Dear Dr. Romance,
I read your article on Age Differences in Dating. I am dating a woman that is 13 years older than I am, I love her, but I am about to quit this relationship. And I want to tell you why? Perhaps you will tell me your opinion. This is has been the hardest choice of my life. I do not feel I am doing the 100% right thing, I do not feel any woman will love me and treat me the way she has. I do not feel I will be feeling for anybody like that. But still I am going to do it for two reasons 1) Rules of Life that have formed my personality (family traditions, my priest, my favorite books, my community, my role models my personal search and experience) and define my personal mission and "they way things should be are in conflict with my Situation of Love or "the way things are"; 2) It is the rules of nature that will not allow us to be happy. Or so I think.
I will start from point 2). She is definitely in a different biological rhythm than I am. She is 38 and she wants the baby…but firstly I feel that she is in search of choosing a man that will bring her the baby and stay around to be the daddy to the baby, and even though she knows that that man might not stay around for long, she also knows that she will do everything to keep her man, and she will do everything for the baby (I am 1000% sure she will) and she feels confident. But from our discussions I also know that deep in mind she thinks "if my man will not stay with me forever, I will still have the baby as the result and fruit of my love". I am 25. You might think that when I will be 37, she will be 50, and when I am 47 she will be 60. I think biology and nature does its things and I don't like the "end that I have in mind" and I even more do not like to "live for the moment and do not worry about the future (this is what she tells me)". Hell, I am worried about OUR future. I want to envision my future the way I want it to happen and want to live up to it. And this relationship will not let me. I am not in the position to be a vehicle of producing a child. I do not know what kind of person should my child be, by which values and principles I should raise him, I am in a search to find myself. If she was in the same situation, we might have gotten married and live together and do this together. But no, she is confident how things should be, she knows exactly and she knows I am the one. I think she would be a great mother, amazing probably. But our biological cycles are not same, we are on different planets in that sense. I probably sound like a pimp, and I feel I should have been more responsible when I told her I loved her. Maybe I should have quit on her just before I felt I was falling for her? Please let me know what you think.
First point is harder (or maybe not). I am a person who values interdependence, because I think it produces strength and power (which give me possibility to do what I think is right, from that I derive my personal freedom in this life). To whom does my interdependence refer to ? God, my country, my family (or at least it was like this before I met this woman). I see the world and interpret the world through the glasses of my family, my ancestors. My family is the source of my personal wisdom that has given out from a generation to generation for many centuries. My family is a traditional Georgian family. And my partner is Russian, and she is from typical Russian family. Our backgrounds are vastly different (most Americans think of Georgia as part of Russia, but this two understandings are very different, probably Georgians are less like Russians than any other ethnic group or nation on earth). It is not that one is better and other is worse, they are just so different. Also there are non ethnic issues. More like individual issues about members of our families. If she tells her father that she wants to marry a Georgian man, that is 13 year younger that she, her father will say "my dear as long as you are happy, I am happy, I wish all the best to you two". If I tell my father I want to marry a woman that is Russian and that she is 13 year older than me, my father will say "think twice, you are not alone, what choice you make will effect your family, your younger brothers, think of not only yourself, I know how you feel, I had to refuse that choice many years ago, your uncles had to refuse it, now it is your time, she will never understand why, but that is life, if you do it, soon you will be divided with her spiritually because she is from another culture, and biologically because she is 13 years older then you". My father and my uncles are definitely my role models, I want to be like them. But I also love her very much. So this is what I mean by saying that My Laws of Life are against My Love.
I do not know what was the point of my writing to you. Do I need help and advice? Yes. Especially now when I have made up my mind (Or I should say I have not made up my mind, but I am doing this blind and with my eyes closed, but I am doing this, just doing this) Please do not write me about finding a compromise and taking tp her and talking to my family and all that. I have gone through thinking over all of that for last two months. The outstanding issues are fundamental and diplomacy here will not work. You are a woman. Perhaps you can help me to explain things to her so that pain she will experience will be as less as possible. Because what is killing me, is that knowing she will spend months depressed, and bad sleep and desperate and like my father said: No matter what, she will never understand why. And she will hate me. And she will be sorry she started this relationship with me.
On the other hand I am so happy that I met her. And in this part of my life I will always love her and only her. But this part of my life lasted for one year and 8 months. Is it my fault that she might not have a family and child? I do not know. Probably yes, at least partly.
Dear Reader:
I can see that you've made up your mind, but you don't want to be a bad person in your girlfriend's eyes. I don't think you can control what she thinks of you or how she feels. She may need to hate you in order to have the energy she needs to survive this blow. If you are certain this is what you want to do, then do it honestly and openly. Tell her you can't be with her, and then cut off communication, so she can mourn and get on with her life. If you drag it out, you'll just waste her time and hurt her more. Read my article "Letting Go Takes Love" for more about this. How to Be a Couple and Still Be Free can help you understand what you want out of relationships in general.
For low-cost phone counseling, email me at [email protected]