Anne Hathaway’s latest film, The Idea of You, has become Amazon’s most-streamed rom com, causing me to reflect that Hollywood’s young man/older woman scenario has changed for the better since The Graduate. Though everyone was mad for it at the time, was there ever a grimmer film about relationships? We’re meant to empathise with the over-privileged, over-grown, over-thinking spoilt brat of a hero – especially when he becomes the ‘prey’ of the much older Mrs Robinson – but that the toy boy is played by the 29-year-old Dustin Hoffman and the cougar by the 35-year-old (and far more attractive) Anne Bancroft merely highlights the misogyny of the enterprise.
I used to be mistaken for my husband’s mum in my forties, which always amused rather than bothered me
Sadly, in real life such unions are still treated as somewhat freakish; witness the criticism this week of the attractive 48-year-old singer and actress Kym Marsh, who has taken up with 29-year-old Samuel Thomas. They met while starring in 101 Dalmatians: The Musical; surely Cruella de Vil herself would not be more cruelly trolled for seeking to make puppies into a coat than Miss Marsh has for making a man the same age as her son into her lover. It’s a cliché, but there is far less kerfuffle when an old fellow marries a young lady; see the 24-year age gap between the (perfectly matched) Boris and Carrie Johnson.
When I got together with my third husband, Mr Raven, nearly 30 years ago, it was considered unwholesome on two counts; one, he was my girlfriend’s younger brother and two, he was 13 years younger than me. Gossip got back to me through helpful friends about how ‘weird’ our relationship was considered by people who had never met either one of us. But most of my friends were either jaded Bohemian contemporaries or much younger than me (my best female friend at the time was a teenager, who I sometimes used to take to the Groucho Club for lunch wearing her school uniform) so it wasn’t like I was outraging the suburban school-run set.
What my friends quickly deduced was that Daniel seemed somewhat more of a grown-up than I did. I was flighty and excitable; he was grounded and equable. When one mate began to call him ‘Dad’ I picked up the habit too, leading to an amusing incident whereby I remarked loudly to a friend in front of the Metropole Hotel on a bustling Bank Holiday ‘That’s where I took Dad’s virginity!’ Cue outraged parents covering their children’s innocent ears and pulling them hastily away from this time-travelling pervert.
He was the best step-father imaginable to my poor son Jack, finding time for him when everyone else – including myself – had turned their backs on him due to the mental illness that made him so difficult to be around and which eventually killed him through suicide. In return, I’ve done everything I can to amuse him when death and illness have stalked his family. It’s not a conventional marriage – we don’t live together, have no friends in common and our meetings take place in pubs, bars and restaurants – but I had two conventional marriages before, and added together they were still only half the length of this one.
I’d never be so silly as to declare that all marriages with an age gap work out well, any more than I would that all marriages between people of the same age work out well; of the 42 per cent of marriages which end in divorce, the vast majority are between people in the same age group. But I do wonder if I would still feel as young as I do if I was married to a man of my own age. It used to be the received wisdom that women ‘went off’ early – like milk – whereas men just kept getting better and better, like fine wine. I think that this myth has been effectively busted; there’s no female equivalent of Victor Meldrew and though the creators of Grumpy Old Men thought up a female equivalent in order to keep the franchise going, it never had the same cultural resonance or personal recognition. Though Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford are both 64, she seems immeasurably more youthful and vital than him; Langsford’s friend Ulrika Jonsson was being blunt but reasonable when she wrote: ‘Eamonn has become a leading member of the Grumpy Old Men’s club over the years and he’s a proper curmudgeon. It could just be that all his moaning got on Ruth’s nerves. There she is, wanting to crack on with life, and she’s got an old misery on two walking sticks dragging her down. She’s smart, empathetic and full of energy – any man would be lucky to have her.’ It’s outrageous to think that Joan Collins was told by a Hollywood studio that her contract would end at 27, after which she would be past her prime; she went on to pose for a 12-page Playboy layout at the age of 50 and marry a man 32 years younger than her when she was 70.
I used to be mistaken for my husband’s mum in my forties, which always amused rather than bothered me, but now he’s 52 and I’m 65 (we were 23 and 36 when we met) this doesn’t happen. We probably haven’t taken the best care of ourselves, and with our missing teeth and drunken ways probably resemble a pair of Skid Row compadres rather than milf and toy boy, as I’m sure we once did. But as long as we have a laugh – which we invariably do – the age gap is neither here nor there. I don’t call him Dad anymore, which is probably a sign that I’ve grown up somewhat – but not too much, I hope. I’ve brought him out of his shell a little and he’s calmed me down a bit, but nothing too radical. I don’t go for all this ‘You complete me’ rubbish – who wants to be with half a person? I was already happy when I met him, but Mr Raven has made me happier, and I hope I’ve done the same for him. Because at the end of the day, the ability to ease someone’s troubles in life counts for a whole lot more than some numbers on a page.
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