A woman married to a man twice her age has shared how she’s lost friends and faced nasty comments online as a result of the age gap between her and her husband.
Savanna Miller, now 23, and husband Mark, 45, from Sydney, Australia, first matched on Tinder five years ago when she was just 18 - though she claims they hadn’t planned to meet up.
They then happened to bump into each other on a night out and realised how much they clicked.
The pair soon fell in love and married in February 2021. They now have plans to start a family together in the future.
Savanna’s family have been supportive, with her mum, who is just seven years older than Mark, even calling him her "son".
"Love who you love and don’t be swayed by others," Savanna said. "I am so grateful for the friends I lost to this relationship.
"At the end of the day if your friends don't support you no matter what, they aren’t friends worth having.
“Both of our parents were completely fine [with our relationship].
"My mom calls him son and she’s only seven years older than Mark (the same age as his older brother).
"He’s really close with my family and vice versa.”
From the minute they met, Savanna says she felt different about Mark compared to other boyfriends and their relationship quickly grew.
She said: “I actually wasn’t physically attracted to my previous boyfriends and wasn’t intimate with any of them.
"Don't get me wrong, they are lovely, wonderful guys and I am still great friends with them but physically there was no attraction – despite other girls my age always liking them.
“I guess with Mark what’s really incredible is having a physical attraction to him as well as the depth of conversation we can have.
"It feels like we are teammates as well as lovers, just constant support on both ends to be who we are and true to ourselves.”
Although neither Mark nor Savanna had been in a relationship with an age gap before, they never felt it was an issue.
She said: “Our relationship just moved from stage to stage naturally with no verbal confirmations.
“Neither of us brought it up with the other. We didn’t really voice any concerns.
"I guess I had in the back of my mind that he may not think I am in the right stage of my life to be serious but we both gave it a shot and we found us both to be in the same stage and in agreement with where and how we were.”
After they got together, Savanna introduced Mark to her family and luckily it went really well.
But other relationships have suffered because she chose to be with him, including close friendships.
She said: “His friends were fine and wonderful and a lot of them are actually some of my best friends now.
“My friends in the main were great but I lost two of my best friends because they couldn’t understand that you can get along and be from different generations and I guess they had conservative small-minded views of relationships.
“I have always deemed myself lucky to have lost them as I don't believe friends are real friends if they don’t support you regardless of their own view – we have different lives and should support each other regardless of our own opinions.”
In late 2020, they decided to get married.
Savanna said: "Neither one of us is overly romantic and he had been asking/stating we should get married for about a month in late 2020 and I just laughed it off every time.
"One day we were on our way to play lawn bowls with our friends and we were at our favourite cafe called the Tennyson Bistro in Napier, New Zealand, eating smoked salmon bagels and he just said 'Pick a date and let's get married'.
"I laughed and said a random date and he agreed and four months later we were married."
The pair had a small wedding with just their closest friends and family on 20 February 2021, on the balcony of their home.
Now, the couple have plans to expand their family at some point in the future.
Savanna said: “We are both into the idea of having children but are in no rush.
"As always we have to plan and discuss everything we do so we have pencilled it in for four years.
“For now, we want lots of adventures, travel and success.
"We have already moved across the country and then moved countries twice now and we would like to keep doing that – exploring and finding opportunities to grow together.
"Life should be an adventure and settling down doesn’t have to mean staying in one place.”
The pair also post about their relationship on TikTok, where they have over 96,000 followers.
While most of the comments they get are positive, the pair say they do get a few negative responses – but they don’t let it bother them.
Savanna said: "It's wonderful because we [get] hundreds of messages from people who are in the same boat but don't have our confidence, and say our TikTok makes them feel better about their relationship.
"We are helping people ignore the judgement.
"There are sort of generic comments which makes me think people don’t really think too deeply and repeat what they’ve seen on Facebook. It's just things like “this is so wrong” and “He could be your dad!”
"I just sit there trying to mature and not comment back 'could be your dad next time Sharon'."
