Katie Lee Joel and Billy Joel on Oprah: About Age Differences

Billy Joel and wife Katie Lee Joel appeared on the Oprah show, according to articles on the Newsday web site. This was the first interview for this May-November couple; Katie Lee is 32 years younger than Billy Joel. I have written in the past briefly about this subject and am back to answer the many questions that people have about age difference relationships based upon my personal experience.

Twice in my life, I have had long-term relationships with people about 20 years older than I am. These relationships are not easy to maintain for either party involved, and there are valid reasons on both sides of the pro-con argument involving this being the proper form of relationship to form or not.

Katie Lee is a very intelligent young lady, and that is often how these relationships start to form. A young person who enjoys advanced intellectual conversation will be drawn into the older age-group providing for this need; relationships form through a shared level of comfortable conversation topics a long time prior to any permanent coupling.

This is no different than how same-age relationships form. People will gravitate into social circles that share their same interests, and choose from possible mates based upon friendships made, and comfort-levels formed. Everybody wants a partner who becomes their closest friend because of shared beliefs and interests. Katie Lee and Billy Joel both have interests and shared friends revolving around their paths in show-business.

What Katie Lee and Billy Joel do not seem to have are the necessary shared backgrounds needed to make an age-different relationship work. I was raised by a parent in the same age group of parents who raised my age-different choice in mates. Our same-age parents taught us how to survive by explanations of how they got through the Great Depression. I was never taught to admire McDonald's as a meal option like my peers.

Without any showing backgrounds that allow Billy Joel and Katie Lee to share the same generational teachings somehow, all that I can predict for this age-different couple is that they will eventually get tired of visiting the others age-generation where they don't fit in.

In my relationships, both sides struggle constantly with younger or older going through life-activities from their actual age group, while the other can not relate to what is going on because it is not appropriate at that point in their age to worry about that age issue. We try to understand, but that is different from understanding because our age is there too. The result is that age-different partners must constantly work at allowing for differences.

Billy Joel is 55 years old, while Katie Lee is in her early 20s. Right now, physically, there is nothing wrong with those ages trying to keep up with the other's lifestyle. People at age 55 still enjoy mountain-climbing and other active sports with younger people. But, what is Katie Lee going to do in 10 years when Billy wants to start chatting about normal aging problems over the breakfast table?

Katie Lee is going to wake-up some morning to discover that she has elder-care duties on her horizon. She will have to make a choice between which lifestyle she plans to live in. Many age-different relationships can get beyond this point due to the dedication of both partners involved, but most crumble into ruins at this point. The younger isn't ready to be old yet, and the older can no longer be young.

I was a care-taker to an elderly person for many years, and have watched the turn-over rate in that industry. Family members who love and care deeply for their elderly relatives don't last very long before they want to go back to their jobs, friends, and other non-old people interests; they hire in "help" and do not try to be the constant companion that a wife like Katie Lee should be to an aged mate. Couples who age together, stay together, no matter what the health issues are. Katie Lee wants a career; to give up quickly?

For some people, age-different relationships work because of hard work and shared values, beliefs, and life-norm expectations. For people like Billy Joel and Katie Lee who are claiming that they meet in the middle on maturity levels as a basis for the relationship; they are probably doomed to failure. Katie Lee told Oprah that she wants a career. Those words are not conducive to a long-term relationship with an elderly mate.