I'm not sure if people have stopped staring at us, or if it's just that we don't notice any more.
My husband Young has just turned 66 years old. I am 31. That's an age difference of 35 years, which we can only describe to people as ‘significant’.
When Young and I started dating, we would head for the darkest, quietest corner of the restaurant, hoping not to draw too much attention. We would hold hands, but only under the table, and our first kisses were soft and nervous.
These days, things are different. We have just celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary, and we have a five-year-old son who is confident and happy. He skips ahead of us down the pavement, loudly singing nursery rhymes and saying hello to everyone we pass. He makes it hard to go unseen.
We met in Edinburgh, the perfect backdrop for any love story. It's a city of dark alleyways, cobbled streets, and cosy pubs with log fires - easy to disappear in, if you need to.
For a good six months or so our dates – all those dinners in dark corners - were merely the backdrop for the conversations we needed to have. Falling in love with a man 35 years older than you, or indeed a woman 35 years younger, is not a decision you take lightly. It's not a relationship you enter into without thought.
It was tough. Those first months are supposed to be fun and giddy – but we had to be objective. There was an attraction, which had zinged in the air the first time we met, but we were not foolish enough to believe that it was enough to carry us forward. There had to be more.
Young and I knew there was no point in anything but absolute honesty. If we stayed together then open communication would be essential further down the line - when we imagined things would perhaps become more difficult - so we had to start as we planned to go on.
We laid ourselves bare. We talked at length about our dreams and ambitions, our families, our histories, our health. We talked about our finances, where our careers were going, and what we pictured in our minds when we thought of a forever house. We talked about the people who had hurt us in the past, about those we had hurt in turn, and what impact those events had had on us both.
We got the difficult bits out of the way early– the questions and self-reflections that most couples leave for a few years before grappling with. Knowing we don't have as much time as ‘normal’ couples and that we can't take a single day for granted means we just get on with loving each other fully, and filling our lives with as much joy as possible.
When I found out I was pregnant, again, we had to ask ourselves some difficult questions: how would we work things out financially when my husband retired? How would our child cope if his Daddy's health declined? What if he or she were bullied because their Dad looked like their Grandpa? We considered all of these things, but we knew that we could provide a safe, happy and loving home for a baby.
Even before we became parents, Young and I helped each other grow. My steady temperament slowed him down a lot, and made him more patient. In turn, he helped build my confidence. Not in a brash or aggressive way, he just filled my heart with love and encouragement and kindness, and gave me a quiet but determined sense of self-belief.
Since we've had Tom, we have continued to grow. We are happier, calmer and more content now than we have ever been. We are grateful, every single day, for our life together. Together, we have a beautiful, smart son, who crawls into bed with us each morning, and always begs for one more book.
There was perhaps a time when our age difference was the most interesting thing about us. Now it is not.
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Guest post: 'Like Stephen Fry, there's 30 years between me and my husband - what's the problem?'
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MumsnetGuestPosts · 08/01/2015 10:19
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