Wednesday, 10 November 2010

• I'm Married to an Older Man (20 Years Older!)

  

  Many of my readers do not actually know that I, being 21, am married to a 44 year old man. A lot of people who find this out bombard me with questions and I thought, since seeing a lot of posts recently about age gaps and such, it'd be good to write this all out for anyone else who might have had these questions. 

  
  

  • Question number one: Has he always been into… younger women? Have you always been into older men?
    Response: No. Actually, my husband has always been into older women. It took a lot of struggling, fighting, and deep understanding to realize that there was no denying our strong emotions for each other. And no, my husband is not a ‘pedophile’! Thanks, stepmom!
  
  

  • Question number two: Three and a half years ago… you would have been barely 18!
    Response: Good job. I was a week before turning 18 when we finally consummated our relationship. He did not want to overstep any legal boundaries, nor did I want him to. We had only known each other since April at that point, so you could say we went fast, but we fell so hard that it was nearly impossible to avoid . Again, my husband is not a pedophile. I am a fully mature woman – I acted and had the body of one and still do.
    
    

  •  Question number three: There have got to be some serious maturity gaps, right?
    Response: Rarely, actually. My husband and I are almost on the same level. Cumulatively, due to years, he has had more experiences than I. However, there is a twist. I have had more painful, life-changing experiences and grew up much quicker than he had to. I have been playing “adult” since I was seven. This is one of the main reasons we fell in love – because no one my age or near it could relate to the things I have gone through. I am the friend who will tell you if your actions are juvenile and will deliver the situation to you straight, whether it is to your liking or not. I skipped a lot of times when one is able to act like a child. My husband always claims that my maturity and ability to evaluate things accurately are two of the biggest reasons he fell in love with me.
    
    

  •  Question number four:  Doesn’t it bother you that you will be alone for many of your final years?
    Response: Yes. It really does. In fact, it is one of the hardest things about being with my husband. I understand that on the assumption of natural deaths, I will have to watch my husband fall apart and eventually die, while I still have around twenty years to myself. It will be extremely heartbreaking to watch his body slowly stop doing things we used to be able to do. I often reassure myself, though, that we still have a good thirty-five years before any of that takes place. I also will be in the kind of career that isn't the safest one, and our expiration dates are never determined. Thirty-five years is a long, wonderful time to spend with someone and giving it up for a “maybe” is self-mutilation of happiness.
    
    

  •  Question number five: Are you a home-wrecker? Is there some daddy complex in there?
    Response: These questions are my favorite. My husband was previously married – yes, while I came into the picture. For a long time, I struggled with trying to overcome guilt and understanding that I am not a home-wrecker. When I came along, my husband and his then-wife had not had sex in nine years. They did not sleep in the same rooms anymore. He was not actively pursuing anyone – we were unforeseen. They were friends under the same roof, acting as partners in parenting, devoid of love or intimacy. When my husband met me, I stressed how much I did not want to be “the other woman”. He did not want this either, and after two weeks of intimacy with me, he left his wife. I will admit to an affair on technical grounds, but I will not concede that I am a home-wrecker. I came along, he took a short period of time to decide, and did it. His ex-wife is now happily living in Texas and everything is amicable. Oh, and no- there is no “daddy complex”. My father and I look far too much alike and the thought of banging someone who looks so much like me is disgusting. Ha, kidding. It's my father, for Chrissakes. This question makes me vom in my mouth a little. Again, thanks stepmom!
    
    
    

  • Question number six: Isn’t sex with someone so much older kind of gross? He must be victim of old, saggy balls.
    Response: Ok, this is so totes my fave question ever. My man looks about 15 years younger than he actually is. People have mistaken him for a graduate student or said, “I assume you’re around 29, right?” My man is not sagging anywhere. He is muscly in all the right places, soft in all the right places, and hard in all the right places. If you have not been able to tell, the sex is amazing. The biggest bonus goes beyond sex – it is intimacy. My husband took something that was terrifying for me, a weapon that was brutally used against me for 10 years, and turned it into something beautiful and special that is shared between two people. I could never share this with anyone else. This is perhaps one of the biggest reasons I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with my husband.
    
    

  • Question number seven: Aren’t you bothered by his previous marriage?
    Response: Yes and no. His ex-wife was very cruel to us for three years. She slandered his name in his workplace, refused to let him have visitation with his kids whilst I was present, and just a multitude of other little things. I do not like her. I have never liked her. I pity her because she is suffering a terminal illness, but I do not excuse her behavior. Part of it was understandable, but it reached a point when enough is enough. She truly enjoyed torturing us. She recently moved to Texas with her daughter, though, and has stopped treating us poorly. She is focusing on a new life and has stopped acting as though we’re the scum of the earth, and has even admitted that she is glad I came along. Although I still do not trust her at all, we have all moved forward.
    
    

  • Question number eight: Don’t you hate being a stepmom? You’re so young.
    Response: It gets really tough now and then, but I actually don’t. His daughter confessed that she loves me before she left for Texas. Now she has asked that instead of half, she wants to spend her entire Christmas break with us. She and I are very close and have a special bond of our own. To be honest, I’ve done the parenting game for many years. I basically did not have parents in my life until I was 15, which means I raised my sister starting from when I was 7, alongside my brother, who left only a few years later. This is merely a trip back in time, taking place in the present.
    
    

  • Question number nine: Don’t you ever want to see what else/who else is out there? Don’t you want to be a normal 21 year old?
    Response: Look at the average college student. It isn’t glamorous – being broke all the time, constantly trying to find someone to sleep with, getting incoherently drunk on a nightly basis, etc. Not all college students are like that, mind you. Some, like me, work and study their asses off. I have my tight circle of friends who don’t care that I’m married – one of them is my age and is my husband’s best friend. Whenever someone asks how on earth I could want to be married instead of unattached, I remind them that I’m the one going to bed with someone who loves me every night. That and I get sex whenever the hell I want to from someone who’s really, really good at it (I'm still broke, though).
    
    

  •  Question number ten: Why should we not think the worst of you two? Why are you together?
    Response: First off, no one should be thinking the worst of anyone. It's unfair and judgmental. My husband and I are together because our love does not see age. We finish each others’ thoughts and sentences. We fight passionately and we make up passionately. We can be completely silly together and it doesn’t matter at all. He treats me as an equal and cares about my future, my desires, and what makes me tick. We are a powerful force together, unable to be ripped apart by social prejudices and hatred. I am not his victim, and he is not my controller. Yes, we have our differences. Yes, I sometimes feel like he’s not listening to me (and vice versa). Yes, I have felt inferior, but we always come to an understanding. We try extremely hard to please one another and to meet eye to eye. My husband makes me breakfast in bed, helps me clean the house, nurses me when I am sick. We sing on the top of our lungs together and dance in our underwear, race down the sidewalk in the pouring rain, and share a mug of hot chocolate in front of Lois & Clark or Bones every night. We watch movies and shows and get deeply involved in the characters’ lives from an analytical point, as if we're actually there. We play a lot of (non-relationship/screwed-up) games and let our big golden retriever sleep next to us in bed. We are very much in a comfortable, passionate relationship and act just like most happily married couples do. We fell in love with each other – not our age.

   

  So those are ten questions presented to me the most. I have been as honest as I can possibly be and realize that I am exposing myself to some people who will be disgusted by this. So this is me, this is my life with my husband.

  Questions?

  
  

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