Shockingly huge age gap, wwyd?

[Saponaria]

I'm am 40 and my partner is 67, so we have a 27 year age gap. We've been together for three years. It's the best relationship I've ever had. He is the most wonderful man and the most loving partner that anyone could ever wish for. He is incredibly wise, sexy, fun, and so much more!

He looks after himself very well, he is physically very fit and has a great body! Also great posture and dresses well. He could pass for 50.
He has had some health issues, cancer and heart problems, but he is fighting fit again now and has bags of energy and enthusiasm for life. He is a really positive, motivated and energetic person. Our sex life is fantastic and I really fancy him despite our age gap.

I am happily child-free, have my own home and work full time. My partner is retired and I see him at the weekends. We live separately.

I'm currently taking stock of the relationship and trying to decide whether to continue. The age gap was a big deal for me at the start but we have proved it can work, it's not something that either of us notices. We have so many shared interests and we're extremely compatible on multiple levels.

However I'm now thinking about the future. If you were me, would you continue with the relationship? Or would you end it now and try and build a life with someone that is more your age?

He has set the bar EXTREMELY high so I worry that I won't find anyone as wonderful as him that I am compatible with on so many levels. It's hard to imagine life without him.

Really need help and perspective!

Just to stick my oar in again, OP, your first post describes the things you are excited about in this relationship:
He looks after himself very well, he is physically very fit and has a great body! Also great posture and dresses well.
He could pass for 50.
He has bags of energy and enthusiasm for life.
He is a really positive, motivated and energetic person.
Our sex life is fantastic.
None of these are "This is the only person I have ever felt comfortable and happy with" which (as the older one in a big age-gap relationship) is, in my view, the ONLY reason a big age gap wouldn't matter over time (and it still might, with mental decline).
The positives you mention are also things that will definitely change in the years ahead

Well said and I agree. At almost 70, these things are going to change at some point soon, and if they do, you need to ask yourself what is left?- is it genuine love? I know of zero 75 year olds who still resemble 55 year olds for example, in either appearance or energy levels.

If you're asking this then your heart isn't in it surely?

My late mother used to say “better an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave”.

It's not at all creepy. How odd

I think the question to ask of the posters who have come on to say it has worked fur them is whether they had the same doubts three years in or whether the age gap didn't ever bother them.

If you're asking this then your heart isn't in it surely?

No, that doesn't follow. Lots of people question whether they're in the right relationship for lots of reasons. If you are in a large-gap relationship you may be more likely to question it because it is contrary to social norms.

I'm in my 50s. The women my age who have an age gap where partner is much older now have regrets. Being 55 with a 75 year old partner is really hard.

I've just read this in an old newspaper I'm recycling.

Why didn’t you have these thoughts at the start?

If as you ay you look in your 20's then you should have no issues meeting someone nice closer to your age, especially as you don't want children. I mean if it is casual with no expectation that it will go anywhere fine but honestly what are your 50's going to look like. Its just way way too much of a gap. He may look young now but age comes to everyone, even if 5 years it will seem like he has aged 20

I'm surprised that you describe him as your partner and not your boyfriend. You don't live together, you don't have any financial commitments or children together, presumably you're not in his will, ou've no plans to get married, you work fulltime while he's retired and just see each other at weekends. So what makes him your partner exactly, as opposed to a boyfriend?

I think he probably is getting to the stage where he's wanting to know if you'll stay around when he needs caring for eventually. I'm not sure I'd want to do that for someone who is essentially just a boyfriend. With a partnership it should be mutually beneficial, hence why it is called a partnership, but you'd just end up losing out on all fronts. And if you are living separate lives literally and financially then how CAN you? You'll still be working fulltime, you'll need to save for your OWN retirement, because who will look after YOU when you need it?

I wouldn't use the term boyfriend at my age now, I would also say partner in this scenario.

join one of the ' are we dating/seeing the same guy' groups on facebook, omg theres right nasty ones, violent, unfaithful all sorts, you will soon realize you struck gold with this fella. Although, by then he'd probably have moved on . dont risk it, treat him like a king ! x

This is making me relieved that the guy I’m in a queerplatonic relationship with and I aren’t talking about love or dating. I’m 26 years older than him and I wouldn’t wish that on him.

Speaking from my and my friends’ experience with their parents, then people do deteriorate mentally and physically quite rapidly from around the age of 75, no matter how fit and healthy they are going in. However they slow down from 60-75, the next 5-10 years is the same again.

I’m not saying you’ll be a full time carer but they simply won’t be the same. And that’s fine if you’re both slowing down, but if you’re not that will be a problem.

