Dear Dan: My partner is 31 years older than I am. I know the math: He’ll be 60 when I’m 29. But that isn’t the problem. The issue is he’s been a lifelong bachelor and never been monogamous. He’s fucked hundreds of women and is close friends with a lot of his former fuck buddies. Because of our four-year friendship before we hooked up, I know a lot about his sex life. The problem isn’t jealousy — and it isn’t knowing he’s fucked every woman he’s friends with or that he fucked someone else after declaring his love for me. It’s that I know too much. We both feel vulnerable at times — him because I’m still in contact with one ex, and me because I feel like I’m fighting his past preference for no-strings-attached relationships. He tells me this relationship is different and he loves me in a way he hasn’t loved anyone before. But I still feel like because of how many people he’s been with, and how many of these amazing, beautiful, young fuck buddies are still in his life, I’ll never attain any sort of primacy.
— Notable Age Gap Gets In Newbie’s Grill
Dear NAGGING: At some point in the future, your partner is going to be 60 and you’re going to be 29, NAGGING, which means you’re somewhere in your 20s and he’s somewhere in his 50s, right? (Math is hard!) And since you two were friends for four years before he realized you were the only woman he wanted to stick his dick in for the rest of his life — pay no attention to the woman he dicked during the brief interlude between telling you he loved you and the aforementioned realization — that means… um… Math is hard, like Barbie says, especially when you don’t have all the relevant data. The same goes for giving advice.
Answering your question without knowing your actual ages is difficult, because it makes a difference whether you’re 21 and he’s 52 (which means this man befriended you when you were a high-school student) or you’re 28 and he’s 59 (and you met this man after you got out of college). Likewise, it would help to know how long you two have been together. Three months? Three years?
Essentially, you’re asking me to game out the odds for both long-term success and monogamous success (and, yes, those are two different things), and that’s hard to do without knowing your ages and how long you’ve been together. Because I would definitely give your relationship slimmer odds of long-term success if your partner were the kind of middle-aged man who befriends and eventually beds high-school students. Conversely, I would give your relationship fatter odds of long-term success if you were three years into it and your partner had been successfully monogamous all that time.
That said, NAGGING, cheating and breakups regularly happen in the absence of significant age gaps and friendship networks composed exclusively of ex–fuck buddies. (Since people tend to partner with — and cheat on and be cheated on by — people in their same age demographic, cheating and breakups almost always happen in the absence of significant age gaps. But that is correlation, not causation — and sophistry, too!) There are no guarantees. Your partner may revert to nonmonogamous form at some point and either cheat (boo!) or ask for permission to open up your relationship (yay?). You could find yourself in a caretaker role in 10-plus years and find yourself asking him for permission to open up your relationship. Or you guys could stay together and stay faithful until death comes for one of you — most likely your partner, leaving you plenty of time to hook up with your ex, if he’s still available.
Oh, shit — blah blah blah, I haven’t answered your question. You’ll obtain primacy — or realize you’ve already attained it — after a significant chunk of time has passed. So give it more time. Either it will work out or it won’t. But even if this relationship isn’t a long-term success, it can still be a short-term success. Good luck.
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