In the death-throes of any opera, where the main characters rapidly come to some morbid ends, there is always a tiny ray of hope--something that gives pause in the blood-letting and betrayal. So,too, it goes with love affairs that define our lives. Amid the wreckage and mayhem, something astute emerges.
I have never become involved with a student--even when I was teaching undergrads at age 27--I know,all too well, how unfair it is. I have also never allowed myself a relationship with anyone twenty-years my junior. I don't need adoration. I don't relish infatuation. It has to begin on equal footing. Though each relationship may tilt or tip, at the start, it must be on level ground. There is way too much destruction involved especially against the younger person, otherwise.
No matter how the younger person argues--no matter how deeply sincere their attraction--nor how powerful their pursuit/seduction ploy becomes--an older lover must resist temptation--especially if the power differential is great: a teacher; a therapist; a coach; a counselor, etc. The problems increase with each decade of difference between two people--most pointedly if the couple is dealing with one person in their teens or twenties--no matter how "mature" the younger person presents. Though I would have been the first person to damn this "rule of thumb", when I found myself falling in love with someone almost two decades older than me, now, in hindsight, having spent a lifetime of failed relationships and self-doubt, always measuring my wiser self against that inexperienced "younger self", and never having the luxury of closure or apology or even some kind of validation of the good side of our shared experience, I must re-iterate: don't get involved with someone who is old enough to be your parent--or young enough to be your child. Just don't.
O, I know the arguments: a younger lover makes up, in bed, what he or she lacks in resources and experience...a younger lover needs to be brought along, introduced by someone who has greater skills or knowledge...a younger lover needs the financial backing and wisdom of the world that someone older can afford....a younger lover adds energy to the life of the older partner... Perhaps too true--but what doesn't often get spelled out is the long term cost of this inequality-- to both sides. In ancient times, this was a model that might have emerged. However, we don't have enough history written by the weaker partner, to validate the arrangements...For today, however, there is enough evidence via psychological and social studies to warrant my warning. My own experience validates this...
As the older person grows bored of the younger's constant angst/dramas/insecurities (or simple faux pas from lack of experience), nothing reflecting the deeper qualities of the former, rise. Only the worst qualities: impatience;anger;frustration; ennui; sarcasm, or, in the worst cases, rage, begin to emerge in those moments. Jealousy; self-loathing; cruelty; competition; all conspire to create betrayal. The latter becomes shattered, lacking equal tools and resources to attempt repair. The former feels trapped and furious at "being used". It is a relationship of pain, in the end.
Unfortunately, it most often becomes a touchstone for the younger party-- a life-marker one may not easily erase, let alone forget. (Two bouts of serious therapy, a successful Twelve Step life-program, and untold years of "processing" with therapist-friends and cohorts, three published novels with characters "disguised"--and still, certain dates are forever tinged from my first "adult" affair.)
What might have changed this?
The person who should have bravely processed the break-down with me, instead, hid out --denying the relationship ever occurred--creating an illusion of purity and distance that persists to this day. If not for a best friend who was present at the dramarama, I might believe it was all a figment of my imagination and wildchild days. It was not. My friend remains, reminding me that only a life uncovered and owned is a life worth living--and sober.
For the older lover, the experience is filed under "a failed affair"--to be more or less remembered and then, allowed to fade into the past,becoming another "story" to share with close friends on a cold night.However, for the younger-party, too often,if the power differential is great enough,it is a scar upon the heart (and psyche) that cannot fade. It is a seminal experience that creates, or adds to the creation, of the emerging adult.It can never "be repaired" nor forgotten--only learned from, and carried into other relations.
Some will protest--arguing I'm no psychologist--these statements I offer are too broadly painted. Fair enough--I am not a shrink. Not even a therapist. However, I have been forever imprinted with an affair which I cannot shake, can only re-evaluate, own and try to learn from--however slow that education is.
My final abandonment came when I was called back after my first collection of poetry, to give a week of readings and workshops, to my college town. Instead of joy for a friend (or even hidden pride, on some level), my old heartflame put the dog we'd raised, together, into a kennel and the child I'd grown close to, on a plane to visit her grandmother in a far-away state; then proceeded to tell me, over the phone, that if the kid ever learned of our affair, my "ex" would take a gun, and come for me--and then follow it with a suicide.
So much for love in the world of the seventies' academia. So much for love between generations of students and educators. So much for shaping the lives of those who look to us with shining eyes and open hearts, with decades of difference in our ages.
I have not written about this part of my life in any published way that might reveal the person. I am not seeking revenge nor retaliation nor even putting blame on the complications of my adult life. I take responsibility for being in my early twenties--of legal age--being wild and free and feeling as if my heart was the truest map I could follow. I did seduce an older friend. I made the first move--but when rebuffed and left at the mall--I backed away.
I took that message and first abandonment to heart--literally. I swore I would turn off my feelings and remove myself from physical proximity--as much as was possible on that small campus in the dead of winter. My friend took the opposite approach--showing up at my dorm room in the middle of the night, calling me back from the edge of friendship. We were both to blame. So, this is a cautionary tale, even as I have three nieces approaching their early twenties, about to go off to college.
If you have already taken the path into the unknown country of this kind of affair, and you are the older partner, heed, too, the warning. At least have the courage and the clean-heart, to process the ending, when it comes. Don't toss your lover over the cliff, alone, when you've changed your mind or affections. They will take it much harder than you can even imagine--if you give it much lingering thought, at all.
