Am I selfish to be dating a much younger woman?

DEAR BEL,

AT 58, I’m divorced and working in a foreign country. A year ago, I met a local lady; we get along very well, see each other most weekends and have been on great holidays.

I’m very fond of her, but she is half my age. When we first met, I worried about it, but it didn’t bother her.

I saw no future in a long-term relationship as my company could possibly send me elsewhere and said she should find a boyfriend for marriage and children.

But as I look towards retirement back at home, I think about life without this lady and know I’d miss her terribly.

It would be a sensible thing to end it now, to give her the chance to find someone her own age. The thing is, we get along so well together and I enjoy her company.

I often wonder what life would be like with her back at home — but I’m too old for children, while I really think she deserves a normal family life. She’d make a lovely mum.

Also, I’m close to my grown-up children. My eldest daughter once said she thinks an older man/much younger woman situation is immoral.

She has no idea about my relationship and says I should find a lady for my ‘golden years’.

I know she’d be very disappointed with me if she knew this current situation.

So do I carry on, selfishly risking stopping my lady friend from meeting someone of her own age and having a family of her own — and also upsetting my daughter in the future into the bargain?

Or should I now act responsibly and end it, despite how much I feel for her?

MAURICE

YOU have written a very thoughtful letter — I bet many men wouldn’t stress about it as you are doing, but just live in the moment.

You’re quite right to raise the issues, not so much because of your daughter’s views (although family relationships are very important), but because of your girlfriend’s future.

It’s easy to be glib and throw off the thought that ‘age is just a number’, but real life is much more complicated than that.

A large age difference can develop badly: I once talked to a woman who’d married a man 20 years older but (as he reached his mid-70s) couldn’t stand the thought of ‘being touched by this old man’. On the other hand, many such marriages are very happy indeed.

I should also point out that many men your age and older are fathering children. Ronnie Wood’s twin girls were born just before his 69th birthday and he seems happy!

What strikes me is that you don’t express any great love for this young woman.

You’re ‘fond’ of her and enjoy her company, but such an unequal partnership will need more than that to cope with uprooting her from her country and exposing her to hostility.

You obviously realise your adult children would find it hard to accept her — and this could cause great pain for every single one of you.

Not having a baby could become an agony to her as time passes, making life pretty intolerable.

So yes, I think you are right that it would be wise and responsible to end the relationship now.

You are putting her first, which is right.