Advice, Dating Online Personals

Kids and the Younger Women

Will didn’t really think we needed to exactly define our relationship but to just let it happen. I felt we needed ground rules.

We talked about moving in together down the road. I had never lived with anyone before and the idea of living with Will both scared and excited me.

The next few months flew by. I met Will’s son and daughter. Justin, age 12, was adorable and I fell in love with him right away. We took Justin to movies with us and I attended Justin’s hockey games with Will. He didn’t seem bothered by the fact that his Dad had a girlfriend or that I was younger than his Dad.

It was a little scarier meeting Miranda who was 15. I was very aware of the fact that I was only 9 years older than her and I was so sure she would hate me on sight. No, she didn’t hate me. But she was definitely more reserved than her younger brother and I’m not sure I really knew where I stood the first few times we got together.

One of the first times we got together with Miranda, she brought a girlfriend with her so she could meet Dad’s “24 year old girlfriend”.

Apparently, the idea was cool–I just didn’t know whether or not I was as cool to her as the idea was.

I think she realized that her Dad was happy so she would go along with the idea of our relationship for the time being, but God help me if I did anything to hurt her Dad.

After a staff picnic that summer, we announced our relationship to the people that we worked with. Some people were completely shocked, other people’s faces held smug smiles, as if to say, I thought there was something going on there.

Over the summer I met most of Will’s family. He had 2 sisters, one older and one younger and 3 younger brothers. His oldest sister had kids older than me and she was very happy to meet me but I am sure that she wasn’t exactly sure what to do with me.

My most serious regret about our age difference was the fact that I didn’t get to meet and get to know Will’s parents. They were both in a nursing home and very ill when we started dating and I don’t know if they even knew that Will was separated from his first wife.

Summer turned into fall and I turned a year older and now we were seriously talking about moving in together. I remember vividly the conversation we had when we decided to move forward with the relationship. Will wanted to be completely upfront with me how he felt.

He loved me and wanted to live with me but he told me quite frankly that he would never marry again and that his kids would always come first. He had had a vasectomy and had no intentions of having any more children and he wanted to me to clearly understand this before we took our relationship to the next level.

That’s a lot of restrictions to put on a relationship before it even gets started. It’s also a lot of provisos for a 25 year old to absorb and agree to. I’m not sure that I could give up the idea of marriage and kids of my own.

Will understood what he was asking from me but he told me honestly as much as he loved his kids there was no way he wanted to start over again at this stage in his life and that his head was more focused on planning his retirement than on planning on nurseries and diaper changing.

How does a 25-year old girl deal with that? Love conquers all, right?

I told Will honestly that giving up any hope of marriage and kids was a very big concession for me to make and not something I could do lightly.

I spent a couple of days and sleepless nights thinking long and hard about what I really wanted for my life.

I couldn’t imagine breaking up with Will but would I be settling if I agreed to his terms. Could I live with someone for the rest of my life and be happy knowing that we would never marry or have children of are own? Could I handle always taking a backseat to his children’s needs? I didn’t want to give up too much of my own identity just because I moved in with Will.

It seemed to be an issue with no clear right or wrong answer. In the end I chose to agree to Will’s terms and deep down I really believed that once we had lived together long enough, he would change his mind.

We moved in together on a cold winter day at the end of January and I was excited and petrified at the same time. It was one thing to spend weekends with someone, but it was completely another to commit to spending all of your life with someone.

In a fairy tale this would be where you would get to the part where we lived happily ever after. Life doesn’t work like that. Making a relationship work is not easy. Both partners have to learn to give and take and to pick your battles. I’m not saying that we weren’t happy. Will and I feel that we are the best things that happened to each other and I thank God every day that he was persistent in his pursuit of me.

We loved each other very much and we learned to make it work. Did the age difference ever get in the way? You betcha. Our friends were different ages and they all had different priorities. Although we had similar tastes in music in some ways, half of the artists that Will was into, I had never heard of before. It was mind boggling to think that when Will started working I was only 2 years old. But just like all new couples, we discovered things about each other and every day was a new experience.

To further Will’s career, we moved across Ontario, and I left my family and friends to begin a new life. A series of coincidences followed that found Will’s estranged wife also moving to the same city we were moving to so Will’s relationship with his children did not change.

Being thrust into the role of a stepmother was wonderful and challenging all at the same time. Miranda and I butted heads a few times and the 9-year difference in age became an issue a few times. It was cool for her Dad to have a young girlfriend at first but it wasn’t so cool when I stuck around. Somehow, without words being spoken we found a way to make it work.

My relationship with Justin was solid, though. Never had a moment’s worry about where I stood with him.