Love Takes Its Poll
I’m a 44-year-old woman who’s recently become single. Most of the men who ask me out are in their early-to-mid-30s, but I’ve gotten to know a really special guy who happens to be 22. He’s asked me out, and I’d like to accept, but I’m flat-out afraid. I know most men my age wouldn’t hesitate to date a 22-year-old woman, but I’m still worried we will alienate our respective friends and families. Then again, this would just be a date like any other. So why am I so cautious?
–Mrs. Robinson
It isn’t just Demi and Ashton. With a growing number of older women cruising frat houses for boyfriends, there’s a whole new market for those wearable panic buttons hawked to the elderly on TV: “Help! I’ve fallen in love, and I can’t get up!”
The truth is, most people really don’t care what you do, except for what it says about them: If others your age can’t get their minds (or their thighs) around somebody 22, well then, you shouldn’t either. According to H.L. Mencken, that’s the definition of puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Sure, there will be issues related to the age difference — just as there would be issues with an “age appropriate” (but perhaps otherwise inappropriate) boyfriend. Work out any sticking points between you — long before you present yourself as an item to a volunteer jury of your peers.
Should you and 22 become boyfriend and girlfriend, squelch any naysayers by brazenly copping to all their suspicions. If somebody snipes that you two must have little to talk about, sigh in agreement, “Yeah, it’s pretty much limited to “don’t stop, don’t stop,’ night and day.” Refocus the conversation on all the things you have in common; for example, you’re both about the same distance from The Diaper Years; in his case, Pampers; in yours, Depends. The bottom-line wisdom to convey? You shouldn’t date anybody you could have given birth to — unless, of course, they ask.
This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2003.
