GUEST COLUMN: "On Loving a Younger Woman"
by David Lamb Minton
5/18/06
Editor's note: As Minto writes below, I did ask him to write this little piece on his May/December romance. What hooked me was that he referred to it one day on the phone as "Fool's Highway." This I had to hear more about -- and I happen to have a special interest in this, um, subject. So Minto's is actually the first of several pieces I have solicited in what I will call the official bimbopolitics "Younger Gal/Older Guy" series. You will see others from guest columnists sprinkled in over the next year. And by the way, if you are in need of a bitchin' webbie, Minto's your man. I couldn't ask for a more on the ball, or more eccentric webmaster. Check him out at www.dlmweb.com XXJacuzzi
It seemed like such an easy request, really. It was five months ago, and I was on the phone with Jacuzzi. "You've got to write a guest column for bimbopolitics on what it was like being married to a younger woman", she said. "Hell, yes!” the lonely old hipster (uh, that would be me) replied, "It's a tale I've told a thousand times."
Well, 5 months later, yesterday to be exact, the challenge still stood. And I'd have been damned if I was going to write another word until I spun this little homily.
So the following is my dust jacket blurb version of my ten-years-long tale of being married to a brilliant, beautiful, sexually robust 17 years younger woman. To begin I will say simply that it was quite a ride. But beyond that, it was a sad and funny story of love, and fear, joy and laughter, tears, pain, remorse, kindnesses, and ecstatic moments. We shared adventures and tedium, growth and regression...foolishness and wisdom, and ultimately, mutual abandonment.
I was 40 years old, and had been a father and husband for almost 20 years when the mother of my kids pulled the plug on my first marriage. Best thing the old gal ever did, for herself, and for me. Wise, wise woman that she was (and still is), she knew we were long past done. Oh it hurt like hell, I wept and moaned, and it took a long, long time to put it into perspective. Her significant other (he was my best friend before and is my best friend today) and she are a match made in heaven, (I don't know who could really put up with either of their idiosyncrasies but the two of them with each other's -- and I say that as lovingly as only an old old friend could.) The three of us laugh at our past, and she and I take joy in our grown sons and growing grandchildren. We are ancient hippy anachronisms, and she and I were damn fine parents and are righteously proud of all we were and are today.
But it took the love of my younger woman to get me to this kind of perspective. It took having to love her, and have her love me back. In her I met my intellectual equal, and also someone who was as screwed up as I was, but in a different way. We fed each other's sicknesses, I suppose, and made love like wild horses in a hurricane. She screamed at me once, toward the end, "You know, all we do is fuck and fight." Well, yeah, it did devolve to that. But we also competed for smartest creature on the planet. All that and real, gentle, sharing love and companionship, too.
To get to this 58 year old vantage point of bemused detachment, and slightly lonely longing only took all those years of giving, receiving and making love . . . oh, and 6 long years of analysis.
So, here's the skinny, old guys. Do you love your younger woman? Not just want to sport fuck her, but LOVE her? Are you ready to hatch a kid? Can you afford the price, financial and emotional? Then, don't play Hamlet, go for it. Be foolish, but don't be a fool.
No, I'm not being simplistic, or glib. I had a rare chance and took it. I knew the chronological facts. She was an old young woman, and I was a young old man and we ran with it. The younger woman and I lasted 10 years, but, as often happens, passion faded. She wanted a child, and I . . . blinked. We ended with her pronouncing me “the kindest man in the universe.” Ouch. Loving divorces hurt tremendously, you know, don't believe it to be any other way. She had outgrown me, and went to find "Something else, not better." Double ouch.
I had become her lover, shrink, father, mother, caretaker, mentor, friend, confidant, and foil. At the end she blamed me for our being joined at the hip. And she was right.
You see, she had been orphaned at a young age, and a trust fund is no substitute for loving and living parents. The best that her expensive college could do was to send her forth into the world a fragile empty vessel, some $80,000 poorer. The care, and loving that I gave was not just my loving kindness, I was selfishly altruistic. She was my distraction from my own emptiness. With my own kids about grown, and my illusion of a future shattered, I needed to nurture even more than I needed to get laid -- and she provided a solution to both. It was a concatenation of sweetly tragic needs. I kept her from self-destruction, to a fault. The battle between my paternalistic self and the lonely lover was beyond my comprehension then.
I felt just like I did when I told my own kids, "If you do that, this will happen". Except I was trying it on a willful 20 something, who also happened to be my spouse. Not good. Still, I couldn't help but try. So for her I kept many of life's hard knocks away, for years, until she grew, and found her way back to a demanding academic job. I couldn't help her then, and watched in horror as her dream job turned nightmare. All the while her biological clock was ticking, and finally, I blinked at rearing yet another kid. We couldn't raise our cat without psychodrama; I was not about to try a baby. I was in fact, worn out. I had been a dad for 35 years!!! Two sons, and then...my child bride.
