When did I become a romance councilor?

I’ve spent the last four days trying to convince someone that their potential May-December romance with an eighteen-year-old would be a bad idea. The fundamental problem isn’t about age or even about life experience — it is really about the people involved.

The guy spent the last 4 days telling me all about all the things that their relationship is messing up in her life; some trivial, some not so trivial. He tells me about how mature and intelligent she is, how much he’s attracted to her, and how he knows the relationship is not a great idea because she’s so young, and they would have to maintain a long-distance relationship for the foreseeable future. What I never heard in the all that time was how he was contributing to her life, just how great she was since it’s been a while since he’s been attracted to someone this much. While I’m glad he’s having a good time, and she is enthusiastic about the relationship, it’s seems pretty clear the relationship is a destructive one for her. My advice has consistently — and increasingly pointedly — been to let her down easy and move on, but it’s been like throwing rocks into a stream — the effects are all on the surface and vanish almost immediately, but throw enough rocks in there, but hopefully he’s hearing me on some level.

I had originally thought that my concerns were about the disparity in life experience between the couple, but tonight’s dinner changed my perspective entirely. I don’t know if I looked at them one too many times, or if it was that I was eating alone, or if they were just that drunk, but the couple sitting at the facing table engaged me in conversation. After a minute or two of talking they had bought my dinner, shots of tequila all around and I was seated at their table. It turns out that they are engaged in a May-December romance as well, and their families would be none too pleased to find out about it; it seems that she went to school with his mother in younger days. They face a greater age difference then my aforementioned companion and his young paramour, and even greater distance issues (he’s military), but my advice to the two couples differed radically.

My dinner companions were exuberant about how their relationship has transformed both of their lives for the better; how before finding each other they despaired for the possibility for happiness, and how much that happiness has come to mean to them. Furthermore, their concerns over the relationship centered around the burden the other would bear in dealing with their respective families; they had no hesitation about their feelings about each other or in dealing with their own personal consequences. I felt no guilt, no hypocrisy in encouraging them to pursue their relationship in spite of their families.

I can only attribute the difference in my responses to the unique situation of each couple. Am I jealous of the first couple’s relationship? I don’t think so, I can’t see myself becoming a destructive element in someone else’s life (again); possibly, I’ve been there too many times. Am I letting my own past color my opinions about the relationships — probably, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But I’m pretty sure that there are no easy answers, and all relationships are more about the people involved and are therefore entirely unique.

I should probably just read more books, talk to fewer people, and shut-up and mind my own business…