of cohabiting, Rob had a part-time job and was a mature student, and I was self-employed, struggling post-recession – but we muddled through.
It was the first in a pattern of events that might have broken us actually making us stronger.
Occasionally, our age gap came to the fore – we didn’t think about kids, and then when we did talk about it after about six years, I was pushing 40.
Maybe if we were both pushing 40 we would have been in more of a rush to think about kids. But we supported each other, dealt with it, and moved on.
We got married after nine years together in 2015. Family illnesses, the pandemic and the death of my father from Covid during the first wave, then my cancer diagnosis, put more pressure on us than anyone should withstand.
But never did I feel unsupported by my now-husband, who graduated, found himself a great job and furthered his studies.
In fact, it’s been the opposite. He has dealt with all of our life crises with maturity and strength.
Our age gap has never been relevant in our relationship.
Now, we’re 53 and 42. We’ve spent 18 years together and have grown in every one of them as individuals and as a unit.
And no one has ever called me his mum since.
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