What if you fell in love with a younger man?

Our expert in the field of human relations, psychologist Marina Slavina, for a Sunday cup of coffee, stored thoughts on this topic. I read it, if I don’t, I read it too.

Have you ever felt like a well-renovated house? Everything is solid there: the parquet is rubbed to shine, the paintings hang smoothly, and there is always fresh water on the table in the decanter. You know where the door creaks and where the floorboard will bend. You own this mansion. Suddenly a draft. You turn around and He is on the doorstep. And he's not twenty, not thirty, just ten years younger than you.

What if you fall in love with a younger man

The first thought: the security system has failed, the second is a mistake, I will close the door. The third is late, because he's already in, shaking the snow off his hair, and your restored world suddenly becomes cramped. Not because it's big, but because it smells like fresh wind.

I'm a Gestalt therapist. And they don’t come to me with novels, they come with tears in the fabric of reality. When a woman says, “I fell in love with a man much younger than myself,” it’s almost always not sex, passion, or a midlife crisis. Behind this is a deaf blow to one’s own identity.

Let's be honest. We were raised on three whales.

First whale. "He who is older is wiser.".

Second whale. “A man must be a breadwinner, which means he is older.”.

Third whale. “Age is status and security is status.”.

And when you meet someone who doesn't fit into that architecture, your inner censor is drowned in panic. He shouts, "Wake up!" What will people say? What will he take from you? You're almost his mother

Stop. Exhale. I'm going to tell you something you didn't expect. In Gestalt, we work not with age, but with the boundary of contact. Age is just a stamp on an envelope with a different letter inside it.

Time zone metaphor

Imagine that each of us has our own time. There are women who at 45 are exactly the same age as another man at 35. It's not about looking young. It's about density.

Or you may have already lived a marriage, had children, buried illusions, learned a foreign language, built a business, and smashed three vases in a fit of rage. And he may just be learning to distinguish despair from longing.

But! He knows what you never learned. He sees the world not as a system, but as a playground. He doesn’t know that “it doesn’t happen like that,” because he didn’t see an era where “it didn’t happen like that.” And that's where the magic begins.

When you fall in love with your youngest, you do not fall in love with him, but with your forgotten ability to wonder. You look at his ambitions and catch yourself with your own ambition lying long ago in a box labeled "Was." You look at his recklessness and feel the same girl you locked in the basement when you married the right one thawing in your chest.

It's dangerous not because he's gone, but because you risk meeting the real one.

Case from practice: "Glass Ball"

Let's say Elena came to me and let's say she's 44. She's the director of a network of clinics. Iron Lady, from whom subordinates shun. She walked into the office and said, "I made a mistake." I fell in love with my assistant. He's 33. That's stupid. I want you to cut out that feeling like appendicitis.”.

I said, "How do you feel when he walks into a room?" She was quiet. And then I cried. Not elegant, but with tears, smearing mascara on the cheeks. She said, "I feel like I'm alive." It's terrible. Because alive means vulnerable.”.

So we started working with that. I asked her to imagine her age. She presented a glass ball, inside which the perfect picture froze: house, order, titles. And he (her assistant) is just a ray of light that falls on this ball. And the balloon starts to heat up. And she's afraid he'll crack.

There is a golden rule in the Gestalt: “Fear not what is destroyed, but what remains frozen.”.

Elena wasn't afraid of love. She was afraid she would have to admit, "I'm 44, but I want to dance in the rain at 3am." This is incompatible with the “director” image. But compatible with life.

She didn't decide to stay with him or not. We were looking for her contact with us. It turned out that at 33, he does exactly what she forbade herself to do at 30: he makes mistakes openly, he laughs at failures, he does not pretend to be a boss. It's just there, and it's the most powerful therapeutic factor. He does not heal her, but by his existence he shows her, “You have a choice: freeze or warm.”.

Pitfalls that are silent about

You might say, "It's beautiful, but what about biology?" What about the decline of reproductive function? What about energy

I'll answer. Forget biology for a minute. The biggest gap between you is not the difference in years, but the difference in injuries. If you’ve lived 20 years in a marriage where you’ve been devalued and he’s just learning to say no, you’re bound to become his mom. If it’s immature and you’re overresponsible, you’ll take it on your shoulders.

But! If you're both adults (and adulthood isn't measured by a passport), the 10-year difference turns into a beautiful asymmetry. You know how to survive a storm because you've been there before. He knows how to rejoice in the wind, because he has not yet broken the sail. You can teach each other what you don’t have.

And here's the honest answer to the question "What to do?"

1.Separate love from duty. You don't have to marry him. You don't have to give birth to him. But you have to honestly admit to yourself: what exactly do you see there? If it's the shadow of a father who was weak, run to therapy. If it is your own shadow, your youth, your audacity, hold her tight!

2 Take the role of Savior or Destroyer. He's not the one to bring you back to youth. And not someone who takes your status away. He's just a mirror. The mirror is not to blame for seeing itself reflected in it. Breaking a mirror is stupid. Better fix your hair.

3 Stop counting in your head. Every time you think, "I'm 50, he's 40," you think about your fears of old age and your social acceptance. I have 10 years more experience of really loving. Or 10 years more experience to suffer. What experience am I choosing now

Weaving relationships alive

The most difficult thing about love is to accept your right to happiness without passport control. We are used to having to earn happiness. And if you're happy with a young man, it's like you haven't earned it. After all, you had to suffer with a peer, endure, pull the strap. And then "bang!" and lightness. It seems like stealing.

But life, it is not about “honestly” or “unfairly”, it is about “sincerely”. If you’re sincere in your desire to be around, if you’re not playing Mommy and saving him from life, if you’re letting him be strong at his age and you’re weak at your age, then you’re not only having an affair, you’re healing.

As I finish this article, I want you to remember one sentence: “Your wish is your most accurate compass.” Age is only the distance you have travelled. And he's just a fellow traveler walking by. And if your steps coincide in rhythm, it doesn’t matter which one of you has walked more kilometers.”.

Let yourself be someone who doesn’t know the numbers. Let yourself be the one who looks into the eyes and sees the soul, not the expiration date. Yeah, he'll leave if it was just a lesson. Yeah, he'll stay if it was a meeting. But most importantly, will you stay with yourself if he leaves?

If you are reading this article and your heart is beating more, you are already alive. Fearing the living is normal and loving is normal. Even if it's "not by the rules." Because life has no rules, only a pulse. And he doesn't know how old you are. He just beats, beats, beats.

And if you think that I write on this topic simply because I can write beautifully, then not at all. I’ve lived this story myself, entered it, and for almost 14 years we’ve been happy with a man who is 11 years younger than me.

If you do not know what to do with your love, come to a consultation, we will figure it out together. 8.961-465-13-65 (tel, mach, vatsap)