I'm inclined to enjoy it whilst it lasts. I recently found a partner age 69, I am 47, I thought she was early 60's when I met her. I'm appreciative of the experience and am going with the flow and seeing what happens. I suspect she will get fed up with me eventually and move on, the age difference and her permanent health issues mean enjoying shared interests is going to be limited (I enjoy physical outdoor activities, she doesn't and couldn't anyway).

He does sound really nice but for me 27 years is too much. While it's ok for now when I retire I want to travel a bit and walk around sightseeing. He'll probably be to old for this.

Have you made it clear to his adult children that you will not be stepping into the carer role. They may assume that you and dad love each other and so that's all sorted. My mum had a friend who was with a much older man. It came as a massive shock to his adult children when she said she wouldn't be involved when he developed Parkinsons.

This. I guess is one of the reasons I really believe in the importance of being married to your life partner. "In sickness and in health", i mean those vows are pretty serious, you really are committing to something, you're making a statement to the world about that person, and an agreement to being their life partner no matter what life throws at you.

OP just isn't really there as the "life partner" bit. So what exactly does he want certainty on?

I got married at 33 when my husband, who'd been married before and had 3 (almost) grown-up children, was 57. We had 2 wonderful daughters together, the first (planned) born when my husband was nearly 59, the second (a surprise, but a very welcome one) when he was 65. To be honest, having had a long and hopeless relationship in my 20s, I would not have embarked on another potentially fruitless relationship if he had not said – and meant – that he would love to have more children. He was a good and involved father to them growing up, and being retired he had more time for them than many younger parents can manage. My husband died of cancer 4 years ago, a week before what would have been our 30th wedding anniversary. He had seen both daughters through school and university, just – the younger one received her results (the best of all his children) only 6 days before he died, and it was as if he had been hanging on for that and was able to let go. We looked after him at home, with the help of carers, the palliative care team, the GP and our extended family, as it was still the tag-end of Covid and if he'd gone into hospital none of us would have been allowed to visit until the end. Our marriage had its ups and downs, but it was mostly a good one and I and my daughters have some very happy memories.

The point of recounting all this to say that if you love this man and believe that you can be happy together, you should seize the opportunity – but in the knowledge that you may well end up having to care for him in later years. I always recognised that I was likely to be a fairly young widow, and counted myself lucky that we managed over 33 years together from the time we first met. Yet even that isn't guaranteed: I know several couples with similar age gaps to ours, and in two cases the younger wife has died first. I'm increasingly of the view that you have to take your happiness where you can, as there are no certainties about the future.

I wonder if you're worried about missing out on a better life partner by staying with this man? You, by your own admission, are very attractive. Is there a tiny hope of attracting a man of a similar age, to grow old together with? Maybe even to have a child with? You are far too young to be an old man's carer, and fit and healthy though he is now, that could all change in a moment.

My friend, early 50's, is in a relationship with a man in his early 80's. When they met, she was 30 and he was a dashing older man. They went on exotic holidays all the time, travelled the UK in a luxury motorhome and dined out pretty much all the time. Now he's just an old man and she feels trapped. She can't leave him now, but the frailer he becomes, the unhappier she is. He can no longer drive, he has no desire to travel, sex is non-existent. He's not rich, he owns no property, he has 3 ex-wives and several children he never sees. He has his pension and a paltry amount of savings.

Think very carefully about what you want your future to look like. I'd be side-lining him as a friend and looking for a partner of my own age, personally.

My first husband died after a thirty year marriage when I was almost 51, and I remarried eighteen months later. My second husband is 7 and a half years older than me so there wasn't the big age gap being discussed here. However, he will be 83 next month (I am 75) and I will say that 83 is quite different physically (though not a great deal mentally) from 67. It makes no difference to me - I love him, we've been married 23 years, and we're in this together till the end.

I guess the points I'm drawing from this are that it's perfectly possible to have later life relationships that begin in your fifties. Also that if you marry someone who is 67, you've got, if you're lucky and his health holds up, about 13-15 years before that makes much of a difference to what he can do alongside what you can do. I was much more able in my early 50s than I am now at 75 but I am still more able than him in some respects. He was much more able at 60 than he is at almost 83.

None of this needs to make a difference to you if you believe that your personal relationship will deal with all these issues as they arise, because unless there is illness or injury they arrive gradually, not all at once.

You are very lucky!
count your blessings there’s not many people who can say how much they love their partner , whatever their age x
tbh I sort of envy you , I’ve been a widow for 20 years not & haven’t met anyone in that time x

She hasn't "built a life" with him, though. They lead separate lives essentially but date at weekends.

Partner implies that your lives are more enmeshed than what OP describes though. It's still a boyfriend otherwise, no matter the age.