What's it like being married to someone much older?

[Anonymous]

I have a family member whose wife was 15 years younger. She died a few years ago at age 72. He's still chopping down trees at age 89.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t matter until the older spouse is like 70 or has major health issues.

+1 I have two friends who had a great time being the younger wives of older men -- until the men started to age. Both spent their 50s and early 60s as nursemaids, basically unable to leave the house until their husbands finally died.

Most men die quickly from old-age related diseases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not just the health issues, but also about retirement. The older person will retire long before the younger person can or willing to. Different life stage.

I was planning to retire at 70, gf was planning to retire at 58, so it looks like perfect timing.

[Anonymous]

I'm 8 yrs younger than my H. We had kids late (I was 40 when DC1 was born), so H was close to 50 already during the newborn phase and was pretty useless. Claimed sleep deprivation affected him much more and didn't do any middle of the night wakeups.

Now that the kids are older, he's much more hands on and a good father. Physically he's in better shape than me. Mentally he seems a lot older.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not just the health issues, but also about retirement. The older person will retire long before the younger person can or willing to. Different life stage.

I was planning to retire at 70, gf was planning to retire at 58, so it looks like perfect timing.

glad it works for you. It doesn't for most people, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a family member whose wife was 15 years younger. She died a few years ago at age 72. He's still chopping down trees at age 89.

but it doesn't work this way for most people. A man's life span is shorter than a woman's to begin with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:9 year gap here. Met when I was 21 and he was 30 and we still like each other more than 20 years later. Works for us. I’ll always feel relatively “young” compared to him. He started having middle-aged health problems before I did, but I’m catching up lately and now I kind of feel like we’re both slowly falling apart together, lol. Would I recommend it? Sure, if you love the person, why not?

This sums up my situation. I wouldn’t avoid a 9-year age gap but I wouldn’t seek it out, either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t matter until the older spouse is like 70 or has major health issues.

+1 I have two friends who had a great time being the younger wives of older men -- until the men started to age. Both spent their 50s and early 60s as nursemaids, basically unable to leave the house until their husbands finally died.

Most men die quickly from old-age related diseases.

You can hope, right?

[Anonymous]

8 years here. Right now, early 40s/early 50s, it doesn't seem like much of an age gap. DH has more energy than most guys his age and he looks as young or younger than I do (he has a lot more melanin). Perhaps it will be an issue again in 10 years, as others have said.

But we got together VERY young, and it was a big issue then. Another poster mentioned they were 21 and 30. We were younger than that.

DH is my soulmate and a fantastic match for me AND we worked hard on this-- otherwise there is no way we could have overcome the challenges that age difference presents. I would not recommend doing what I did. The problems caused by our age difference took 20+ years to undo and are still not fully resolved. Luckily there are/were personality, cultural/familial and circumstantial factors that mitigated the enormous power imbalance somewhat, even from the beginning. But... c'mon. In particular, I internalized all kinds of problematic ideas about myself because I had so little life experience and my brain was so far from fully formed when we met. Even though DH is fantastic in most ways, he's not perfect, and even if he were, just... being with a guy with that much more life experience was not healthy for my self-esteem. It was easy for me to get the idea that I was immature or poorer at certain skills because of some fundamental character trait, rather than the fact I was 17, 18, 19... And of course, there was a lot of rescuing/coddling of me, and that kind of problematic dynamic, too. Parentifying DH and so on.

You can't prove a counterfactual, so I can't say for sure all of this will have been worth it in the end-- even though our relationship is amazing in many, many ways. One thing we did do right-- and on purpose-- was wait a very very very long time (married 15 years) to have a kid. So we had worked through quite a bit of this before she came along.

I do worry about him passing away well before I do. He has more health issues and can be more neglectful about them, plus the age difference. Naturally, since we've been together my entire adult life (and well over half of my entire life), I can't imagine my world without him.

[Anonymous]

15 years apart, late 30s and early 50s. Young kids. So far, so good. Many of the arguments against marrying an older spouse are mitigated by money, and we are fortunate to have more than enough. We both still work and will likely retire together within the next 5 years because we can. I will be sad if I lose him first or he gets sick, but I will be able to afford plenty of help if/when that time comes. I've already lost a friend in her 30s to cancer, so age isn't everything and life is unpredictable. I know I took a risk with the age gap, but so far, so good. He's still very physically fit, a lifelong athlete, fashionable, up on current culture, and his career keeps him young. The biggest challenge in our life right now related to age is just that he has some friends that too old for me, so we keep some aspects of our social lives separate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not just the health issues, but also about retirement. The older person will retire long before the younger person can or willing to. Different life stage.

It's harder when a couple ages. I wouldn't recommend any age difference >5 years.

I know someone who married a man who was 25 years older when she was 24 (daddy issues). He had kids about her age and didn't want anymore. She is in her 60's now no kids and her DH is in his eighties. She is his caretaker now and she has also supported him financially for several decades since he retired. When he dies she will be alone with no family.

[Anonymous]

Age gaps are not uncommon in lesbian marriages from what I’ve noticed!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t matter until the older spouse is like 70 or has major health issues.

This.

[Anonymous]

DH is 8.5 years older than me, and we almost never think of the age difference. He's very athletic and in better shape than I am, he keeps up with the kids as well as I can. We both work gov jobs and he'll be able to retire in his mid 50s before our kids graduate, which I think is kind of cool. Kids are 6 and 3 now, I'm 40 and he's about to turn 49. We're in similar places professionally, I just got an earlier start!

[Anonymous]

8-10 years is nothing people.