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Article about boyfriend 20 years older:
The Reality Of Having A Boyfriend Who’s 20 Years Older Than You. How do you find common ground with someone when he graduated 20 years ago and I’ve been alumni for only two? Published on 2nd September 2015 at 11.18am.

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I'm 24, and my boyfriend is 43. We’ve been together for just under one year. He’s 369 days younger than my Mum, and has teenage children. Despite the maths, and the fact he thinks Kim Kardashian is married to Jay Z, it’s a solid, respectful relationship devoid of weird power dynamics. To begin with, I was wary. I was vaguely suspicious of a forty-something attracted to a twenty-something with student loans instead of a sorted older woman at her sexual peak. Then a few realisations fell into place: firstly, nobody is sorted. Let’s just take a moment to appreciate that. Secondly, it was hardly surprising that I connected with somebody much older – Kevin McCloud was one of my teenage-crushes. If anyone should have been worried about age-fetishes, it was him, not me. Still, I had questions about whether an age-gap, between two people at such different stages in life was a feasible endeavour. I did what any millennial does – I took my niggling questions to Google. Few search results gave me the story I wanted to hear. I wanted a tale reflecting my own situation. Of somebody in their twenties in a relationship with somebody older, which didn’t involve sugar daddies, psychological abuse or nostalgia from couples now in their fifties and seventies. I reached the point when the only viable comparison I could find was Carrie and Big. And I don’t care which side of the Big fence you sit on, Carrie and Big had a fucked-up power dynamic. In an attempt to redress the balance of real-life May-September stories I couldn’t find, I’m telling mine. In short: I stopped worrying and continued to fancy back this person who desired the unfiltered version of myself. I found my answers to those questions like, ‘If he graduated 20 years ago and I’ve been alumni for only two, how will we find common ground?’ It works because we both want the same things: satisfaction from work, plenty of good food, a passion that fuels us, travel, and to sleep and spend time with somebody who embraces rather than rejects the excitement of getting closer. I tolerate his love of ’80s bands like Deacon Blue (Who? Exactly) and in most ways, we meet emotionally in the middle. My previous romantic involvements were with men who zoned out when I talked to them, or told me their life stories, but never asked about mine. Being with somebody older, who’s been through it all before, and is tired of game-playing is utterly refreshing. His philosophy is if you like somebody, why wouldn’t you admit to wanting to spend time with them? It is the antithesis of ‘chill’ and the tendency of people in their twenties to fear labels. Friends ask if we trip over clashing cultural references? Occasionally, like when he quotes Taylor Swift ( 1989 is one of his favourite albums ‘because of the production values’) and I do not follow. We’ve discovered overlapping cultural references from my childhood because he had direct involvement with them. Like the time he had dinner with Hear’say, or when he produced Late Night Love , a call-in radio show I used to fall asleep listening to aged 14. More revealing of our gap is his ability to provide practical solutions to the problems I cannot solve. It’s helpful when somebody knows how to hang shelves without tearing down walls. But these offers of help often clash with my personal conflicts as a feminist desiring autonomy through self-taught skills, who also happens to lose interest two pages into an instructions manual.













boyfriend 20 years older