What it is actually like courting a person in his fifties as a lady aged 34

I’ve always liked an age gap, whichever way it lands, but until recently had never dated someone 20 years my senior. I’m 34 and met Pete last year after we were introduced by a new friend after I’d moved to Edinburgh. A man in his mid-50s was a new prospect, which was precisely why I was keen on the idea.

It wasn’t the stereotypical benefits I was after, you see. Millennials like me look at older Gen X-ers like him and see financial security, career success, a fancy car, probably a property somewhere — while men our own age typically have none of these things.

But that wasn’t what I found attractive about Pete. It was the years of extra experience that interested me the most: I like to be taught things and he had an undeniably superior knowledge of the world.

So what did I learn about dating a fiftysomething man as a thirtysomething woman? Well, good things and bad things — and much of it a big surprise…

Sex will not fix a row

During my six-month relationship with Pete, I realised how ingrained casual intimacy has become for my own generation. To test a new attraction, to fix a row, to ease a hangover — you name it, my peers and I use sex and dating, via apps, to generate the endorphin high we crave. For us, the buzz of intimacy soothes all wounds.

Not for Pete. Four months into sleeping with each other, we were walking to a pub and his mood was foul. I can’t remember why — grumpy moods came quickly and easily. (Was that him or his age? I didn’t know.)

‘Shall we just go back to mine and get into bed?’ I asked, knowing that intimacy would make me at least feel much better than sitting in a pub with someone in this much of a mood.

‘No, I don’t want to go home and get into bed,’ he half-spat. He seemed genuinely offended.

‘I don’t offer that to everyone, obviously,’ I wanted to say.

He wasn’t a tactile man, perhaps that was the problem. Surprise, surprise, we had one of our biggest rows that night.

You learn how short life is!

Part of the fun of dating someone a lot older is being immersed in decades of unknown music and film. I quickly became obsessed with a playlist full of brilliant songs he made me — in particular with Silver Lady by former Starsky & Hutch actor David Soul.

Then David Soul (Hutch) died, and I had to mourn him. The same happened with singer Sinead O’Connor. I’d known Nothing Compares 2 U, of course, but it was Pete who introduced me to the rest of her music. And then she died and my sadness was greater than it would have been.

It felt like the old saying ‘It’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all’ was a record on repeat.

Given his age, there was also a friend’s funeral here and there. Death came with the territory, it seemed, which taught me that no one (or life) should be taken for granted.

They really are set in their ways…

So don’t try and change their look. Not that I’d have dared. Pete’s kind of dishevelled hipster chic had been honed over many years.

He wore baggy jeans, long-sleeve flannely tops, sports jackets, trainers that were old and cool (probably) and always, always with a tiny hat.

Who was I to step in and decide that those tiny hats that only cover the top half of your head and make you look like a fisherman were not what he needed in life? So, eager to be supportive, I bought him one. It was rejected and I eventually gave it to my mum.

‘We are closer in age than you two are,’ she said pointedly. She was slightly pursed-lipped about our relationship, but agreed he sounded ‘interesting’.

What I learned was a man’s ways are firmly set by the time he hits his mid-50s. Pete had had 20 years longer than me to know what he liked, which also meant when it came to elements of our relationship — where we went on dates, or the kind of food we ate — it was largely his way or the highway. Flexibility was nil.

Space becomes private the older you are

For example, I was starting to worry that he had an entire family hidden at the flat he rented. We had dated for five months before I was invited back to his.

Turned out he was teaching me a lesson on space — both that having our own was important and that it was a privilege to be in someone else’s.

On the vast majority of our dates, we ended up back at mine. But then, on New Year’s Eve, I got the invitation to his. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I did think by then he must be hiding something.

And yet I found no framed pictures of another family, no horrible decor, no heaps of dirty clothes indicating that he was a mess but hadn’t wanted me to know.

It was lovely — designed with taste, and full of plants. I realised suddenly, but perhaps only because I’d had to wait, that you’re lucky to be invited into someone’s home. It’s a part of them not everyone gets to see.

They’ll have slept with half your friends

It was while sitting in a nice old man’s pub, appropriately, that I came to the realisation three out of the five women on my table had slept with my boyfriend. That’s including me.

