Can Age Difference End a Relationship

There are just some relationships that are just not meant to be. I have a friend and she is very dear to me, she is in her mid thirties, she is a college graduate and a single mother of two wonderful girls. She was married at one time and that marriage just did not work out for her. She started to feel that her life was having no meaning, she was alone, attractive, single and although she loved her girls she stated time and again that she felt unfulfilled. She started to go out on the weekends with her co-workers and she met a young man at a local bar.

Peter was British, handsome, young, carefree, full of energy and he was twelve years younger than my friend. He was 25. He showed her the attention that she felt that she was lacking. He was young and really not looking for a ready made family. There are a whole host of problems that can be found when a one bases a relationship just on physical attraction.

I could see the problems happening before my eyes but there was no way that I could convince her that this young man was not really her future. Yet she emerged herself, her life, love and body into this relationship. She actually fell head over heals in love with him. She wanted stability, a man that was going to be with her twenty years down the road, someone who would be there as they aged.

He wanted someone who would be able to go to the bar, play pool or darts and be ready to go on vacation at the drop of a hat. That does not happen when you have responsibilities of two pre teenage daughters. It was hard for him to try to fit into a pattern of a boyfriend that their two minds could not reconcile. They were on different wave lengths and had different priorities.

They tried, I can honestly say that both of them have redeeming qualities and I liked Peter a lot, he reminded me of my son. I could not blame him for the decisions that he made. He was not ready to settle down into a father figure for two pre teens that were only a few years younger than he was. The responsibilities that Amy wanted to put on him he could not handle.

And I could not blame Amy for what she wanted in life. She wanted the happy ever after ending and she thought that she had found it in this amazing young man. I feel empathy for both of them. They were good for one another to fill in the voids that they had in their lives, but were either to immature or mature to handle a long term relationship. They may have been on the same path but they were on different points in that path.

I only hope that they have both learned from their experience together. That they have learned not to expect to much, to understand that the difference in age played an important part in their relationship, both good and bad. Perhaps in the future they may both find what they were eagerly looking for.