Now, I've written it down.
I have never become involved with a student--even when I was teaching undergrads at age 27--I know,all too well, how unfair it is. I have also never allowed myself a relationship with anyone twenty-years my junior. I don't need adoration. I don't relish infatuation. It has to begin on equal footing. Though each relationship may tilt or tip, at the start, it must be on level ground. There is way too much destruction involved especially against the younger person, otherwise.
No matter how the younger person argues--no matter how deeply sincere their attraction--nor how powerful their pursuit/seduction ploy becomes--an older lover must resist temptation--especially if the power differential is great: a teacher; a therapist; a coach; a counselor, etc. The problems increase with each decade of difference between two people--most pointedly if the couple is dealing with one person in their teens or twenties--no matter how "mature" the younger person presents. Though I would have been the first person to damn this "rule of thumb", when I found myself falling in love with someone almost two decades older than me, now, in hindsight, having spent a lifetime of failed relationships and self-doubt, always measuring my wiser self against that inexperienced "younger self", and never having the luxury of closure or apology or even some kind of validation of the good side of our shared experience, I must re-iterate: don't get involved with someone who is old enough to be your parent--or young enough to be your child. Just don't.
O, I know the arguments: a younger lover makes up, in bed, what he or she lacks in resources and experience...a younger lover needs to be brought along, introduced by someone who has greater skills or knowledge...a younger lover needs the financial backing and wisdom of the world that someone older can afford....a younger lover adds energy to the life of the older partner... Perhaps too true--but what doesn't often get spelled out is the long term cost of this inequality-- to both sides. In ancient times, this was a model that might have emerged. However, we don't have enough history written by the weaker partner, to validate the arrangements...For today, however, there is enough evidence via psychological and social studies to warrant my warning. My own experience validates this...
As the older person grows bored of the younger's constant angst/dramas/insecurities (or simple faux pas from lack of experience), nothing reflecting the deeper qualities of the former, rise. Only the worst qualities: impatience;anger;frustration; ennui; sarcasm, or, in the worst cases, rage, begin to emerge in those moments. Jealousy; self-loathing; cruelty; competition; all conspire to create betrayal. The latter becomes shattered, lacking equal tools and resources to attempt repair. The former feels trapped and furious at "being used". It is a relationship of pain, in the end.
Unfortunately, it most often becomes a touchstone for the younger party-- a life-marker one may not easily erase, let alone forget. (Two bouts of serious therapy, a successful Twelve Step life-program, and untold years of "processing" with therapist-friends and cohorts, three published novels with characters "disguised"--and still, certain dates are forever tinged from my first "adult" affair.)
What might have changed this?
The person who should have bravely processed the break-down with me, instead, hid out --denying the relationship ever occurred--creating an illusion of purity and distance that persists to this day. If not for a best friend who was present at the dramarama, I might believe it was all a figment of my imagination and wildchild days. It was not. My friend remains, reminding me that only a life uncovered and owned is a life worth living--and sober.
For the older lover, the experience is filed under "a failed affair"--to be more or less remembered and then, allowed to fade into the past,becoming another "story" to share with close friends on a cold night.However, for the younger-party, too often,if the power differential is great enough,it is a scar upon the heart (and psyche) that cannot fade. It is a seminal experience that creates, or adds to the creation, of the emerging adult.It can never "be repaired" nor forgotten--only learned from, and carried into other relations.
Some will protest--arguing I'm no psychologist--these statements I offer are too broadly painted. Fair enough--I am not a shrink. Not even a therapist. However, I have been forever imprinted with an affair which I cannot shake, can only re-evaluate, own and try to learn from--however slow that education is.
My final abandonment came when I was called back after my first collection of poetry, to give a week of readings and workshops, to my college town. Instead of joy for a friend (or even hidden pride, on some level), my old heartflame put the dog we'd raised, together, into a kennel and the child I'd grown close to, on a plane to visit her grandmother in a far-away state; then proceeded to tell me, over the phone, that if the kid ever learned of our affair, my "ex" would take a gun, and come for me--and then follow it with a suicide.
So much for love in the world of the seventies' academia. So much for love between generations of students and educators. So much for shaping the lives of those who look to us with shining eyes and open hearts, with decades of difference in our ages.
I have not written about this part of my life in any published way that might reveal the person. I am not seeking revenge nor retaliation nor even putting blame on the complications of my adult life. I take responsibility for being in my early twenties--of legal age--being wild and free and feeling as if my heart was the truest map I could follow. I did seduce an older friend. I made the first move--but when rebuffed and left at the mall--I backed away.
I took that message and first abandonment to heart--literally. I swore I would turn off my feelings and remove myself from physical proximity--as much as was possible on that small campus in the dead of winter. My friend took the opposite approach--showing up at my dorm room in the middle of the night, calling me back from the edge of friendship. We were both to blame. So, this is a cautionary tale, even as I have three nieces approaching their early twenties, about to go off to college.
If you have already taken the path into the unknown country of this kind of affair, and you are the older partner, heed, too, the warning. At least have the courage and the clean-heart, to process the ending, when it comes. Don't toss your lover over the cliff, alone, when you've changed your mind or affections. They will take it much harder than you can even imagine--if you give it much lingering thought, at all.
Now, I've written it down.
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