Dear JH

I can try to relate being in the same age bracket and knowing people who’ve been / are in a similar situation.

In general, whatever you choose to do, as long as you’re not thinking its a bad idea while you’re doing it (i.e. as long as if you went back without hindsight you’d definitely do the same thing) you can’t possibly have any regrets later on.

If you feel like you won’t have lived your life to the full if you don’t explore your youthful sexuality and romance and spending time with people your own age then maybe you should do that – you have the social context to do that now, which you may not in future. If it’s fear of losing what you’ve got now, I’d lose the fear – after all you have time to build that back up for yourself in the next 20 years and you’re young you can probably deal with more now than you’ll want to later on. Even if you’re more of a relationship kind of person, no reason you can’t experience different relationships which will later guide you to the last one.

What I know about people who’ve attempted / had relationships with people much older is the following:

If you don’t think you properly love each other or aren’t committed enough to each other then the ‘perks’ need to be significant – later on in life if you’re still together you’ll basically become his carer so finances can’t be an issue ever.

Those who managed to make it work without the perks could so because they got something else they were looking for in each other – one person I know had a terrible relationship with her father earlier on in life so she basically found a father in her partner and he had just left a previous relationship so for him it was like being back in his twenties. They’re both good at talking with each other though and managed to work out their differences, now they live a frugal life, he’s approaching 70 and she 50 but they’re ok.

Anyway hope this helps!