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The stakes are always high in any relationship deemed strange or “impractical” by either the society at large or that one nagging relative who seems
What to Keep in Mind When Dating Someone Older. The stakes are always high in any relationship deemed strange or “impractical” by either the society at large or that one nagging relative who seems to be more enthusiastic about getting you hitched than you yourself. The same holds true for those in a relationship with someone considerably older than them.

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Videos by VICE. For starters, your love is often subjected to the gaze of strangers and faced with judgement. If you’re a younger guy, you can be labelled a playboy, fetishist, or victim. If you’re a younger woman dating an older man, you get stereotyped as a gold digger or someone with daddy issues. But for Avaneesh Arya, a 33-year-old real estate manager living in Pune, India, none of that mattered when he fell in love with a senior at work who is six years older than him. “We were compatible from the word ‘go,’” he said. “When I asked her out, it seemed like the most natural thing.” Arya was only too happy to see that his parents had no objection to him marrying an older woman. This was certainly an exception in a country where men being the younger partner in a marriage is often considered taboo. “My happiness was all that mattered to them. My friends opposed it until the end, but I believed in our love and still do.” That’s not to say that age gaps don’t pose challenges as most relationships do. What we seek out of life changes with time, be it money, stability, career milestones, or just what makes us happy. Heck, your partner might not even get the pop culture references you make. But love is love, even if the most popular band when your sweetie was a teenager was Aerosmith. To be able to better navigate your own intergenerational romance, we asked experts and those in age-gap relationships themselves about how to bridge the gap. Communicate what’s important to you. “He understands me on a molecular level,” Heena Shaikh, a 24-year-old entrepreneur based in New Delhi, said about her 38-year-old husband whom she met on a dating app. “And yet, we have to try our best to be on the same page when it comes to how we felt that day about the smallest of things.” Shaikh believes that open communication about not just your day and goals in life but also your insecurities can go a long way in making it work. “The idea that a couple shouldn’t go to bed without completely resolving their point of conflict can be quite unfair. You can’t put a deadline to a resolution. But you can assure each other of persistent dialogue.” Himanshu, a 32-year-old multidisciplinary artist based in Mumbai, echoed the sentiment. He was the older one in a relationship that lasted over a year with a man seven years younger. “There needs to be immense conversation on a daily basis,” he said. “But we didn’t choke each other with a barrage of confrontations either. There needs to be room to breathe, and also for poetry and drama – we’re not lab rats. With him, I realised only in retrospect that it should’ve taken place more often.” Have a vision. Jasdeep Mago, a neuropsychologist based in Mumbai, said that before exclusively getting into an age-gap relationship, the conversation must be tailored towards the future without any delay. “Perhaps someone who is much older is looking at settling down and wants a stable life, while the younger one in the equation would still want to experiment and check out all their options,” she said. Mago believes that as we go through life, our career goals can change as well, and that both partners should work on being okay with what stage the other person is in. While one partner may want to bask in the success of a well-developed career or think about how to fold up that chapter of their life in the near future, the other might be focused on the hustle of building theirs. Instead of trying to force your partner to conform to the lifestyle that your particular stage requires, be supportive of where they are in theirs. Draw up your future plans together keeping in mind these differences. Be aware of the skewed power dynamics, if any. Mandy Hale, a New York Times bestselling author, wrote in The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass that “red flags are moments of hesitation that determine our destination.” Ashwini Singh, a 26-year-old banker, saw such red flags quite early on in her relationship with a man 15 years older. “We matched on a dating app, but he told me only on our third date that he had joined the app [on] the very day his wife had initiated divorce proceedings against him,” Singh said. Even though the first two dates flowed effortlessly, things took a dramatic turn after the confession on the third date.













Going on a date with an older guy


Going on a date with an older man


Going out with a younger man


Going out with older man


Going out with a younger guy