[may-december] even with the best will in the world

Mention was made today of an older man with a 17 to 21 year old girl.

So much has been written about May-Decembers, mostly either the outraged morality of those who have never been there or the wishful naivety of someone who has been smitten. The old rule of half your age plus ten has much to recommend it: 30-25, 40-30 or 50-35 but 55-17 is something else again.

A seventeen year old girl can have a veneer of maturity, especially these days and especially if she's of a serious disposition. She can look and act the goods and he's the catalyst which instils confidence in her and makes her seem even more mature, just as he gets a new lease of life himself. By nineteen or twenty she's almost a different person and that is half the problem.

What he's dealing with is not a fully-fledged adult but a girl who's still 30 to 40% her mother, who lacks the experience to make a life decision of this magnitude, given the gulf between them and whose needs and directions are going to alter as she hones her purpose in life. He, on the other hand, knows where he is and what he's doing. It's just that he's smitten.

To shy away from a serious commitment with such a girl immediately raises other issues - just what does the older man then want her for? If he says: 'Do I have to want her for anything?' this is sweet and actuated only by the purest motives but how, practically, can they then relate? How does he deal with her parents?

If he says there's no sexual component, then what will he do in the long term? How can he keep her from that which comes naturally at this age? Is he being honest with himself or with her? And what of the state of play with his own sexuality?

With the best will in the world, even if he's in peak physical condition, has most of his hair and desire has still not outstripped performance, even if his musical tastes more than 50% coincide with hers, even if she loves him more than he loves her, it is still fraught.

She has a different rhythm, differing perspectives even if they agree on an issue and he can only take the mentor thing so far, can only show her so much of the world and give her so much of the earth. He'll believe that in his case it's different, that he has the flexibility and sensitivity to make it work; that she is also old enough to decide.

It still doesn't work, in the end. I've not only been there twice but two friends over the last two decades also did the same thing, one even marrying. I'm not being mean - it simply doesn't work. Sooner or later the question of children also arises and this now becomes an extended family affair. And will the broader community of relatives give the happy couple an easy time?

'So, we'll go to another country,' he or she suggests. But she doesn't know what it is to be cut adrift from her moorings and when the reality finally sets in, what then? It's a lovely ideal, they might just love each other to bits but reality will finally bite.

Of course, none of this even begins to touch on the ladies 'of a certain age' whose motherly eyes lightly fall on a young man of promise in his 20s. That's another question again.