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Age and Love
Why sometimes it’s really just a number
I have a friend who’s fifty-five. She typically dates men in their late thirties. This is because she’s a triathlete with a high sex drive. It’s difficult enough to find men of any age who can keep up with her and by the time most men reach their mid-fifties or above, they are basically prisoners of the sofa. She’s highly intelligent and connects with men who are likewise smart and curious about the world. She doesn’t “target” younger men but she’s had no success in finding compatible men near her own age.
For myself I’ve tended to be in relationships with women significantly younger than me, and for much the same reasons. Even at the advanced age of nearly sixty-one I find there are few people of either gender who can match my enthusiasm for strenuous activities both outdoors and indoors. As I have zero interest in pop culture I find myself attracted to intelligent self-aware polymaths who likewise haven’t much interest in knowing about the latest movie or must-repeat sound-bite but who are fascinated by the potential of evolutionary psychology or who can argue with me about a range of gender issues.
In my long and chequered life I’ve found that compatibility is not a function of the number of years we’ve accrued as our beautiful blue-green planet orbits the sun. I have very little in common with anyone who spends their free…