So we ended, not because she was too young, not because she was too nuts. Because we grew, and if that is the price of loving...well, I'll sign up again. I made her smile, she made me laugh. She gave as good as she got, and what more can we ask, really?
Good ol' Chris Smither has a line that really sums it up: "Your loss is measured in illusions, and your gain is all in bittersweet intelligence."
I'm a grandpa twice over now, yet will continue to race go-karts at 100 mph two inches off the ground until I can't get out of the seat! At 35 that former child bride got rid of me, went back to school and started in on her masters, and some 5 years after that she hatched that kid she wanted. So maybe age don't mean shit, but shit still happens, anyway. Some folks live and love together forever; some shine as brightly as a supernova, and then blink out to dust. But in this universe, stardust is just the seed of yet another sun aborning.
And in this endless universe, I am wiser for the giving, and better for the loving. I would do it again in a heartbeat...
5/20/2006
Thank you for your honesty and insight into your May/December romance. With all this gained knowledge of relationships, life, self, it would seem a fitting ending for love to find you once again . . .
tba
5/28/2006
I stumbled into this piece via PumpellyRacing.com, and I'm so glad I did. Yep, I know it all, and in the end it's not about age differences. It's about what we needed to learn and who showed up to help us. What a design!!! Now that I think I've got it all figured out, I still wonder....what's it got to do with love? Ha!
9/6/2006
As a never married 48 year old man (look and act like a 38 year old), I'm 100% for the older man/younger woman relationships. Unlike the writer, I have no ex-spouses, nor do I have any children. There's nothing more annoying and undesirable than a jaded old hag who's been "rode hard and hung out wet". Not to mention being saddled with some other guy's children, especially teenage children to boot.
I'm pleased that the writer would take a younger woman over again. You could not pay me enough to take up with a woman my age, or near my age. If that means remaining single all my life, well then so be it!
10/7/2006
wow...i've fallen in love with a younger woman, much younger.. but she is a young old sole and I am an older spirited young soul, only conversation up until know but i think we both feel it, she has never asked me my age..probably doesn't want to really hear it. I'm hesitant to get closer because i know it will run it's course in 5-10 years and I'll just be alone again but maybe better for it..so based on your article, I may give it a shot.
5/15/2007
Hi. I'm 30 and I just broke up with my 49 yr old boyfriend. We both agreed that we were each other's dream come true. On the first few dates I brought up the fact that I wanted to have kids and that if he was not open to that as a person then I would walk away because it was a deal breaker to me. He said he was open to having them for the otehr person (me) so I kept going even with a vasectomy he had long time ago when he was married knowing it could be reversed. He's brought me into his family, I got really attached to his daughters, had seatdown dinners, trips, you name them. My family was coming to visit and he mentioned how much she wanted to meet them to discuss his good intentions. Ten days later he mentioned that he was unsure if he wanted kids and asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I didn't want to be by his side while he figured it out jut because I thought it was just an excuse to keep buying time next to the "younger woman" while his family felt "complete" with me. I felt like he went back on his word and wasted my time. I also felt sorry because if he loved me as much as I felt it then he's letting his happiness go by and quitting to life and what brings. I was born from parents that had 30 years appart. My dad had multiple grown children and then they had me and I was the light in his eyes. He lived 95 happy years next to his "young woman" that wasn't all that "young" at the end of their love story.
Should I forget about this guy and move on to young guys with no children?
3/6/2008
Aren't we all just little supernovas, little blazes of light ourselves? Our own lives are but the blink of an eye for the universe, so why not love fully no matter what the age difference? I am madly in love with a man 29 years my senior and we were friends for 5 years before realizing a deeper connection that has led to a romantic and sexual relationship. We have long conversations as to how "we" came about and can find no other reasons than that we grow in each other's presence and laugh nothing but love. He loves my child and has even talked about wanting children with me (though he says he knows that's crazy due to his age and he doesn't want to leave me raising two or more children alone). Thank you for writing this article on your relationship as all I've read recently are how it is so socially unacceptable, the younger woman is usually a gold digger (my man has no money but he has a lot of soul), etc. etc. Everything up until your article was a real downer. Thanks for sharing your feelings and the insights you gained.
3/6/2008
And thank you for reminding me why it was that I answered Jacoozi's challenge and laid my soul on the line in this little tale.
Your delightful turn of phrase, "...laugh nothing but love" brought tears to my eyes, you know. How priceless to experience, and so wonderfully shared. I wish you both all the joy the world can give you.
David
4/17/2008
wonderful story, i came upon it by searching for things on the same topic, i am 28, he is 50, it is difficult...your story is encouraging...
