11 Love Lessons You Learn From Dating An Older Man

I was 20 and he was 31. It was my first real romantic relationship. I thought that we were going to last forever, especially after he stuck a promise ring on my finger. But we skidded to a nasty end, with him cheating on me and giving me trust issues for life. Although the reason why we ended was that he was an a-hole, not our age difference, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I learned some love lessons from dating an older man. Here are just a few of them.

1. I didn’t care enough about what others thought. Many people thought that we were an odd match because he was 11 years older than me. I wrote them off, which I thought was good. But honestly? I should’ve paid a bit more attention when my friends thought something was “off,” at least to consider it before writing it off like the world was out to get me. We weren’t right for each other but I didn’t want to see it.
2. The age difference can be weird. Look, there’s nothing wrong with dating an older man. Love knows no age, right? Well… Here’s the thing. He was 31 and I was 20. Looking back, that was quite creepy from his side of things. As my mother had asked me at the time, “What is a 31-year-old grown-ass man doing with a 20-year-old woman?” She had a freaking point, you guys.
3. I should’ve been more assertive. Being so much younger than my BF made me sort of take a backseat so he could be in control of the relationship. I think I kinda went along with whatever he wanted to do because he was older, and he expected me to follow ‘cause he was older. I was such a yes girl. That’s screwed up. It taught me that I have to be assertive in relationships otherwise I won’t get what I want, and I deserve for my needs to be met!
4. I need someone who actually gets me. I wasn’t really acknowledged in my relationship. We were at such different phases in our lives – he was stabilized in his career and I was just starting out with mine; he’d been married, I was decades away from getting hitched – and sometimes it felt like he didn’t really “get” me. We were dating, but we were in completely different places. Honestly, it would’ve been nice to have someone at my side who totally understood where I was and what I was going through because they were going through it too.
5. Ex-wives and other baggage can be a problem. At first, I didn’t really think that the fact that he had an ex-wife and kids was going to bother me, but I was so blind to the reality. Of course it would affect me. How could it not? I wasn’t jealous of his history with his ex, but he’d been married. They had shared something huge that I’d never know about. It was a big deal and something that was unique to dating an older man.
6. I didn’t realize my needs would be pushed aside. The age difference meant that he wasn’t keen on having kids or even getting married again. Um, what about what I wanted? That got pushed aside, even though I wasn’t sure if I could totally write those future possibilities off. Dating an older man taught me that I had to prioritize what I wanted for my future and not get led astray by someone who’d already been there, done that.

More things I learned from dating an older man

1. I shouldn’t have stuck with a mansplainer. Okay, this is probably something that was more about him as a jerk than a guy older than me, but dating a man who was a lot older than me caused me to end up with someone who thought he knew everything about everything. He was always giving me advice when I never asked for it. Sometimes it made me feel like he saw me as a little kid. So damn annoying.
2. I want someone who knows what they want. While he was older, he was all over the show. See, age doesn’t mean a thing! A guy in his 30s can be as messed up and confused as a guy in his 20s. This guy was inconsistent, didn’t know what he wanted career-wise, and wasn’t making me feel secure in the relationship. Plus, he ended up cheating on me like hell. Um, what? Here’s the dating life lesson I learned from my older man: If a guy’s over 30 and isn’t consistent and clear about who he is and what he wants, RUN.
3. It was a problem that he was set in his ways. He was stuck in his ways and pretty inflexible. He didn’t want to do things that younger people were doing and that I wanted to do, such as hitting the clubs or spending time with my friends. That’s the thing to bear in mind when dating an older man: he might be less open-minded than younger guys.
4. His kids were his number one priority. The guy had kids from his previous marriage, which was huge. At the time I tried to be cool about everything, but sometimes it meant I had to be put on ice. He’d cancel coming to my birthday because he had to do something with them at the last minute, like go to a school play. Once, when I was really upset about something that happened to me, he told me to stop crying ‘cause we were going to spend time with his kids. Ouch. This wasn’t always easy to deal with.
5. He didn’t give me a lot of time. Looking back on that two-year relationship, it was pretty crazy to think that he only saw me once a week. I would never put up with that sloppy behavior now! He was legit busy and had a fully-formed career to run. But it ended up feeling like he was compartmentalizing his life to squeeze me in without me having full access to it. Again, this points to how we had different schedules and it was a problem. Dating an older man was fun in a lot of ways, but in others, it was a total downer.