Mind The Gap
5 minute read
I have a friend, let’s call her Lisa. She sent me a log meandering voice note a couple of weeks ago. Just one of those out for a walk, catching up, nothing much to say voice notes. Until the last few seconds.
“I’ll let you go, this is so long it’s basically a podcast and I’ve said nothing at all. We must book in that walk, and I need to come see the girls. Anyway, I’ll talk to you soon.”
There was a beat.
“Oh yeah, I did mean to, well, em, I met a guy, it’s a funny one, well not funny but… anyway will fill you in when I see you. Ok bye.”
I realised as I replayed the end of her message that the whole six-minute ramble was actually a preamble to the new man news. But it was odd, it wasn’t gushing, it was hesitant and strained. I immediately went to record a voice note back but stopped. It felt like in-person news, a proper conversation, so I texted to say when I was free for the long overdue walk.
When we met up she was nervous. We walked to a wall with our coffee (this meetup definitely wasn’t going to win any exercise awards) and settled in for a chat.
Go on, I said. And she did.
Having spent every lockdown alone in her apartment - working, living, eating, exercising, sleeping in the same 500 square feet Lisa decided to reinstall her dating apps. She had deleted them all in 2019, sick of dates that went nowhere and conversations that seemed promising but stopped for no discernible reason. She was, she had decided then, better off alone. Her job was fulfilling and involved travel and entertaining, she had a wide circle of good friends, was close to her sisters and nieces, was busy most weekends and never felt lonely. She had constructed the life that she wanted to live at 40. Not one that was just good enough, one that she loved. But the pandemic cast its cold shadow on what she had created and she was, she realised, very lonely when you took everything else away. She read some articles and heard anecdotally that dating in Dublin had improved. Even the fuck boys were ready to settle down now that everyone had been touched by the loneliness of Covid.
So, she started talking to a few men online and went on a couple of virtual dates and one had stuck. I was thrilled for her, she was beaming. Tell me more I grinned. He’s a data something, he runs and hikes, is from just outside the city and is really hot. And he’s 28.
Oh. Oh. Right.
My husband is three years younger than me and I’ve been slagged about it occasionally by my friends. But it’s not much of a leap. This was almost thirteen years. I wasn’t sure what to say, or what she wanted me to say. She changed the subject quickly and we strolled for a bit before heading off. I knew we both felt awkward and that made me sad.
When I got home, I sat with a coffee and tried to figure out why it had been so weird. I was shocked and she seemed embarrassed, but why? We have a male friend who is engaged to a woman in her mid-20s and apart from the odd gentle slagging no one seems to care. But I know it would be harder for Lisa. There are bound to be questions about her having children that would never come up for a man. We may roll our eyes a little when men we know become fathers in their 50s or even 60s but that’s it, it’s not that unusual, but biology is often the first thing we think of when we see a woman with a younger man.
Then there’s money, is he after hers? Is that what this is? We have been taught to laugh at the old trope of the granny going to Greece and bringing home a waiter instead of a fridge magnet. We’ve seen the Jeremy Kyle episodes with the oily holiday fling who marries the sad old woman and then claims half her home.
It’s as if a young man couldn’t possibly fall for an older woman without wanting to take her cash or have their life funded in some way.
But I know my friend better than that and I wasn’t worried about her bank balance. I wondered about their life together. My goals and ambitions were very different at 28 to where they were at 40. I was out a lot, I wasn’t overly worried about anything, I was having a good time. One of my friends then had a boyfriend who was about ten years older, and she always seemed a little stressed around him – he clearly thought we were all ridiculous. Maybe we were but you’re allowed to be when you’re in your 20s.
It’s total misogyny of course. If men can form relationships with women of any age why can the converse not be true? We’re conditioned to believe that relationships look and work a certain way and anything outside of that is wrong or embarrassing.
Who we fall for shouldn’t be determined by what we think we should do and ultimately, at the end of the day, whose business is it other than our own? We should probably celebrate the future young men who want to take us dancing post-divorce or bereavement!
In the end, I called my friend. I told her I was happy for her and that I’d love to meet him. She asked me what my reservations were. For her, for them, and I told her.
“They’re mine too,” she said. “But you know, 12 years won’t seem such a big deal when he’s 65,” she laughed, and then more quietly she said: “Maybe this won’t last, and that’s fine, but I’ve been lonely and he’s nice and wants to spend time with me and I’m having fun.”
That’s good enough for me. Isn’t that all any of us want in the end?
Jennifer Stevens, September 2021
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