A girlfriend and I went to a very fun picnic in the park this past Saturday. The temperature was fantastic and you know your girl had on a crop top! The outing was actually a photo walk event where people who follow a certain Instagram account come together to take great photographs — of one another, the scenery, whatever comes into view. I went along just to enjoy the weather, but my friend went not only to take some shots but to shoot her shot with potential prospects of the opposite sex. There were quite a few handsome men there, including a guy she’d previously talked to, albeit briefly. Despite looking like a 35-year-old who just so happens to have a salt and pepper beard, the guy is actually 53. I couldn’t believe it. My friend, in her early 30s, was really into him, but when she first started getting to know him, he was entering into a relationship with a woman closer to his age. But by the time we saw him this past weekend, he was single and ready to mingle.
They did some chatting back and forth following the event and ended up having a very interesting conversation about age. It makes sense that a man who is 53 would have a child, or hell, a couple of children — possibly of adult age. But my friend was taken aback when she learned that this guy had a daughter who was her exact age.
It came out while they were joking about him possibly forgetting her name. He blamed it on the fact that he was “old,” and she replied that he could have fooled her and anyone else because he doesn’t look it. That’s when he asked her age. When she told him he casually said, “Oh, my daughter Tia is turning 32 next month.” She didn’t know what to think. “Omg! What is my life?!” to be specific.
While she didn’t explicitly say that it would be an issue for her, she definitely felt like it was weird, the idea of dating a man with a child her age.
When I posed the question to my co-workers, asking if they would do it, one emphatically said “No!” The other raised her eyebrow, sat back in her chair to think for a second and replied, “How fine is he?”
For me, it would also likely be a no. I have a friend whose father dated a girl our age for a couple of years, and based on the way said friend and her sisters treated that relationship and looked at that young woman, it just seems like more trouble than it’s worth.
A young woman wrote about her experience dating a man with multiple daughters around her age, and all of the ways their relationship was looked at by others for Cosmo in 2015. She was 26 at the time, her boyfriend, 52. And despite the judgments, they’d managed to make it work, at the time of writing, for five years:
Despite all the love, we’ve been called every name in the book: I must be a gold digger and have daddy issues. He must be a pervert or be very immature to love me. I have been confronted in public a few times, by drunk people at bars who say I’m an embarrassment to my family for loving him. Our own families have spent hours begging us to choose between each other and them. My parents are terrified of the thought that he will pass away around the time they do, and I’ll be left alone. His daughters, whom he had young and are around my age, have a strong loyalty to their mother (his ex-wife) and have struggled to let me in. At times, both of our families have been embarrassed by our relationship. When his daughters’ friends see pictures of me and Tim, his daughters feel the need to explain, “Yes, that’s his girlfriend; yes, she is really young.” We ourselves have been embarrassed too — like one time when a stranger assumed Tim was my dad and we had to correct him.
The woman would go on to say that complicated feelings about their relationship would often come up between the couple when they thought about more serious stages of their relationship. For instance, because his kids were her age, as in grown, he didn’t know if he would want to have another child with her. Still, the writer, who didn’t share her name, said that they’d managed to create a home and a life full of “an abundance of love.” Something they both didn’t think would be possible, neither did his daughter’s believe it, when they initially started dating.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being open to dating an older man with a child in your age group. The guy could be amazing! And his daughter, or children in general, could welcome you with open arms. Or maybe, just maybe, it may not even get that far, and the two of you could just enjoy one another’s company. Get to know each other for a short while and see where things go. Because honestly, it’s not always reasonable to meet someone and immediately start thinking, planning or worrying about your future as a couple. Sometimes it’s fun to just have fun.
But issa no for me dawg…
As always, that’s just my opinion. What say you? Is it petty not to want to date a guy who has children your age?
Image via Bigstock
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