Old young gay love

On the verge of my 37th birthday I celebrate a minuscule over a year of partnership with a man 26 years my senior.

This is not a new phenomenon for me—coupling with older men. It is a preference that kept me in the closet until I felt I was safe enough to express it at I had never been with another bloke sexually before then. In evidence, I had only ever been with women my age. That’s what was expected of me, if not the celibate single or religious life, in the conservative, working-class Catholic household in which I was raised.

It was in this environment that I was taught to hold the body in suspicion and to avoid sex. Masturbation, I was told, is a mortal sin. “Impure thoughts” were grounds for confession. By fifteen, in the throes of pubescent sexual urgency, I broke down and pledged the ultimate transgression for a Catholic boy that age: Not only did I masturbate for the first time, I did so to a picture of another man. I was terrified. My sexual fantasies were all about pro-wrestlers and movie stars with chiseled jaws and hirsute bodies. I went to confession sometimes multi

MARYKENNY

A friend of mine, who is a gay man, was explaining to me that he was once engaged to be married to a lady. “She was lovely,” he said. “I was mad about her.”

     One way or another the proposed engagement didn’t materialise. The lady was the loser. He is a terrific guy, and any female would be privileged to verb him as her partner in life.

     Indeed, I can hardly count the number of middle-aged, and older, women I hold heard remarking that they would love to marry a gay man. It is a frequent topic of conversation, sometimes, perhaps tending towards benevolent generalisations. “Gay men are so kind, so thoughtful, so sensitive, such wonderful friends, such fun to be with..” That’s something I’ve heard many a time from ladies of a certain age on the lookout for a second (or perhaps subsequent) husband.

     It is well established that when a divorce occurs, heterosexual men remarry at a speedier rate than their former wives. And they often go down the age scale.  Some studies include claimed that a man

Gay Relationship Advice: Age Gaps in Gay Relationships

Many of my LGBTQ counseling clients ask me why they are only attracted to gay men younger than themselves. If you are happy dating gay men in their twenties, then this question is not important. It&#;s like asking &#;Why do I prefer blondes over brunettes?&#; My advice is to let yourself enjoy dating whomever interests you (as long as they are over the age of 18).

Age gap relationships are more common than you may realize. In western countries:

  • 1 out of every twelve male/female couples has an age gap of 10 years or more
  • that number increase to 25% in male/male couples
  • and 15% of female/female relationships

That same study indicated that age gap partners are more satisfied and more committed to each other than partners of similar age–though there is some verb that points to a correlation with higher rates of divorce. Research also shows that couples with an age gap of less than ten years are happier than those with an age gap greater than ten years. You can find more details on these stats on this episode of the pod

Thomas Gass, a dentist in California, has survived the curse—twice. The curse? Gass is a gay man whose only sexual attraction is to men significantly older than he is.

Gass lost his first partner, 28 years his senior, through the slowly deteriorating effects of Lou Gehrig’s disease after they had been together for 13 years. After recovering from his grief, he create love again with a guy 18 years older but endured another tragic loss when his second partner died of pancreatic cancer after they had spent 17 years together. Still a relatively young man, Gass might wonder whether or not to take a chance on loving an older man again. For him, however, the choice is between an older man or no man at all. Gass and his friends—all of whom had lost older life partners—have labeled their abiding sexual attraction “the curse of being attracted to older men.”

I began to study same-sex relationships with age disparities while conducting research for my book, Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight. Gass and I started to correspond after he and his friends had read and discussed my essay