I have quite a few exes myself, but they are spread about the UK — and I’ve had significantly fewer one-night stands. My risk of bumping into former lovers was a lot lower than his.

It was hard knowing the man I was dating had slept with so many people I knew. Neither did his attitude towards some of them endear him to me.

‘Oh, that was ten years ago’ he’d say, or: ‘Oh, that was one time and she’s a bit mad.’

When you date someone a lot older than you, you realise how much more likely this is to happen. He’d been having sex for 20 more years than I had, so of course it would seem like he’d been around the block. Twice.

Middle-aged men can be big food snobs

Nothing tastes like it does in New York, he’d say. Very often.

Pete had lived all over the world, which was one of the things I loved most about him. Conversation about culture, music and life in other cities — Berlin, New York, Riyadh — never ran dry.

But his cosmopolitan past had spoilt him in one significant regard: now he was home in Edinburgh, the food was never good enough. In particular, no restaurant could match his favourite eateries in Manhattan. We couldn’t order sushi without it being described as ‘frozen’ and ‘not actually tuna belly’, before the place was blacklisted.

In New York’ he’d had the best bagels, the best pasta, the best everything. ‘Not like they do in New York,’ became a running joke until it began to seriously grate.

‘Why don’t you just move back to New York if everything’s better there?’ I eventually blurted.

To me, being with him made a half-decent takeaway great. But that lovely sentiment didn’t seem to work the other way around.

Families are difficult whatever age you are

My relationship with Pete coincided with my relationship with my brother going downhill, which pained me hugely. But being with Pete taught me that siblings needn’t be close; and that, as you get older, long-term friends often replace them.

He had four brothers and sisters and wasn’t especially close to any of them. He’d bail on plans to meet the one he liked most as often as he’d turn up. Whereas I found my situation with my brother tragic.

What happened to loyalty between siblings as everyone grew up?

And yet, seeing how many friends Pete had around him, and how he’d learnt to accept a different version of family to the conventional one, made me wonder whether blood ties actually do trump everything else. I was learning that they didn’t.

Gifts will be… middle-aged but thoughtful

Given Pete definitely did have a sex drive, I was surprised to find the gifts he gave me — a much younger woman — were so sensible.

First came a pair of slippers. No, really. They were great slippers, made of 100 per cent Scottish sheep wool. But still, slippers?

‘What’ll the next gift be? A housecoat?’ I joked.

A tea-strainer, it turned out. A very high-end tea-strainer for the very fancy loose-leaf tea he bought me. I thanked him politely and said: ‘Can I have a sexier present next time?’

At one point he gave me half a loaf of artisan bread from a local bakery he thought I’d like, and I started to feel like Emma Thompson’s character in the film Love Actually, who gets a depressing Joni Mitchell album while her husband’s mistress gets glittering jewellery.

The presents from Pete said we’d been together for four years and he wanted me to be comfortable and eat nice things — but it had only been four months at that point.

That made me wonder exactly how reluctant he was for us to ever do anything exciting.

Drinking is worrying if you don’t curb it

Booze blues get worse with age, that’s for sure. After a big night out, Pete would sometimes disappear for a week, going into a hole of regret that meant he’d ignore his phone and I’d feel well and truly binned.

Sometimes, just as I was thinking how well it was going, he’d suddenly disappear.

These absences weren’t anything to do with me, however. It was a form of self-flagellation and an illustration of how much worse hangovers can get with age.

‘Something bad is going to happen to me if I keep drinking like this,’ he once said, because when he drank, he drank, and I wasn’t sure I could argue.

It made me think about my own alcohol consumption and hope that, having seen someone going through this war of the mind, I’d be able to curb my own enthusiasm for booze if I felt it was similarly out-of-hand.

My biggest lesson? Learning what a commitment-phobe looked like

Do women always think they can change a man? I’d certainly been guilty of it in the past.

With Pete, it was a pleasure not to have an ex-wife or any kids to deal with. It kept it all simpler and made me happy that if we ever did anything like that ourselves, it would be a ‘first’ for both of us.

But beyond the dream was the reality that if someone has reached their mid-50s without ever having been married, had a child or even bought a house (despite the opportunity), they probably don’t want to.

It lasted six months.