Dear Bel,
I am 28 and single – a university graduate with a professional job. I have my own apartment in a nice neighbourhood, I am not a slob nor do I play computer games at night.
I am good-looking, in good physical shape and not insecure. I have a sense of humour, can laugh at myself and am adventurous. I binge-read instead of binge-drinking. I’m well dressed, tattoo-free and devoid of any piercings and will be until eternity.
I have good manners, listen when people speak, but feel a bit shy around strangers. Oh, and I don’t lie unless I’m trying not to hurt someone.
I’ve only had one relationship with a woman my own age and that was solely because I had a crush on her (unfortunately) happily-married mother.
Drawn to older women, I find those over 45 extremely appealing. I have had three long affairs with older, married women and I can attest to the anguish that is caused when you fall in love with someone who has already been taken.
This not a kink or a fetish with me. I just find a type of self-assured, elegant and beautiful woman to be my ideal. This isn’t new; it’s always been the case since I was a teenager. My drawback is that I am not yet at my peak earning age. I can barely afford to pay rent after all my normal expenses are taken out. I don’t have the ability yet to spoil a woman I love as I would like to.
I also know it is hard for women of a certain age to take me seriously as someone who would like to make a long-term commitment to their happiness.
There is still a mentality among women that it is abnormal, or wrong, to form a relationship with someone significantly younger, or they have the misconception that, as a woman ages, she becomes less appealing to her younger partner and that would eventually prompt her partner to find someone less old.
I’m not a Luddite, but am not into online dating at all. Every woman I have met and been involved with I either bumped into while shopping or took a risk at a bar or a restaurant and directly approached them. That sounds kind of creepy, but it wasn’t.
I would like to find someone to form a relationship with and settle down and build a future together. It’s difficult. Do you have any suggestions?
DANIEL
Bel Mooney replies: Well, to be frank, I consider myself something of an expert here, since the age gap between me and my husband is exactly what you consider to be ideal!
So with that in mind, maybe I should start by reassuring you about what doesn’t matter, but also what certainly could, in years to come.
Many older women fantasise about having a younger lover; I bet there’s a lot reading this who would like your contact details. (Sadly, the column isn’t a dating site, although plenty of people have told me they wished it was.)
Anyway, this observant granny is happy to point out that you sound quite a catch. And with the right younger man, I promise you, a confident and sophisticated older woman is usually quite happy to pick up the tab.
If she wants spoiling with a pair of diamond studs, she can buy them herself. I tell you, she’ll choose some slow-hand chords in a small cosy flat rather than another cashmere, any day.
So don’t concern yourself about money: just work and play hard and meet as many women (but all ages please; after all, one of the younger ones might have an older sister) as you can, by all the old-fashioned ways you know. You’re so young; you have to get out there. But steer clear of married women, whatever you do.
Now let’s look at what could become important, down the line. You say, ‘they have the misconception that, as a woman ages, she becomes less appealing to her younger partner and that would eventually prompt her partner to find someone younger’. Well, it’s quite true that can become an issue. It used to bother me that in the natural order of things I’d become wrinkly first – and also that choosing me ruled out my husband having children of his own. It made me sad.
I don’t think about that anymore, but it can be a real issue in age-gap relationships. Demi Moore must have been heartbroken when Ashton Kutcher – 15 years her junior – left their marriage after just six years.
Yes, if a younger man does decide he yearns for a new life and kids with someone his own age (or younger) that’s painful for his rejected older love. A wise older woman will consider it – and so should a sensible younger man.
My last piece of advice to you is the most important. Don’t be so prescriptive. You think you know exactly what you want, and also what women want: Mr (well-read and polite) Perfect, searching for the perfect dame.
But you know, that ‘self-assured, elegant and beautiful woman’ of your dreams might think a little tattoo super-cool.
I’d loosen up a bit.
I’m getting old . . . and I can’t stand it!
Dear Bel,
A long time ago when my first wife left me for another man, I was utterly distraught. I hurt so bad I was tempted to end it all, but – by what I felt was divine intervention – I didn’t. However, the thought that it was an option stayed with me for years.
I am now in my seventies and have a loving wife and a nice house; we’re not rich but have no financial worries. I have no kids of my own. So what’s the problem?
Old age. Pain, stiffness, increasing immobility and the descent into decrepitude and dependency. The realisation that what was once a world of possibilities has receded.
Yes, I know there are people far worse than me who bear their situations and conditions with great fortitude and resignation. Good luck to them for clinging on to life.
Please don’t tell me to watch Bargain Hunt and Escape To The Country and accept my fate – because I find the prospect of the future so appalling that the old thoughts have once again returned.
Growing old is s***. I do not want to get any older. How to deal with such feelings?
ADRIAN
Bel Mooney replies: My short answer is that it’s possible to deal with the feelings of dejection which may afflict older people by focussing the mind on an inescapable truth: we jolly well have to deal with them. But yes, I know . . . that’s all too easy to say.
My words to you are a message to myself. I really do understand how you feel – but I fight it. And not by watching daytime TV, although I see nothing wrong with that.
Although you enumerate what the poet T.S. Eliot called, with bleak irony, ‘the gifts reserved for age’, I suggest a dread of time passing and of life becoming worse is not actually age specific.
When you were much younger a catastrophic change in your emotional life made you question the point of living. Such a dark night of the soul can afflict people of all ages.
Now you’re older the changes are physical, and the inevitability of the ‘descent into decrepitude’ is profoundly depressing. You simply do not want it.
I’m curious about the notion of ‘divine intervention.’ God spoke to you then, but He isn’t doing a good job of sending you a positive message now. I wonder whether you have lost your faith, or whether it wasn’t very strong in the first place.
Whatever the truth, the sceptic might suggest that what you call ‘divine intervention’ was in fact your own wish to stay alive. It was that essential spark of survival which once made a man I know well – afflicted by a dark despair which made him suicidal in his late fifties – swim for his life when he accidentally fell into a river. At 80 now, his life is blessedly happy and fulfilling.
As I write this I feel very anxious about a child I know with specific issues and also somebody dear to me who is ill. That tension is held in my throat, which triggers my perennial asthma and terrible cough; what’s more (this the worst) I have a permanent pain on the right side of my neck right up into my skull, which severely restricts movement. Energy levels right down. Not much fun, I can tell you.
Yet for me ‘the world of possibilities’ is always there. Next month we’ll have a week’s holiday in Italy – the first break for a year. There are riotously jolly nights with chums, and forthcoming visits to and from friends, and so many books I want to read and theatre and concert tickets in Bath already booked . . . so that when I think of those prospects all I want to do is dress up and get on with it.
My own ‘divine intervention’ is within the golden autumnal sunshine on the trees and the welcome given by three little dogs when I’ve been out for one full hour.
I don’t expect you to understand – even though I do (I repeat) understand your negativity. All I ask you to do is step outside yourself (a narrow focus, that) for a few moments and look at your life as if it were a short advertisement for living. Are there blessings there?
You are loved and there is no doubt that choosing to end your life would inflict great hurt on the person (and people?) who care so much for you. So courage, my friend – take my virtual hand and let us step forward bravely into the next stage, yes, even towards the darkness at the end.
- Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.