Mr. Cactus

I know I will get flamed for this, but personally I think that once someone gets to a certain age - and having never been married before - then they are often actually better off staying single for the rest of their days. This man has lived perhaps two-thirds of his life and he is thinking of marrying a person who is virtually just starting out with theirs. Even formal studies I have seen indicate that once a man gets to his mid-thirties without having married, then it is very likely he will remain single all his life. What I am trying to say is that I think even under ideal circumstances, a first marriage at his age is going to be such a monumental change to his way of life, that I just wonder if he is really going to be fulfilled and happy anyway. I just feel that if he really was a marriage minded person, he would have done something positive about it two decades ago. Add to that all the problems you mentioned in your first post - and I think this marriage - were it to occur - would either be brief or very unhappy. And I know who will come out of it worse for wear too. It would be particularly devastating for him because of his age and the fact that it would be his first marriage. Of course, I don't see a problem with people his age and older getting married if they have been previously married. That is completely different, since the marriage mindset became part of them at a younger age. I guess I should add that I recently had an age-gap friendship which ended once I really found out how immature she really was (she actually managed to act mature and have me fooled for 5 months). When that ended it was devastating - I still haven't gotten over it 6 months later. So I can't imagine how horrific a failed marriage would be for him. I just don't think it is worth the risk. I think age gap relationships (of any sort) can only work when the younger person is fully mature. At what age this occurs naturally varies from person to person.

Touche 8) My personal experience is that women are like this too For my own part, I'm certainly not letting any women come emotionally close to me for a very long time, if ever again.

I can only agree with what the others have said. In my opinion it is hard enough to even be friends with someone you have never met, let alone actually think you can go so far as having a relationship with them. Personally, I can tell more about someone (in terms of being a good / bad / potentially compatible / incompatible person) from a single hour long lunch with them than I could in even years of relating to them only on a long distance basis (and whom I had never met personally). People can project whatever image they like when the contact is not personal, so you never really know exactly what sort of person you are dealing with until you have been in personal contact with them on an extended basis. I would go so far as to echo what another poster said here a little while back - you can't truly know someone till you have actually lived with them.

Having been in a very similar position (only with the sexes reversed) I guess I see two options. One is to completely break things off as you were thinking. The second is to adopt a completely different mindset and lower your expectations. I have tended to find, however, that doing the second thing (which I consider preferable) is very difficult to do unless you give it a lot of time and also happen to find someone else to fill that emotional gap (not that you would be proactively looking for someone else - they just might simply come along as it were when you least expect it). I just tend to find these sorts of long distance relationships very rarely work in the longer terms anyway. I'm not trying to be disrespectful to your relationship - just that you would probably be better off trying to find someone locally. The massive number of posts over time here at eNotAlone have shown me one thing: No matter how wonderful you think your current partner / potential partner is, there is always someone else out there who would be just as wonderful a partner. I think in your case I would be inclined to make the break as you suggested. I would not say to him that this decision was absolutely final however, since given time away from him you may find you can ultimately be friends with lowered expectations. You could just say that you would like to put any friendship on hold for the time being and not specify any sort of time period for a reappraisal of the situation. You can also assure him that you know where to find him if you want to resume contact. It is all very well for him to say all those things about how he wants the relationship to proceed. I think, however, that if he sticks to his guns then he is being a little selfish and a little lacking in empathy as regards the situation from your perspective.

Oh no! Oh well, what is done is done. Somehow I sense that you still need to get something out of your system before you can sustain NC. Maybe you still need to give him a big piece of your mind or something?

Yes, I had heard about it helping to prevent prostate problems as well. I can't help wondering whether at least some of the prostate problems in older men are because they don't "do it enough" (one way or the other) as they get older. It makes sense to me. So I think perhaps we should all make the effort to schedule this activity into our busy days / nights /whatever

Yes, please stay strong. As ForAnother so rightly says, if we could all fast forward time, it is unlikely we would all suffer much emotionally from breakups. You are right though in that we really need to be with someone who will 100% love us, otherwise the relationship can become a millstone around our neck. You will be surprised at how well complete NC will work, although it takes a lot of willpower and time. The temptation to talk will often be irrisistable, but as time goes on you will truly feel less and less inclined to talk to him and think about him all the time. Additionally, as time goes by your perspective on whyt he relationship did not work becomes more rational - you tend to mitigate the other partner's mistakes less and less. As a fellow Aussie, try to enjoy the onset of our wonderful Spring - get out and enjoy it

I know it is an ironic comfort, but it is comforting in a way to know there are other people around who are going through the exact same emotions that I and others are going through. I agree with what SnowFlurry said. He should not be speaking to you. I think that is only hurting you more than healing you and he really should stop - at least for the foreseeable future. Everytime you speak to him it just rips the scab off that healing wound of yours. It could take many months for you to start to feel better, but if he keeps contacting you, you are not going to get anywhere.

Well I'm 39, and the minimum age of someone with whom I would be interested in having a relationship is around 26, so that is pretty close to 14 years difference. I just think much below that and the gulf is too wide to bridge. The point is though, as I get older, I would still be happy to have a relationship with a mature 26 year old if she were actually interested in someone my age. And in case people think I am strange for having said that, I would of course be interested in having a relationship with someone my own age as well. There are a lot of relationships I know of where the man is 30 or more years older, and neither partner is there to take advantage of the other. To be honest, I don't even think of 14 years as an age gap of much significance, so long as the younger partner has "qualified" themselves by having had lots of life experience. As Gilgamesh put it, the younger partner in particular need to know what they want out of life and their relationship.

