I have something relevant to say about this, but I should warm up to it a little. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll get to that in a moment.

I met Linda when I was 1800 miles from home and had just been “Dear-Johne”ed by somebody that I had corresponded wtih for two years. Linda and I were both soured by the whole dating thing when we met on the campus of a major denomination’s confererence center campus in the foothills of the Rockies. It seemed like the perfect friendship – we weren’t interested in the dating rat race and everybody around us was *consumed* by it. Therefore, we did a lot of things together because we were immune. We had a great time together. We went to movies, ate out with friends, went hiking, and walked through the historic streets of old Santa Fe, oblivious to the raging hormones that seemed to afflict everybody else.

This lasted for maybe 12 weeks (which seemed like eternity or the blink of an eye, depending on your perspective, a very quick timeless moment).

One night, I saw her walking toward me in a skirt at the Chuckwagon. I was eating a hot fudge sundae (with extra fudge). She was radiant and oblivious to her beauty. She had the longest, sexiest legs I’d ever seen and it occurred to me as she sat down that I hadn’t thought of __________ in about ten weeks. This was A Big Deal because I’d come out there for this other girl and Linda had cast all thought and memory of her out of my mind with her smile and her friendly disinterest in guys.

Things happened quickly after that. We were holding hands after the incident with the pretend bear and we were hugging for hours on end shortly thereafter. I don’t remember when we had our first kiss, but I remember the kiss itself as if it were yesterday. All other kisses are mere reflections of that kiss.

It got to the place where we could seemingly read each other’s minds and emotions. This was both a blessing and a curse. From the other side of the campus, I could tell when she wanted to eat breakfast and when she needed to go to Santa Fe for pizza and a movie (or simply to spend two hours necking in the mall parking lot). I could also tell the time when there was a black cloud over her head and when I should leave her be.

She called me after that and that’s when I heard her story; how she was technically engaged but came to New Mexico to get some time to think. Yours truly didn’t know that and had gone and fallen in love. Worse yet, I’d wooed her so successfully that she’d fallen in love with me, too. Her fiance drove up from AZ to clear things and was sent packing – she’d agreed to marry him because it was a very small town in a very remote place but she’d never really loved him and she’d needed time to see that. She finally knew love, but it wasn’t with him, it was with me.

So as it turns out, I was The Other Man.

That was when I volunteered to step aside for this man, but she didn’t love him and she wanted to be with me. I left it up to her. I drove her back to AZ at the end of the summer in time for her to teach, and I met her ex (which is another story unto itself).

We settled into a routine – we called each other every weekend and I wrote to her every night. We’d see each other for the weekend every six weeks; she’d come back up to NM or I’d go to AZ. Around the fourth visit, we started talking about what it would be like to be married. I don’t really remember proposing and I don’t remember her accepting, but one visit we were boyfriend and girlfriend and another we were engaged. When her parents visited, I did ask her Father for her hand and his blessing, and he and her mother cheerfully agreed.

Here we are at long last – the revelation.

At some point during one of her visits, the topic of age finally came up. We were sitting somewhere quiet and she was reclining back against me and I had my arms wrapped around her. She mentioned in passing when she’d graduated from High School in ‘74 and from college in ‘78 and I started to do some mental math. I mentioned that I’d graduated from High School in ‘81 and we had this moment of epiphany fall on us – she was seven years older than I.

There was a brief awkward moment and then we both started laughing – we were long past caring about something as simple as the Julian Calendar by this point and decided it didn’t matter. It wasn’t a factor at that moment and it has never mattered to either one of us ever since.

And, yes, older women can be fantastic in bed as I discovered on December 22, 1985, our wedding night 18 and a half years ago. We have been keeping each other warm and frisky ever since.

Yes, perhaps older women are more at ease sexually – but they’ve had more time to explore both sex and their own sexual identity. But to say that older women are mostly out for “boy toys” is just a shame.

I’ll be blatantly honest here – part of the reason I’m attracted to younger men is because they are often free of too much bitterness toward past relationships, they tend to (not always) be more sexually enthusiastic and interested, and they tend to be, at least in the U.S., more comfortable with stronger women.

My one hesitancy about getting involved with younger men has always had to do with the fact that I’m not running after marriage or children, and if that’s something they want, and we can have a meaningful relationship – well, that causes conflict, and I don’t want to stand in anyone’s way when it comes to fulfilling their life goals.

Maybe I have ethics, and that’s what goes against the grain of the Maxim article, which pretty much advocates having younger man / older woman sex but shutting the door on the way out. That’s sad. Even if the relationship is based on mutual sexual interest, well, I don’t know about everyone else, but I sure like a little lovin’ while I’m being screwed.

The quality of human relationships should always boil down to the love. I don’t care if it lasts five minutes or a lifetime, there’s simply too much abuse and hatred in the world to add more to it.

My more than two cents . . .
Molly :)