I Met “The One” But He’s 7 Years Younger Than Me

I’ve always been open to whatever the universe has for me, which is why I’ve dated all sorts of people from all types of backgrounds. These experiences have taught me to accept people for who they are and to be flexible, but dating a man who’s seven years younger than me has pushed me to my limits.

  1. He acts his age. My boyfriend is 25 and he acts like it. There’s nothing wrong with that except I’m 32. The extra years I have on him have made me a lot more mature. I don’t want to force him to become something that he’s not, but I also don’t want to date someone whose maturity level is not the same as mine. The problem is that there are so many great things about him. He ticks so many boxes but I worry that his lack of maturity will become a problem. All the talk of women who dated younger guys and got burned is just making more worried about where this relationship is going.
  2. I can see him beginning to change based on what I say to him. I think that growing and becoming a better person is good in any relationship, but I worry that my boyfriend is molding himself into my ideal guy. Just over the last few months, he’s stopped going out and doing a lot of dumb things with his friends. I don’t want to force him to become something he’s not. I want him to be a good partner to me but also be his own person.
  3. I feel like I’m robbing him of his youth. I had all my fun in my twenties and I still have fun now I’ll be it a different kind of fun. My boyfriend keeps telling me that he doesn’t mind growing up a little faster, but I worry that not getting to experience the things that he should will come back to haunt us. I don’t want to deal with a husband who has a mid-life crisis because he didn’t get to have fun in his twenties.
  4. His family doesn’t like me. I should mention that I have only met his family twice, but the vibe I get from them is that they don’t approve of our relationship. His sister even made an offhand comment about how much he’s changed and asked him if it was because of me. I don’t want to create tension in his family or marry into a family where no one likes me.
  5. I don’t know if he’s ready to be a father. As a woman of a certain age, I feel like my biological clock is ticking. So many of my friends that are only a couple of years older than me are having fertility issues. I don’t want to wait too long and face the same consequences. The only problem is that I don’t know that my boyfriend is ready for kids and I don’t want to force him to be.
  6. I wonder if there will always be a maturity gap between us. Yes, my boyfriend has done a lot of growing up in the past year, but he’ll always be seven years behind me. While I’m trying to work my way into junior management, he’s just starting in the corporate world. So much of who I am and the maturity I have comes from my life experiences I worry that as time goes on, I’ll continue to feel like he’s one step behind me. I fear that I’ll always feel like he’s not my equal, which sounds horrible but it’s true.
  7. People always mistake him for my younger brother. I know that other people’s opinions shouldn’t matter, but it feels weird whenever we go into a restaurant and someone assumes we’re related. I want everyone I meet to understand he is my man, not raise their eyebrows when I say that this young looking 25-year-old man is my boyfriend.
  8. My friends and family doubt that he’ll stay with me. Something we all know about young men is that they tend to be flaky. I’d love to say that the thought of my boyfriend leaving me has never crossed my mind but that would be a lie. At 25, I didn’t know what I wanted. How could he? And if he does, how sure can I be that he’ll want the same thing in 10 years?
  9. I worry that we’ll grow to resent each other. The reality of our situation is that we are in different places in our lives. If we go at my pace and get married and have kids, I worry that my boyfriend will be resent me for pushing him into a more mature lifestyle early on. If, on the other hand, we go at his pace, I worry that I will resent him if for some reason I can’t have a child. I find myself torn as I’ve never been. I’m pretty sure my boyfriend is “The One,” I just wish we were the same age.
Hannah is a twenty-something-year-old freelance writer, obsessed with reality TV, and all things sweet.
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