My mother calls me a gerontophile. This is an unkind, not to say bigoted, way of saying that I have a habit of going out with much older men. Age-gap relationships are the prejudice of the day. But thankfully London is teeming with us May-December types.
Different factions of Londoners like to date out of their accepted bracket. There are the trendy types who make it look zeitgeisty and cool. Sam Taylor-Wood (57) paved the way when she married Aaron Taylor-Johnson (34), the odds-on next Bond, in 2012, and moved him into her edgy City warehouse complete with the Pet Shop Boys’ recording studio in the basement. While no-one looks cooler pottering down Portobello Road with baby-plus-boyfriend, Oli Green (28) than Sienna Miller (43). Kate Moss (51) is said to still be reeling from her split with Nikolai Von Bismarck (38) but, it has to be said that for nine years she wasn’t seen at any party or launch without the perfect whippersnapper accessory on her arm.
What tends to be less chic is when it looks like an older man is using a younger girlfriend to seem hip. Frank Skinner said that when he was dating a 20 year old, even some of the nicer women he knew either turned “disproportionately vicious” or treated him like Woody Allen. But much worse was laddish congratulations, friends “taking me to one side at a party and giving me an enthusiastic congratulatory handshake. The horror!”
But there is a category of age-gap sex and the city that has got nothing to do with being cool, and that’s the one that I fit into. Though I used to go out out with a much, much older TV presenter (he was 30 years older than me) whose only waking thought was raving at Torture Gardens, on the whole my vintage lovers have acted even older than the age on their passports (blue from the first time around). This means that there are things to get used to. “Meet you at the club” means The Atheneaum not The Box, and we tend to wander around Wren churches not Broadway Market at the weekend. This is a good thing, as I’m afraid the ship of my boyfriend sporting a trendy man bun or, in fact, any hair at all, sailed decades ago.
The age-gap detractors tend to spout idiotic theories like the Di Caprio Rule which holds that men don’t like dating women older than 25 as that’s the age when your prefrontal cortex (bit of the brain responsible for impulse control and decision-making) is finally formed. As Florence Pugh (29) who went out with Zach Braff (49) for 3 years pointed out, “I’ve always found it funny how I can be good enough for people to watch my work, and support my work, and pay for tickets, and I'm old enough to be an adult and pay taxes, but I'm not old enough to know who I should and should not have sex with.”
Unfortunately this kind of judgement doesn’t stop even when the cortex is well and truly formed (not to say atrophying), the implication seems to be that if you are not born around the same time how can you have anything meaningful in common. One or other of you is being shallow. Or has Daddy Issues. Probably both.
It’s certainly true that my (older) boyfriend has never sweatily humped a speaker at Fabric, but I’m not sure how much that matters. Crucially, too, he is totally unshockable
It’s certainly true that my boyfriend (16 years older than me) has never sweatily humped a speaker at Fabric, but I’m not sure how much that matters. He’s done and knows a million other things to make up for this lapse. Crucially too, he is totally unshockable. (Or perhaps, like an indulgent father, he just tunes out when I am showing off). The point is that age is the least of our problems.
A bona fide cause for relationship strife might well be Valentine’s Day on the other hand. Last year we celebrated by going to a party given by Gyles Brandreth for the Queen and every living Dame (think Lumley, Lipman, Redgrave, Routledge etc), this year is set to be much less groovy. And this might be my one beef about dating a confirmed bachelor of middling years: they tend to have consigned their grand gesture Don Juan days to the past, and are much more likely to remember April Fool’s Day than Valentine’s Day.
In fact that gives me a thought. A few years ago I told my elder-love that I was pregnant as a fool. He went as green as a Limebike and complained of chest pains (another occupational hazard). So although it’s looking like I’ll spend my Valentine’s Day talking about ribbed vaulting in a Pall Mall gentlemen’s club, I can spend the time plotting my revenge. There are only forty five shopping days left till April 1. Bring on those heart palpitations.
