5 Things I’ve Learned from my Age Gap Relationship

Five years ago, I met someone.

The night we met was at a back-to-school party thrown at our university. They called it a mixer – but we didn’t mix with anyone else. We talked about everything that night. I told him about my parents’ divorce and my fears about love, he told me about his Latin American heritage and the struggles he faced when he moved to Canada as a young teenager. Instilled with confidence of the vodka-cran variety, when the mixer ended I held his hand and pulled him to my friend’s residence room where I leaned against his leg while he played the guitar and sang Spanish love songs. To say I was smitten was an understatement. The next day, he asked me on a coffee date, and now we’ve got half a decade of love behind us.

Oh – and did I mention he’s 11 years older than me?

I never set out to date an older man. And likewise, Leo wasn’t looking for a younger woman. We were just two people whose paths happened to cross; and I’m grateful everyday that they did.

Age really is just a number – but at the same time, it does play a role in our relationship. From the reactions we get from other people to subtle ways we interact with each other, coming from different generations has impacted our love story and taught me a lot about life, love, and myself. Here are 5 things I’ve learned from being in an age gap relationship.

1. Everyone has an opinion.

In the early days of our relationship, I was worried about how our families and friends would react. Luckily almost everyone was overwhelmingly supportive, but we faced our fair share of criticisms as well.

My biggest concern was how my family, particularly my Mom, would react to our age gap relationship. To my surprise, she was completely supportive. Her philosophy was that as long as it was a happy and healthy relationship, Leo’s age shouldn’t matter. His family were also extremely encouraging. Leo’s parents got married when they were still in their teens and are still together almost 50 years later, so they understood that age isn’t a barrier to true love.

As an older man dating a younger woman, Leo’s friends probably reacted with high fives and congratulations. They saw me as a fling rather than a serious partner. This was something that bothered me quite a lot initially. Would Leo’s peers not take me seriously because of my age? Meanwhile, my friends reacted differently. I definitely got my fair share of support as well, but there was a different tone to their comments. Their reactions ranged from concern, to confusion, to outright disgust. I remember one acquaintance telling me, “that’s gross, he’s old enough to be your Dad”. Um, only if he was running around having babies when he was in the fourth grade, which seems unlikely.

I’ve also dealt with jokes about me being a gold digger or a sugar baby. As if being in love with my handsome, charismatic boyfriend would require some sort of compensation! People assume Leo only wants to be with me because I am young, and I would only want to be with him because of money or some other benefit. What is it about age gap relationships that make people think they know the whole story before they’ve even read the first page?

2. Age is just a number… Until it isn’t.

In our day-to-day relationship, the topic of our age difference rarely comes up. We are just your average couple, until Leo starts talking about being a senior in high school and we realize that I was in the first grade then. Pop culture references also remind us of how vastly different our formative years were. I’ve never heard of some of the music and movies that defined Leo’s youth, just like he has no clue about the things that define mine.

But rather than these things being a barrier, they actually serve as a bridge to help us connect and understand each other more. I’ve been introduced to so many amazing movies, songs and shows that I would never have known about if it wasn’t for our age gap. Similarly, Leo knows more about Tik Tok and Twilight than any man his age would ever care to know, no matter how much he claims to hate it… And he was the one who insisted we watch the entire Twilight saga because he “needed to see what happens next”. Just sayin’.

3. Empathy is key.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a man in his 30’s. Likewise, although Leo does remember what his 20’s were like, it’s easy for him to forget how stressful certain parts of young adulthood are. It’s extra important for us to be empathetic when helping each other through a problem.

It would be easy for Leo to say my problems are small, and that things will get better when I’m older. In a way, he would be right. But all that would do is diminish my struggles, and make me feel like my problems don’t matter to him. One of the things I love most about him is how supportive he is – it doesn’t matter if this stressor will be gone in 5 years, what matters that it’s causing me stress now, and he always knows what to say to help me work through those feelings. It’s great to rely on his life experience for support when I don’t know how to handle something.

The same goes for me supporting Leo. Certain things that don’t bother a 20-year-old are hugely stressful for a 30-year-old. Before brushing off something that’s worrying him, I need to really put myself in his shoes and think about how this issue is affecting him. I think this is key in all relationships, but in an age gap relationship it’s especially important.

4. Life stage matters more than physical age.

When we first met, I was 19 and Leo was 30. It seems like a huge difference, but at the time we were both undergraduate students at university with a lot in common. The only difference was that I had gone to university right after high school, while Leo had returned to school for a career change after working for a decade. We were at similar places in life, so our age gap mattered much less than it would have if Leo was in a different life stage.

I think this is one of the reasons why age gaps seem to matter less as you age. 19 and 30 seems like a much bigger difference than 40 and 51, for example. A 40 and 50-year-old would be in a similar place in life, so people would be less likely to question their relationship.

At the same time, I know many healthy age gap relationships where the partners are in vastly different stages in life. For example, check out Mindy and Larry on YouTube. They have an age difference of 30+ years and are in different life stages, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t have a wonderful relationship! While it can make things easier, being in the same life stage is certainly not necessary to have a happy relationship. I look forward to a future of growing up and growing old together, no matter our ages.

5. Love is love.

One of my Mom’s good friends, let’s call her K, met her soulmate at 40. The only problem? He was 60, and 20 years her senior. They had 10 amazing years together before he died suddenly and left K heartbroken.

When Leo and I started dating, my Mom was hesitant to tell most of her friends. But she was excited to tell K. She assumed that K’s experience with age gap relationships would make her supportive of mine and Leo’s budding love story. To our surprise, K was less than thrilled. Like many people, she saw an older guy dating a younger woman and assumed the worst. Despite her experiences with her husband, she felt I was too young to enter into a relationship with an older man.

I was confused when my Mom told me what K had said. She had only gotten 10 years with the love of her life. Wouldn’t she have preferred to meet him at 20 and spent even more time with him? Yes, I was young when Leo and I met. And no, I would not recommend an age gap relationship to everyone. But when we first connected at the party that night, I knew I had met someone that made my soul smile. What more could you ask for from a partner?

When Mom talked to K again, she told her what I had said and she immediately changed her tune. If she could have gone back in time and met her husband sooner, she would have done it in a heartbeat. Regardless of age, she would have done anything to spend more time with the man she loved.

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An age gap relationship really isn’t all that different from any other relationship. Soulmates come in all shapes and sizes. People of different ages, cultures, and backgrounds fall in love everyday. These differences can make a relationship more difficult, but they can also bring people together in new ways that you didn’t even realize were possible. Yes, my boyfriend is over a decade older than me. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.