Wise words in both your posts, Gilgamesh. I wish you all the best in your communications with your younger friend.

I am glad you are making a success of it. I guess the only thing I could add is that when you say your advice is to the "younger half", I think your advice can apply just as easily to the older half too. There are, as you do actually point out further in your post, many younger people out to take advantage of older people too.

I agree that you should tell him straight. It is not only in your best interest, but importantly his as well. Of course he will be hurt, but better to hurt him now, because the longer you leave it the more hurt he will be.

It's incredibly hard to see something completely objectively when the emotion of it all runs so deep and close to home as it does in your case. Most of us have been through things like this - and as unhelpful as it seems right now, you absolutely have to know that things do get better. It might not happen quickly, it could take many months or even years - but in the end an emotionally healthy person - as you appear to be - will ultimately heal from this. Hypothetically, if you were reading your own post without the hurt, feelings and lack of closure you are experiencing, you would immediately make the decision to look after yourself by pulling up stumps, eliminating this person from your life and trying to fully integrate back into society without this person. I honestly cannot glean anything at all from your post that makes me think that somehow this relationship can be ressurected or that this person can somehow improve in the quantum leaps and bounds that would be needed to become someone that would satisfy you emotionally. You've given us a whole shopping list of showstoppers there. I think you deserve much better. Everyone deserves much better. I get the feeling this isn't just about how this relationship has effected you though - I truly think you are actually more fearful of your future and your ability to forge new connections with new people. I think that fear is at least part of the reason for you wanting to keep this person close to you in your life - in other words as unhappy as you are, you are more even more fearful of the consequences of moving on. I recently ended my only true friendship (or what I thought was a friendship), so I can empathise with what you are going through. I don't have any real friends either and I am not in a relationship, so I know how incredibly tough it is when being essentially friendless is piled up on top of a personal relationship that appears to have fallen apart at the seams and is now unhealthy for you. I'm not going to beat around the bush though. I do admit to finding things incredibly hard at the moment, but I left behind an unhealthy friendship and deep down I am glad I did. It was torturing me in the same way your relationship is torturing you. It was stunting my emotional growth and my potential to meet new people. I was no longer willing to keep sustaining and feeding such a huge emotional investment. You shouldn't be either. You need to keep thinking of the logical reasons why you should move on (and they are littered throughout your post), even though it is going to be incredibly hard for you. If that means writing down all the negative points about this relationship on a piece of paper that you keep by your bedside, then do it! I think as regards making new friends, you might find this easier a little bit further down the track once you have made the conscious effort to move on and you start to heal. I am a great believer that we give out subconscious signals regarding our friendship "potential" and perhaps those signals are a little weak and unconvincing in your particular case at the moment (I know they are in my case). For me it's because I still need to give myself more time to let my old friendship completely go, because I am still hurting an awful lot from it. I remember for the first couple of months after my old friendship ended, I was desperate to befriend anyone with a pair of ears, but of course I did not succeed in befriending anyone. To be perfectly honest I was not in an emotional state to do so anyway. So I think in your case friendships won't initially come easily - you still have an unhealthly relationship to extracate yourself from first. Please never think that ending any sort of relationship implies some sort of finality in terms of forging new ones or even friendships. I am sure most people going through breakups tend to view things that way, but look through the archives here - so many people have not only found even better relationships down the track, but they use the experiences of their old ones to improve the solidarity of their newest relationship.

Hi Gypsy, I agree with what you say about online meetings and long distance relationships. I really feel now that I could learn more about someone through a single hour-long lunch with them (by that I mean the sort of person they are) than I could through liaising with them for any amount of time online. I am sure you are a loyal honest and loving person - I can sense that just through the way you write, express yourself and how you debate points in a mature way. I wish there were more people around like that - my tastes are somewhat soured on that point at the moment. I think though, as you say, it comes down to maturity and none of us should tar everyone with the same brush. Were I to put myself on a dating site I would surely be one of the honest and loyal men out there, although that is difficult to prove unless -as you say - you are going to end up in close proximity to each other. I am sure there are very many others like me too. Sorry - I did not mean to hijack the thread through retelling my own experience - it's better for me to have experienced what I did and to just be hurt and bitter about it, since it could have been a whole lot worse.

Hi Gypsy, I completely understand your perspective. I have been in almost an identical situation to yourself. I met someone online as well. Over the 6 months I knew them, they completely mislead me - not only about how they felt about me but what they thought of me as a person. I wasn't looking for a relationship though. Although I felt there was the potential down the track for a relationship (if we could solve the distance issues), I kept quiet about it and never brought the subject up. She decided to, asking me how I felt about her. I had the choice of lying and saying I had no feelings at all, or telling the truth. She pointed out (about a hundred times before I told her) that how I felt would never, ever impact the relationship. She also said that no matter what I thought of her, I would never lose the friendship. So I decided to tell her the truth, having the comfort of knowing that. Within three weeks of that, she totally changed as a person and became cold, ambivalent, flippant and just an all-round unpleasant person to be around. When I confronted her sometime later as to why she had changed so much - especially with all the things she had previously told me - she told me a slew of untruths that anyone with even the remotest amount of commonsense could see right through. So I guess I have become a rather untrusting person - I certainly won't ever trust another person I ever meet online unless I subsequently have prolonged personal contact with them. Only then do I feel I could judge them for who they are.